Ranting

This journal is just a random rant because I have too much time on my hands. It’s really to help me put my mind in order, so feel free to ignore it if you want. I won’t be offended.

I’ve been thinking about the writing process and the part that really stumps me is finding my genre/audience for my book.

The genre bit, in particular, bewilders me, especially since every genre can be broken down into smaller genres. It’s like splitting the atom-all of sudden all this crap comes out and there are so many things you don’t even know what to call them anymore (honestly who the hell came up with muon and gluon?!)  Let’s take the current book I am working on right: Hurrah for the Next Killer that Dies which is part of my larger series, the Nothing but Glory series.
Hurrah for the Next Killer that Dies is a fake memoir written by a fake revolutionary about a fake revolution in a fake country. The main character is an Ilkhatal, also known as a Killer (Killer being a slang word the race adopted out of spite), a humanoid reptile with a broad snout, short horns on the side of its head, and long, soft, furry ears. It’s basically what would happen if a cow, human, and iguana decided to have a mutated child. The Killers are the oppressed citizens of a country known as Shiva. The fake memoir chronicles their attempts to break free from the Shivians-artistic and snooty humans. Although I do not like comparing my creatures with any particular movement/race/country/event in history, the Killer Liberation Army (KLA) could be classified as a separatist movement similar to the IRA or the Irgun. I even have a prison break in the book (which seemed to have been one of Irgun’s favorite pastimes when they were not assassinating British officers and fighting amongst themselves).
The world is very similar to the Victorian Era, but not dependent on steam (thus making it hard to justify it as a steampunk novel-especially since there are no dirigibles, men with large muttonchops wearing monocles, or bionic limbs in my first book, although I will admit that one character will sport muttonchops later in the series and the tank, airplane, and flamethrower will become a popular weapon as the series progresses). The series could be labeled as a fantasy series because it has fantastical characters such as Minotaurs, Phoenixes, Demons, and Gargoyles, but the mythology is more Greco-Roman than Arthurian/Norse and the world is more akin to the twentieth century than the thirteenth or fourteenth century. And it’s not modern or contemporary fantasy because it is set in the past.
The series is also hard to catalog because it is not a fable or mythological study of right and wrong or good and evil, it is a socio-political and historical examination of a world in the midst of change. Hurrah for the Next Killer that Dies takes place between two world wars-the First and Second Shadow War-and is a microcosm study of a minority using the turmoil of one war to seize control of its own destinies while preparing for the coming of a second war. It has more in common with a political science book than an Arthurian fable.

So where does it belong? It is not fantasy, because fantasy is usually associated with knights, damsels in distress, petty squabbles over small kingdoms that haven’t quite reach nation state status, and usually has some connection with magic. Fantasy is also heavily entrenched in the Arthurian/Norse mythology and as I mentioned before my story is not. It follows the Greek mythology where the gods don’t give a fuck about humanity, they’re really just a set of squabbling family members,  when the gods do intercede it usually doesn’t work out for our hero because it’s just a petty fight between one god and two or three other gods, and man is his own worst enemy. It also does not start with the premise of a feudal system and there is no hidden king or prophesized hero to save the world. It is a world full of nation states and an international order similar to the Westphalia system found in today’s world and there are no destined heroes, only accidental ones. So, no, it’s not fantasy.

And it is not science fiction because science fiction is usually associated with futuristic societies, the evils of technology, the downfall of man, and some kind of alien or robotic intervention. While technology is an issue in my world, the series praises technology than it damns it. Actually, it damns man more for using technology to further greed and pride than it actually damns the technology itself, if that makes any sense. In many ways it is closer to the science fiction of Verne and Wells and the only reason they were considered science fiction was because they wrote about things that had not yet been created.  Obviously everyone is familiar with electricity and telegraph. Also, hate to disappoint any potential readers, but there will be no robots or aliens visiting my world. Sorry.
I thought about classifying it as science fantasy, but then grew annoyed with myself because that term makes as much sense as the term muon.

But, for argument’s sake, say I decide to label it as a science fantasy novel, who is my audience? It’s not squealing teenager boys and girls because there is an idiotic industry assumption that teenagers are only interested in books about teenagers, just as girls are only interested in books that are solely about girls and romance and boys are only interested in books solely about boys and action and adventure. Seeing as Hurrah for the Next Killer that Dies starts with Kingsley as 16 but ends with him in his forties, it would probably be hard to argue that this book is meant for young adults. I also doubt parents would want their teenagers reading about assassinations, prison breaks, and blowing up buildings. I do not think my target audiences are the fantasy or science fiction gurus for the same reasons the book is not a fantasy or science fiction book. I could potentially try and sell it steampunk lovers, but I feel that they would quickly sense that my book does not quite gel with their philosophy. It seems to be that they are in awe in the Victorian era and the world of steam, and while I am certainly a fan and consider myself a semi-steampunker myself, my series does not praise that world, it condemns it.

In many ways the series is a fantastical condemnation of the latter half of the 19th and most of the 20th century. It is my attempt to try and justify a century spent killing each other and forcing ideologues down people’s throats while praising the high ideals of democracy. But how to convince political scientists and historians to read a fictional account of two world wars and their aftermaths simply because I was too lazy to conduct the research necessary to write a series about the actual world wars?