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Joined: 7/24/2013
Posts: 1
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Does anyone else have a novel they're working on where they have absolutely no idea how to categorize it, other than romance?
Okay, maybe I should be more specific. I have a romance novel I'm working on where this guy is transferred from one police station to another. Only at this police station, everyone there is some sort of Other, or people with abilities/physical mutations. For instance, the forensic guy is half-spider. The secretary can talk to cats. The entire town is like this, and it's one of a few towns where Others can go and avoid being targeted. However, there's also quite a bit of comedy, since none of the policemen there know anything about their job. They just let the chief's granddaughter grab items, read what's there, and then tell them what happened. The chief is an old, almost-senile Irish man who tells everyone that looks at his granddaughter "Eyes up, boy-o!" So I'm really torn as to how to categorize this. Paranormal romance? Mystery? (Since there are some crimes going on.)
Does anyone else have that problem, or am I seriously the only one?
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it sounds more paranormal romance to me.
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Joined: 6/7/2013
Posts: 1356
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Hi Alexandra! Welcome to Book Country! So glad to have you here.
Your book sounds amazing! And no, you're definitely not the first member to wonder what section of the proverbial bookstore their book should go. I'm thinking Mari's on the right track with Paranormal Romance--seems like that would be a good area of the Genre Map to check out first. Maybe Paranormal Mystery and Comic Fantasy as well? Check out the Landmark Titles for each of those categories and see if you can imagine your book sitting on a shelf next to them. What does everyone else think? I might be totally off-base here.
Let me know if I can be any help to you as you get to know the Book Country site. And update us on what you decide about your book's literary category!
Happy writing!
Lucy Silag
Book Country Community and Engagement Manager
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Alexandra: Since I don't, can't, write for a preconceived readership, I have a difficult time trying to fit my work into a category. My current novel, The Commercial, is listed under Erotica mostly because it contains much off-the-wall graphic sex and depiction of cannibalism involving the ingestion of a penis washed down with a liter of Coca-Cola because, in keeping with the novel's theme, the phallic gourmand knew "things go better with Coke," Yet it also harbors numerous romantic interludes and a protracted representation of the paranormal.With the assistance of a stout shoehorn, and more than a generous dollop of imagination, it might be crammed into several genres. Before Book Country's recent reshuffling, the Erotic genre contained many entrees that were decidedly not erotic; were more appropriate to the Romantic genre. The main differences between the two categories are intensity, duration and abundance. Whereas erotica contains veritable geysers of seminal fluids on a par and regularity with Old Faithful, the romantic field manifests nary a spurt. On the computerized Erectophile machine, good sexual descriptions, that is to say, flagrantly smutty ones, will ring with the clarion call of the Liberty Bell (before it got cracked.) If the Erectophile bell barely tingles, you can safely assume that you've become well established in the Romantic genre.
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Here's the test. A romance is about the growing relationship between two people. It can be on Mars, Under the ocean, or in a strange town. But if the focus is on the romance of the two people involved, it's a romance.
If the focus is on solving the problems the protagonist is having, while at the same time getting the couple together, it's probably not.
Romance comes in lots of flavors and subgenres, but in all of them the focus is on the relationship.
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