It’s always strange when you finish a book, to see how it fits into the categories offered by publishers. My three nonfiction books were, one by one, total misfits: Each is a serious book about women, or women and men, with the academic approval I’d hoped for but with commercial appeal that made them popular, too. So, that’s a problem: Should they appear under the heading, “Women’s Studies”? Not really. That’s a bit more for academic books. “Commercial Nonfiction”? Better. But, as with “Self-Help,” usually reserved for prescriptive books, not so much for thoughtful, less made-to-be-popular ones. Nobody knew what to do; each was a Genre Problem. I don’t say this because they were so fabulous that no one could possibly fine the right category, but because they blended categories, or straddled them; they crossed genres.
Now I find the same problem exists in the ebook publishing world. I’ve written a novel with my husband, Richard. It’s a love story for grownups, not for teens or tweens or twenty-something (, although reading about different age groups shouldn’t be a problem for anyone). But it’s not, strictly speaking, a Romance. Nor, although it’s literate, is it Literary Fiction. It’s adventurous but not Adventure, nor, in any way, Political. It’s a novel, a story– but not a short story and not one in a collection of stories. And so it goes. Oh, and what about the otherworldly presence–Cupid, the God of Love–whom we use for fun….does that mean it’s should be under the category of “Magical Realism” or “Sprituality”? No, not either. As Yul Brynner once put it, speaking as the King of Siam in his own love story with Anna, “Is a puzzlement.”
Well, just for fun, check it out. On Amazon you can find our book (A Godsend: A Love Story for Grownups) under a bunch of headings, but I hope you will take a leap and spend the $2.99 to download it onto your Kindle or Ipad (using the Kindle APP) and just enjoy this love story, whatever genre they want to put it in!
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