Fusion - Joan Lennon

I like fusion.  I like the way unlikely, different things bump up against each other and result in something else that is unlikely and different in a different and unlikely way.

I like Bardcore (as of really recently, as I didn't know it existed before then) - a fusion of medieval and pop (or in this case country) music:

I like Newen Afrobeat - a heady mix of Fela Kuti and Brazilian music:

In my own writing, I'm interested in the places where poetry and prose meet and mingle.  At the moment, I'm working on a narrative poem about 3 women living on Fair Isle at different times, and my narrative poem Granny Garbage is a post-apocalyptic science fiction monologue.  MY YA novel Silver Skin has been described as a historical fantasy science fiction adventure romance, which is a mouthful that always makes me smile.

But, in recent years, when doing author events in schools or festivals, I've found I'm being asked more and more questions about genre, frequently to the approving nods of attendant teachers.  What genre do you like to write?  What genre do you like to read?  What's your favourite genre?  

When I try to answer with suggestions that I don't really think about genre that much, or that maybe it's more to do with shelving problems than with books themselves, I haven't had a lot of approving nods.  But I don't start to write a genre.  I start to write a story.  And that usually means a fusion of all sorts of things.

So, fellow readers and writers, what do you think?  What role does genre have to play in your world of books?  Let's talk!

Joan Lennon's blog.
Granny Garbage.
Silver Skin.

Changing Genres, by Claire Fayers

This afternoon I will be in Cardiff, celebrating the launch of Mirror Magic, also know as The Book That Nearly Killed Me.

My first two books were fantasy adventures and they were easy to write. (If the plot starts to flag, just throw in another giant octopus.) But after my second book, my publisher wanted something new, and my agent mentioned she’d love to read a middle-grade take on Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I, with more optimism than sense, declared that I was just the author to write it.

All went well for a while. I set about researching the Victorian period with gusto – mainly by watching costume dramas and reading gothic novels, but this was going to be a very alternative history. I sent in my first draft and sat back, reasonably satisfied.

Then I got a call from my editor.

“First question,” she said, “is this book supposed to be a mystery or an adventure?”

I hadn’t even considered it – or even considered that I ought to consider it. Weren’t they both the same thing?

“Does it make any difference?” I asked.

Yes, actually, it turned out, it made a huge difference. Because, while adventures can swing blithely from one crisis to the next, a mystery is an altogether different kettle of fiction. The plot must twist and turn, you must have clues, moments of danger, clues, a formidable villain, clues, red herrings and wrong avenues, clues… Did I mention clues?

“The pacing is a little erratic,” my editor said with monumental understatement. “You need to go back to the start and plan out how the information will unfold.”

That didn’t sound too hard. I made a spreadsheet. By chapter thirteen, for example, I decided my characters needed to have learned x,y, and z.

I added a kindly vicar to chapter thirteen. “Hello, characters,” he said. “By the way, x, y, and z.”

“Um, this is getting better,” my editor said after I proudly presented my second draft. “But now you need to remove the kindly vicar and plant clues so the readers can work out what’s going on for themselves. Your readers will enjoy feeling clever.”

I thought of all the times I’d gloated over working out a whodunnit, and I didn’t feel so clever any more. I cut the kindly vicar and planted clues the size of giant octopuses all over the first twelve chapters.

“It’s almost there,” my editor sighed, shuffling the tear-stained pages of draft three. “Now you just need to make it a little more subtle. Maybe a lot more subtle. And, by the way, the last four chapters of the book don’t make sense.”

Of course they didn’t, because I’d spent all my time planting clues in the first twelve chapters. I wondered if I could use my new-found knowledge of crime to murder my editor. Given the clumsiness of my plotting, though, I'd probably be found out immediately. I sat down to rewrite yet again.

I think we did four drafts altogether. Maybe five – or five and a half. The whole experience was like learning to play a new instrument. Thinking that because I could play the cello, the flute would be easy. Some adventure elements crept into the mystery, of course. Giant octopuses were out, but ghastly skeletons from the Unworld were a pretty good substitute. And, because I have to have at least one sarcastic character in every book (if it’s not written into my contract, it should be) I invented The Book – a magical tome with an erratic ability to see the future and a huge attitude problem.

I finished my last draft with a whole new appreciation of different genres and the difficulties that must be inherent in each one. And also a huge respect for my editor’s patience and persistence, her refusal to let me get away with sloppy plotting or clumsy clues.

Mirror Magic and I had a difficult relationship but I’m rather proud of my wayward offspring. I think if we met in the street we’d tip our hats, nod and smile knowingly, acknowledging that the journey was worth it in the end.

That’s the joy and challenge of writing. You’re always learning, always pushing yourself, always trying new things. My fourth book is well underway and it’s a bit of an oddity. After that, who knows? Romance? Thriller? A ghost story? Or maybe I’ll really push my limits and try a different age group. But today I’m raising my glass to Mirror Magic – the book that made me write better.

The Next Big Thing by Keren David

Trend-setter

Dystopia is the new paranormal. So says The Bookseller magazine, reporting on the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.  Publishers’ stands were still full of vampires, angels and ghosts, but agents and publishers were haggling over rights for Young Adult books about imagined worlds and deadly disasters. 

Publishers' Weekly quoted Random House UK’s Becky Stradwick: “I literally had six dystopian novels land on my desk a week before the fair. People are feeling the need to create a feeding frenzy, a ‘book of the fair.’

The trend started with the deserved success of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, in which the government of Pan-em, an imagined America, makes teens fight to the death on television.  Big advances, film rights and a lot of hype followed for several other writers of high concept dystopian tales. Their books will be heading up publishers lists, getting the biggest share of marketing spend and prominent placement on bookshop shelves next year.

Woo! Exciting! Shelve that sexy vampire story and start dreaming up a world with no energy sources. A planet without water? A regime in which half the population is imprisoned by a tiny elite? Dystopia gives writers a great opportunity to take a premise wherever they want to, to tackle contemporary and universal issues in a futuristic setting.

But wait. Dystopia is already on the wane. According to The Bookseller article spring 2012 is already saturated with apocalyptic tales. Francesca Dow, managing director of Penguin Children's, said there had been a wave of dystopian trilogies from the US, ‘and we are being very selective.’

The glut of dystopia books coming next year won't start the next fashion. That’ll be reserved for some other book that slipped through the net and got published even though its chances were severely limited by not being on-trend. Publishers' Weekly runs through a few ideas for the next Next Big Thing. Books for younger readers! Time travel (the anti-dystopia, apparently) And I'm glad to say that there's even hope for the realistic novel. PW spoke to another Random House editor, Beverly Horowitz who said “Everyone’s asking if I think the realistic novel is coming back. ‘It’s never gone away,’ I tell them. These books are still selling, they’re just not getting the same attention.”

 My imagined world -  my utopia -  is one where the world of publishing isn’t so quick to follow  one best-seller with more of the same. Where story, characters, plot and writing matters more than genre. Where publishers say things such as ‘Readers need a wide range of books about all sorts of subjects.’ And ‘We value originality more than anything else.’ And ‘We judge every book on its own merits, not on its similarity to books by other authors.’  There are editors, sales and marketing people, booksellers who believe this and act accordingly. And those people start trends rather than follow them.

The London Book Fair starts today. Good luck to all those YA dystopian writers. And even better luck, this year, to everyone else. 

Tired of Vampires? Miriam Halahmy

Two weeks ago I did my first event for my new novel HIDDEN at Portsmouth University for their Multicultural Staff and Student Forum. The organiser, Maricar Jagger, had contacted me over Twitter when I started to Tweet about setting my novels on Hayling Island next to Portsmouth. It was a lovely event to kick off with. Blackwells University Bookshop stocked my novels and Chris, pictured here, a member of the Forum, is the very first person to buy my book in a bookshop! HIDDEN is officially released on March 31st.

I was invited to speak at this Forum because HIDDEN is about asylum seekers and covers current immigration policies and human rights issues in the UK today. Although the audience was quite small, we covered a huge amount of ground from the inspirations and background to the writing of the novel, all the way to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the initiatives I am involved with to promote dialogue and peace.

But perhaps the most interesting response I had to my novel came from two women who both had 16 year old daughters. My book is marketed for the 11+ age range and the protagonists are 14. Generally we are told that young people prefer to read about characters older than themselves. So I hadn't thought it would be of interest to older teens. However both  women said that their daughters were fed up with a diet of vampires and romance and were looking for fiction which was more challenging. They felt that HIDDEN could offer them this kind of read.

It is always difficult to predict trends in any market but I have felt from talks and articles generated by the industry over the past four years when I have been writing and submitting HIDDEN, that this kind of book is probably not the most marketable to teens. Of course only time will tell but I certainly felt uplifted to hear that there were sixteen year olds out there looking for an alternative to some of the more recent popular themes.

I have recently  joined a group of authors who are writing gritty contemporary fiction for teens and we are hoping to participate as a group to promote our particular style of writing. We are setting up a blog - so watch this space. It certainly feels like my novel is coming out at a time when there might just be a bit more space for it in the current market trends.

Literary Genres by Marie-Louise Jensen

I've just read an interesting piece on Stephen Hunt's website, about the invisibility of genre fiction on World Book Night and its general invisiblity in the media. The discussion was mainly about adult fiction, but so many of the points seemed to me to be relevant to the world of young people's fiction, that I feel impelled to look at a couple of them here.

Of course our starting point is that children's fiction is already the Cinderella of the fiction world. But let's leave that aside for now. Martin Amis' offensive remarks have already been responded to thoroughly here.

The general bone of contention is that so-called genre writers feel they are looked down on, ignored and passed over for writers of contemporary fiction. In children's fiction, I would personally refer to that as 'issue fiction' for reasons I will explain presently.

When I first started reading and studying fiction for young people and looking at reviews and esecially prize lists back in about 2004, it struck me immediately that the majority of the books that make those lists are issue fiction. This is particuarly true of the Carnegie prize, where it's rare to see genre fiction, unless it's suitably dark and adult.

Historical fiction is sometimes taken seriously, but woe betide any writers who have the poor judgement to include a love story, because that will relegate them to the trash pile at once. A group of us have recently found that to be true when we considered joining a newly-established history association that has allegedly banned all works of romance from their august and select group.

But is issue fiction intrinsically better or more worthwhile than science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, horror or chicklit?

The answer has to be: of course not. There will be 'good' and 'bad' books in all genres. So why is it so over-represented? It isn't what is read most or sells best. The prize for that would probably go to fantasy, spy books or chicklit publications for that. Any children's author probably knows that it's fantasy that sells best in the foreign rights market, for example.

Chicklit is contemporary fiction, and yet is just as ignored as any science fiction books. This is why I earlier drew the distinction between issue fiction and contemporary fiction. In fact the Queen of Teen award recently drew some most ill-considered remarks from a well-known writer for young people who ought to have known better. She suggested most strongly that it was all trash and criminalised the reading of it.

So why would that author - who is not alone in her position by any means - lift her voice against her sisters in fiction-writing and denounce their work?

I do believe that this snobbishness spreads into our world of children's fiction. That many people like to look down on genre fiction - and chick lit above all is considered fair game by almost everyone. (I noticed Stephen Hunt didn't defend or mention chicklit in his rant. Even he, the defender of genre fiction, probably secretly likes to look down on it; the exploration of women's feelings and relationships a fearful, unknown world to him!)

What I can't explain is why. I think all the genres have an equal amount to offer the population and are all of value, each in their own way. I certainly read the whole lot when I was growing up. From Enid Blyton, to pony stories, to Tolkein to a huge selection of the classics. And I'm quite sure I was all the better for it.

Conjugal & Genre Fidelity – Michelle Lovric

A lot of writers these days will claim to be fashionably non-genre.

Oh yes. And a lot of gondoliers will tell you they are divorced.

Once, when yet another frolicsome gondolier told me he was divorced, I mentioned somewhat wearily that many of his colleagues had told me they were between wives.

The gondolier nodded sagely and offered me this explanation: ‘It goes like this. You eat spaghetti every day. You love, I mean really love spaghetti. But after seven days you get just a tiny bit bored with it, even though you love it. Suddenly, on the eighth day, you want some tortellini. You just gotta have that tortellini. Then you go back to spaghetti quite happily for a while, because you really love it. But eventually you want some tortellini again. Then you have to get a divorce.’

He sighed, ‘And you remember all the good times with the spaghetti. And you are a sorry one.’

Are writers like this?

Don’t we all take holidays on the wild side, saga-writers going on safari as short-story writers, crime-writers romancing the idea of a love story? How many ‘literary’ writers have taken a furtive little roll in chick-lit, under another name? Do the noiristas have Magical Real moments, and think it could all be Otherwise and Otherworldly?

A career historical novelist for adults, I too had a genre-bending moment. I decided to write The Undrowned Child, a novel set in Venice for the 9–12 age band.

I was not betraying my genre to write a novel for children. My infidelity consisted in trying to write a book with a modern setting. And I just could not.

I could not conceive how a child could get into creative trouble with all the hi-tech accessories currently available. Can’t find out a crucial fact? What about Google? Lost in a strange part of town? What is your mobile phone for? Even though I have read and worshipped Creature of the Night, Bog Child, Artemis Fowl etc, I just could not manage the modern world. I knew it could be done. Just not by me. I stubbed my toe after 20,000 words. Reading what I’d written, my lack of conviction had tainted everything: how brutal and stark seemed my setting; how strained and artificially clanged my characters’ so-called contemporary vernacular. My plot stood naked in its banality.

It was a bad moment. A tortellini moment.

And then I too remembered all the good times I’d spent in the cosy embrace of a long work of historical fiction, in which my characters could express themselves with unabashed eloquence and a plot might writhe, somersault and deep-dive without a mobile phone or Google to click in a duh solution.

I remembered all those good times, and I too was a sorry one. And so I deep-dived into history, dragging The Undrowned Child way back to 1899 and 1310.

This is why I suspect that deep down we know where we belong. Don’t we?

In my case, historical fiction, be it for children or adults, is where I belong.

So – are we born genred, just as we are born gendered?

And does what Virginia Woolf said about the sexes apply to writers – that there is more difference among the genres than between them?

Memorable Characters - Katherine Langrish

I was asked by a fantasy and science fiction survey what I thought were the weaknesses of the two genres. This is a bit like being asked in a job interview to identify your own personal weaknesses – one doesn’t want to admit to anything. But in the end I replied ‘Poor characterisation and an over-reliance on magical and scientific hardware.’ I don’t think this was unfair. As a teenager I gobbled up Isaac Asimov’s ‘Robot’ and ‘Foundation’ books, and Arthur C. Clarke’s many and various space odysseys, but what I loved was the vast sweep of the black canvas they both painted on – prickling with stars and smudged with dusty, embryonic galaxies. Against that background, the human characters in their books were unmemorable. I’m trying right now, and I can’t think of even one of their names.

As for fantasy, the same thing applies. The world is often more important than the characters. I don’t think I would recognise Colin and Susan from Alan Garner’s brilliant early fantasies, if I saw them in the street. Even in ‘Lord of the Rings’, characters are more often conveniently defined by their species (elf, dwarf, hobbit etc) than by personality. Could you pick Legolas from an identity parade of other elves, or Gimli from a line-up of other dwarfs?

You have several wonderfully memorable science-fiction/fantasy characters on the tip of your tongue at this very moment, I can tell, and you are burning to let me know. I can think of a notable exception myself: Mervyn Peake’s cast of eccentrics in the Gormenghast books. I’ll look forward to your comments... But moving swiftly on, I began to think about memorable characters in children’s fiction – which as a genre, like science fiction and fantasy, tends to be strong on narrative. Does children’s fiction in general, I wondered, have characters that walk off the page?

So here, in no particular order, is a partial list. Mr Toad. The Mole and the Water Rat. Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore and Tigger. William. Alice. The Red Queen. Oswald Bastable and Noel Bastable. Arrietty, Homily and Pod. Mrs Oldknowe. Dido Twite. Patrick Pennington. Mary Poppins. Mowgli. Long John Silver. Peter Pan. Ramona. Huck Finn. Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy. Puddleglum. Pa, Ma, Laura and Mary. Stalky. Moomintroll, the Snork Maiden and the Hemulen...

All of these characters, I would argue, are so strongly drawn that once you have met them you will never forget them. I will bet that for each of the above names (so long as you’ve read the books) you knew instantaneously who I meant, and had a picture of them in your head and the ‘flavour’ of them in your mind, just as if they were real people. These characters have a life beyond the page: not only is it possible to imagine them doing other things besides what their authors have described, it’s almost impossible not to believe that in some sense they possess a sort of independent reality.

There are many good books in which characterisation is not very important. Fairytales have always relied on standard ‘types’: the foolish younger son whose good heart triumphs, the princess in rags, the cruel queen, the harsh stepmother, the weak father, the lucky lad whose courage carries him through. This is because fairytales are templates for experience, and they are short: we identify with the hero, and move on with the narrative. Fairytales are not about other people: they are about us.

But the crown of fiction is the creation of new, independent characters. Though Mr Toad may share some characteristics with the boastful, lucky lad of Grimm’s fairytale ‘The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs’, he is nevertheless gloriously and individually himself. Huck Finn is more than a poor peasant boy or a woodcutter’s son. Children’s fiction is a fertile ground in which such characters can flourish.

Visit Katherine's website at www.katherinelangrish.co.uk

Fauns with Umbrellas - Katherine Langrish

“Why do you write for children?”

Each time I’m asked this, I probably come up with a different answer, and sometimes I’m tempted to be a little sharp – to answer, “Why not?” or “Children are human too, you know!” Actually, I write for children because that’s the way stories come to me.

C.S. Lewis claimed to write for children ‘because a children’s story was the best art form for something he had to say’. People who dislike Lewis for his didacticism feel their hackles rising suspiciously when they read this – Ha; proof of his propaganda campaign to infiltrate innocent minds with pernicious reactionary Christian ideology – and Lewis probably believed it when he wrote it; but I think he was kidding himself. To me the statement sounds not only a little pretentious, but suspiciously like something he came up with after he’d written his books.

I don’t honestly believe anyone chooses a genre because they decide in advance that it’s the best art form for something they wish to say. (Unless they’re in advertising.) Rather, you get grabbed by an idea. Often, for me, a picture of something happening. Lewis himself said that ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ started with a picture in his head of a faun with an umbrella walking through a snowy forest.

Well, if you’re being haunted (and I mean haunted: possessed) by an umbrella-carrying faun in a snowy wood, what are you going to do with it? You’re probably going to write a children’s story, because it’s going to take superhuman ingenuity to work it into a novel for adults. It’s not even very likely to become part of an adult fantasy. The comically domestic detail about the umbrella says that. Fauns in adult fantasy are going to be sexier. They’re going to riot through those woods in a wild, dangerous Dionysiac revel: and they’re not going to want umbrellas.

No: the material imposes the form. Fauns with umbrellas will insist on you writing a children’s fantasy for them. Other things may then find their way into that story; your moral outlook, world picture, concerns, loves and hates. No author is free of these, and one can only hope to find sympathetic readers who understand or at least make allowances. But throw away that umbrella, and you’ve thrown away the book.

Or to put it another way, writing is like this: you let down your shimmering little hook into the deep pool where stories come from, and something bites. You pull it up (if you're lucky). But look what happens! The fish talks! It opens its whiskery, blubbery mouth and speaks to you! And to me it says:

This is a fairytale...