A few announcements and a question of genre…(updated)

Today is my last day of work at the day job. I’ve enjoyed my time there and I love all the fabulous people I work with (I think I have the best coworkers in the world!) but I’ve decided to take the leap and write full time. Wish me luck, and expect a lot of posts here in the future about setting up a schedule and etc.

(Yes, I have health insurance.)

Also, it was one year ago today that I sold my novel to Kerri Buckley at Bantam Dell. Happy anniversary, book contract!

Finally, they’ve got my correct cover up at Amazon. Woo hoo!

Okay, on to other stuff. In the comments trail of the last post, the hierophant 😉 Becca asked:
“Could I ask: How central does a romantic subplot have to be to count a book as a cross genre romance?”

Gosh, I have no idea. I guess my first question is, what do all those terms mean? What do you think of as a romantic subplot? As a cross-genre romance? I know some people who think that ANYTHING that accompanies the word “romance” in the genre description makes it “cross genre, such as “romantic comedy” or “historical romance” or “time travel romance.” I’m not really with them on that one. Is a romantic suspense a cross-genre book, because many of them have huge crossover appeal? (I think books like Allison Brennan’s are probably read by a much different demographic than the romance one.) Or are you talking about the trendy “with romantic elements” kind of story? (Probably, since you said “subplot”.) I’ve heard of a few paranormal romances referred to as cross genre, since they are as much if not more supernatural (i.e., shelved in fantasy or horror) than they are romantic. Bookseller Chick once lamented whether books like Mary Janice Davidson’s Undead series should be shelved in romance or sci fi/fantasy. I suppose that would be as much a reflection of the books’ lack of romance as it would be of their fantasy elements, because there are stories with far, far more complex fantasy worlds that are shelved in romance because the story is totally about love.

Do you see all those keywords in the above paragraph? “Shelved” and “bookseller” and etc? That’s the clue, right there. Cross genre is not really something that you, the writer, decide. The publisher and bookseller decide. If the publisher or bookseller for whatever reason decide that you will sell better in romance than in sci-fi, you’re going to get shelved in romance. You might get shelved in romance at one store and at sci fi in another and in both at a third store, because the guy running that store knows that a lot of his customers know to look for, say, Diana Gabaldon in romance but he also thinks that a lot of people who would love Diana Gabaldon would never look in the romance section and so also shelves her in fiction. (This was actually a big hullabaloo this past year, as some big chain finally officially moved Gabaldon out of romance and into fiction.)

“But,” I see a certain kind of writer say, “I don’t want my books to be romance. I want them to be insert-genre-here.” (I’m not saying this is Becca, mind you. This is just for the sake of discussion.)

Well, that’s nice for you. That and $3.50 will get you a latte at Starbucks. Okay, serioously, there area few things you can do about that. When you speak to your agent about marketing this book, you two decide to market it to mystery houses (if you’re a cross genre mystery) rather than, say, chick lit or romance houses. This is a very popular option right now for the type of book we used to call, unblinkingly, a chick lit mystery. Because the chick lit market is in a slump, the savvy editor is going to go to the publisher with some “fabulous mystery with a snarky, witty voice and a dash of romance” rather than a “chick lit with crime.” Or you might try shopping to a fantasy-centric house before a romance-centric one. But if that fails, your agent is going to sell your cross genre fantasy romance to a romance house and not blink an eye. Because the point is to sell it as best you can, and if a romance house wants it and will do good things for it and pay you a pile of money, then maybe there’s a reason.

Regarding the strength of the subplot though, I haven’t the foggiest, and I’m probably the wrong person to ask, as I question whether or nto the romantic subplot in my first release even counts as “with romantic elements.” I would say that to be legitimately cross-genre, it had better be reasonably strong. In terms of percentages, I dunno. I don’t know if it’s about page numbers or about happy endings or about emotional involvement… I think it depends.

Let’s see what other people think, especially those who are writing cross-genre novels. Julie, that means you. 😉

No, seriously, what do you all think about this question? How do you define “cross genre” and how do you measure the strength of a romantic subplot?

(And go check out Nalini Singh’s blog, where she has a slam book story going on…