On Literary Genre

One of the crazy things about working on the Herongarde novels is having to think about genre. I chuckle a bit to myself, because the story doesn’t exactly fit into the “typical” genres like romance, mystery, fantasy, historical fiction, speculative fiction, science fiction, or thriller. It really includes aspects of many of these genres, which perhaps is a reflection of the interdisciplinary nation of my life as a whole. After all, I could call myself a “biogeochemist, and have degrees in biology, chemistry, and geology. I know what it is to not fit any category properly.

So what genre is a book that takes a 21st century woman and thrusts her into a parallel universe (or maybe back in time), to a place much like medieval Europe once was? It’s not historical fiction, exactly. OK, so it’s speculative fiction, sort of. Let’s try “speculative historical fiction.” That sounds good, but what about the parallel universe bit. That’s science fiction, right? Well, it’s not that important to the story, so we’ll forget about it. Maybe it can be called “alternative history,” because the place is like medieval Europe, but not exactly…

And! Oh, wait. Hey! It’s a love story. So maybe it’s “romantic speculative historical fiction.” Naw that’s no good.

Well, I need to figure this out, because literary agents want to know the genre of your book. It helps them decide on a first, very rough pass, whether they want to even read the rest of your query letter, much less the synopsis or any part of the manuscript.

So, what is the genre for Herongarde? Pop over here [Herongarde – the pitch] to read an older (but still accurate) synopsis. Oh, hey. Look. I call it “medieval speculative fiction” there.

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