Never underestimate the commercial value of mental illness.
My subtitle says, “Religion. Money. Politics. Sex.” Okay, I think I’ve covered them all, but my tag cloud says I’m getting heavy on the religion side, so let’s hit the money for a while.
Over on Teleread, while looking for a post on ePub format (I know I read it the other day and I’ll address that in a future post), I found this gem: Top Ten Self-Publishing Myths. It’s all relevant to me, but I’m not going to post it all here. Copyright, you know. Go read, then come back!
We’ve got Mrs. Giggles, whom I have referenced before. Obviously, one reason I like her is she reviews self-published books. The other is she’s a hoot.
I don’t read a fraction as much as she does, I’m not nearly as adventurous as she is, and I certainly don’t have the gift for reviewing that she does, but I trust her reviews.
I am bored with the below discussion (but don’t let me rain on your parade, so carry on). However, I do need to use it as the springboard for what’s on my ADHD mind today: What, precisely, defines a genre?
We’re very specific in romance. Got an email yesterday from my newest BFF (kidding! but the offer’s open!) who said, “I know you don’t write romance…” Well, yeah, I do. It’s just got so much other STUFF in it that it can’t be classified, which is why I’m publishing it myself. In fact, it’s got THREE (count ’em, 1, 2, 3) full-length romances going on at the same time all woven together (which is why it’s going to top 700 pages and who-knows-how-many megabytes). And they have sex and there is no fade-to-black and they say the f-word and the c-word. They live a certain political philosophy (some more than others) that will probably be uncomfortable for other types of readers. The story takes place over the course of 5 years and oh, by the way, they’re all in their late 30s and early 40s and wow is that so not part of genre romance.
Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander
by Ann Herendeen
published by Harper Paperbacks
This book, whose tagline is “A man in love with his wife and his boyfriend,” wouldn’t normally catch my eye because m/m isn’t my kink. I bought it for an entirely different reason. So now that I bought it and read it and thoroughly enjoyed myself (oooh, have you noticed this trend about what I review?), I must speak my piece.
Here we are in Regency England (and those of us in Romancelandia are more or less completely and totally comfortable in Regency England, Heyer or no Heyer) and a sodomite wishes to marry to fulfill his duty to his family name while still continuing his unabashed lifestyle. He finds the right chick, marries her, figures out he so really doesn’t mind doing her, thinks she’s refreshing and falls in love with her blahblahblah (yeah, you know how it goes), then meets the male love of his life and we all end up happily ever after in the same bed with nary a menage a trois to be had. Of course, what would a Regency romance be without a little spying here and there?
Third person narrative: Limited, Omniscient, Objective
Third person limited, with a little modification.
According to Wikipedia (that most unassailable source), third-person limited is:
Third person limited is when the narrator is an outsider who sees into the mind of one character…In third person limited the narrator is outside of the story and tells the story from only one character’s view.
However, some authors use an even narrower and more subjective perspective, as though the viewpoint character were narrating the story; this is dramatically very similar to the first person, allowing in-depth revelation of the protagonist’s personality, but uses third-person grammar.
In my time writing novels, being in critique groups, chomped on by the creative writing professors at UMKC, this has been pounded into me as being The Correct Way To Do Things. Well, either that or first person, which has a literary cachet that is only beginning to gain ground in genre fiction.