In January 2025 I braved the frigid north to attend a writing retreat north of Ottawa, Canada. Brrr! Despite the 1 degree weather (Fahrenheit, Canadian friends, more like a hundred below for you), it was a warm, cozy experience.
If you’d like to know more about how great the retreat and writer support was, from coaches Kevin Johns and Kimberley Grabas, subscribe to my newsletter and request the January 2025 email.
That email describes the great boost I got at the retreat itself, but in the month afterward, I received another boon.
Yes, a boon as in the Hero’s Journey, because it clarified an issue I’ve been grappling for years. I even blogged about it early in my publishing history, as a guest on The Artist Unleashed. As far back as 2014, baby!
The Journey
At that time I bemoaned that I had not minded young author advice to pick a genre, research it, and create and behave within its boundaries.
Instead, I was all excited about creating some new hybrid form. If reincarnation defined my subject matter, then call it Karma Lit. But if my series was defined by its concept – a soul group recalling past life stories – then those stories are at times historical fiction, science-fiction, fantasy, romance, and modernist literature. That is, a cauldron of a hybrid wrapped in an experimental form posing as an enigma.
The Grail Quest that I set out on was to market this odd duck to an odder, multiple niche group of paté lovers. Some readers would flock to the reincarnation content; others would be intrigued by the 1001 Nights milieu. Still others would sojourn through the series, happy to encounter historical fiction pieces throughout.
I was a proud experimentalist trying to find a commercial audience, but the Grail was elusive, as always.
I was content with my Quest for the Odder Duck for many years, basically content with creating the books and staying in denial about marketing them.
I hunkered down in an identity as a hybrid speculative novelist, even though Amazon made me claim an existing genre like Contemporary Fantasy. And I ‘stooped’ to telling folks my work was a fantasy epic just to save time.
Very little Sword and Sorcery going on, but I said Fantasy nonetheless. Easier that way.
Back to Ottawa
Back to post-Ottawa days and my boon after this long journey. It was a delight to be among like-minded writers working hard at their craft. When I write ‘like-minded,’ I don’t mean we were writing in the same genres.
At first I was self-conscious talking about my work among these genre writers with clear audiences. I was the hybrid author who doesn’t fit in anywhere and doesn’t know who their readership is. But during the week, I learned some valuable lessons about genre fiction and my place in it.
We were all writing different kinds of books. Lacey was a therapist writing a deep, trauma-based memoir. We were all at different stages of careers. Shari had moved on from highly responsible professions to write a dozen books of historical fiction set in Prohibition. We all had differing attitudes toward our work. Philly was unsure whether to focus on a sci-fi or a mystery project. And we all worked in different ways with Kim and Kevin, our coaches. Lorraine, a clearly declared fantasy writer, tirelessly worked with both of them, feeding Kevin her homework every day.
First Lesson:
I learned that even the most clear-minded genre writer had hybrid elements going on. Shari, the historical fiction author mixed in a mystery in some books, and brushed elbows with romance. Philly, working on her inspired sci-fi book, was unclear if that was her home genre. And the woman crafting a memoir was a therapist, but her work had strong storytelling elements.
Second Lesson:
I also learned that despite the hybrid elements, they had their genre at the forefront.
Within her 1920s historical fiction novels, Shari enjoyed mystery and romance elements, but boy was she a demon for historical research and authenticity. She had called a local historian in Philadelphia to nail down bus routes in 1927!
Lacey kept her therapist self foremost: her story was her therapy, about her path to therapy, and reached out to an audience therapeutically.
Lorraine, the other fantasy writer, perhaps was the least hybrid, but helped me realize I was a fantasy writer foremost.
Third Lesson:
I may have past life stories in many genres in The Reincarnation Chronicles, but fantasy informs all of them.
There’s a hybrid genre called romantasy within the romance genre, but when I mix in romance, I would call it fantasomance; the loving is incidental to the weird and wild. If my sci-fi tales go to other planets, what the reader finds there is magical and whimsical, with a little theoretical stuff thrown in for my scientist family.
I love science, but in fantastical ways, like Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics. And when I’m hybriding with historical fiction, authenticity be damned: my first thought is how can my imagination mess with this period? If I set a story during the 18th Century shtetl life, I’m more drawn to that magical cave high in the Carpathian Mountains where a Jewish hermit has fantastical visions. Or if it’s prehistoric times, I’ll wonder when the first cave dogs were domesticated (see my post about this story from Book 2).
Fourth Lesson:
In reflection, I even learned that I am foremost a fantasy writer in my reading habits. If I’m reading a ‘serious’ novel, I can’t wait to finish and get back to that recent dragon trilogy.
I failed at a reading resolution to strike a balance between fantasy, serious lit, big epics, and non-fiction. Fantasy wins out every time.
I even look at the sci-fi reading I’ll do to give me inspiration for the future life stories in The Reincarnation Chronicles as a ‘necessary task.’ Sorry, Mr. Bradbury, my first love; Tolkien took you out decades ago!
The Boon
All these lessons led up to a huge realization. I write fantasy. That is my genre.
Maybe Contemporary Fantasy is a sub-genre, maybe Karma Fantasy Lit is a sub-sub-genre.
But that was my boon.
Rubbing elbows with those writers, having my mind lit up by those coaches, I reflected on my work afterward and saw this vision clearly. It’s still odd and weird and hybrid and epic and experimental, but my work is Fantasy.
Maybe the marketing won’t be any easier, but maybe it’ll be clearer.
Cheatsheet:
So if you’re a writer and wonder what genre you’re working in, here are the four lessons:
¥ If you think you’re writing a hybrid form, what are the various genres you’re playing with? Are there just two? Are there more? How do they interact?
¥ Once you understand the hybrid elements, which one is foremost? Is there one that carries through everything? Are there others that occasionally inform the work? If you had to choose one as the ‘Grandmother’ of the book, which would it be?
¥ Is there one foremost genre that tends to influence, inform, color the other genres? Do you see that foremost genre reflected in the other genres?
¥ If you’re still unsure, what do you tend to read foremost? Does that confirm your suspicion about what your foremost genre is that you write?
If this helps, don’t thank me, thank Ottawa.
1001 The Reincarnation Chronicles, Fantasy, Genre, writing process