A Next Big Thing Blog: Ten Questions About My Book

Blog Hop: easier agreed to than done

A Next Best Thing blog hop is a giant game of tag to help readers discover
authors who are new to them.



kern.justin / Wedding Photos / CC BY-NC-ND

Naomi Williams, one of my former creative writing instructors at U.C. Davis Extension, tagged me several weeks ago to talk about my current writing project as part of the hop.

I said yes, of course, but it has taken me until now to actually answer the 10 questions involved. Believe me, this project is easier agreed to than done.

Another part of the "blog hop" is to tag several other writers to repeat the process, something even more difficult for me than answering the ten questions.

Would my blogger buddies thank me for being invited, or put me on their now-you-owe-me-big-time lists?

Links to the sites of the bloggers who answered to the affirmative (thank you, dear friends) are listed at the end of this post.

So here it goes! A Next Big Thing: 10 Questions About My Book

Chapters/Scenes for Between Now and Forever

What is the working title of your book or story? Between Now and Forever is the title of my current project, the fourth (and hopefully final) novel in a series called The Between.

What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book? When Marjorie Veil takes on a class of thirteen-year-olds with psychic abilities that surpass her own, she realizes playing solitaire isn’t the only game in town; she can get a lot more creative with the cards she’s dealt by putting a little heart into the game.

I know, that's two sentences. Using a semicolon is cheating.

Where did the idea for the book come from? A combination of things, actually. My original idea, thirteen years ago, was to write one novel about a woman’s search for spiritual and emotional freedom.

Then I came across two books by Kenneth Meadows, Earth Medicine and The Medicine Way, about the hidden teachings of the Native American Medicine Wheel and the shamanic path to self mastery.

I was blown away and ended up using four of the directional paths in the Native American Wheel to map out my protagonist’s journey. The lessons she learned on each path became a separate novel.

• Between Will and Surrender: East, the path of illumination and clarity
• Between Darkness and Dawn: South, the path of love and trust
• Between Yesterday and Tomorrow: West, the path of introspection and transformation
• Between Now and Forever: North, the path of wisdom and knowledge.

The last of the four directions turned into my fourth and current novel, which I will publish first as a frame for The Between series.

What genre does your book fall under?

Oh dear, here’s where the story gets interesting, or depressing, depending on how you look at it.

When I delved into the exciting and fascinating worlds of shamanic paths and, later, psychic children, I had no idea I was digging myself into a deep hole, when it comes to the way books are classified by agents, publishers, and book sellers.


A fraction of my research books

You see, while marketing my books to agents, I discovered there was no genre - and supposedly no market - for stories about shamanic paths and psychic abilities. Not in fiction anyway.

My novels are spiritual, but not religious. They have paranormal elements, but aren’t science fiction or magical realism. They highlight a woman’s journey, but don’t fit the genre of women’s fiction because of their spiritual/paranormal elements. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

I later discovered a book category called visionary fiction, an exact fit for what I write.

Unfortunately, this genre is not recognized by the gatekeepers. Back to square one.

I tried marketing my novels as upmarket fiction, women’s fiction with paranormal elements, and fantasy, but grew frustrated because none of these categories were a good fit.

I finally resorted to calling my work what it is, visionary fiction, regardless of the consequences.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? My protagonist is a triplet. So the actor playing the lead role would have to play three parts—a tough job. If Cher Bono were twenty-eight, she’d do a fantastic job.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten in the movie rendition fantasy.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Ha. For the reasons stated above, my first novel will be self-published. Agents currently will not take on visionary fiction. If Between Now and Forever or visionary fiction catches on, I may be able to find representation for future novels.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? The rough drafts of my novels came fast and furious. I’m talking about three months each. But then, oh my...the revisions and rewrites. Did I mention I started writing my first novel thirteen years ago?

What other books would you compare this story to, within your genre? As far as I know, there is no other published stories like mine. Another nail in my coffin, right?

However, I am a founding member of Visionary Fiction Alliance, a website dedicated to promoting visionary fiction. I’ve noticed increased interest in this genre by readers and writers alike. Maybe visionary fiction will become the next big thing!!!!

Who or what inspired you to write this book? Well, book one inspired book two and book two inspired book three and book four…

Seriously, the article on my website, A Word from My Protagonist, explains what inspired me to write book one. The rest followed, as I pointed out above.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Seven of the characters in Between Now and Forever are Indigo Children.

People in the metaphysical world believe that a large percentage of the children born today—labeled as Indigo Children, Transitional Children, and Children of Now—have special gifts, including psychic abilities.

Any more questions? Really? If so, click: FAQ.

Links to three other authors answering:10 Questions About My Book

Rosi Hollinbeck
Jo Chandler (Her blog debuts March 11, 2013 at 4:00 PM)
Lee Lopez

These bloggers may not have their 10 question posts up yet, but their sites are definitely worth a visit.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Dean Koontz/ Author of Horror or Visionary Fiction?



I'd like to introduce you to Visionary Fiction Alliance, a website created to promote visionary fiction.

I've written a post there, titled Is Dean Koontz a Visionary Fiction Writer?

It starts like this:

Dean Koontz is generally categorized as a writer of horror, and I’m not a fan of horror, so I’m not sure what possessed me to read one of his novels. Maybe someone gave it to me. Maybe I picked it up in a bargain bin somewhere.

What I do remember is that the book’s title was Watchers and, while reading it, I fell in love with a dog named Einstein and an author named Dean Koontz. 

For more, please visit Visionary Fiction Alliance.   

 

If you like fiction that heals, empowers, and bridges differences, you'll be glad you did.

Visionary Fiction/ Niche-Specific Audience

I've heard that writers need to find a niche and then directly address a niche-specific audience.

But in order to do so, the writer must first figure out who that audience is.

Each of us, of course, hopes our work will enjoy universal appeal, when more than likely it will attract one segment of the population over others.

With this in mind, one of my creative writing teachers gave us the following assignment:

• Create a character who is your ideal reader--the one you imagine pulling your book from a shelf and thumbing through the pages you have written.
• Give the character a name; give us a picture of your reader and write a brief scene that shows him/her interaction with something you have written.
• 350 words.

Here was my response:

My Ideal Reader

Lorna bites her tongue and prays for patience. Each time she ventures into an unfamiliar bookstore and asks the clerk to direct her to Visionary Fiction, she gets the same response. A blank stare.



By Denis Colette

"Paul Coehlo," Lorna says, already anticipating the response.

"Oh you mean the Metaphysical section."

No, Lorna thinks. I mean fiction in which the expansion of the human mind drives the plot. But she nods. Guess Metaphysical will have to do.

No matter where she goes, she finds Paul Coehlo shelved under Metaphysical, with nonfiction books on Wicca, astrology, and self-actualization. These books have their merits, true, but Lorna believes that Paul and writers like him deserve a section of their own.

No use asking for the author Lorna is specifically looking for. Margaret Duarte is too obscure for that. Duarte's fiction appeals mostly to Cultural Creatives such as herself, a subculture equally obscure, invisible, and under the radar.

Lorna fumes at the thought. Duarte's stories are as familiar to her as her own face in the mirror. She likes the author's first person accounts of the mystical, psychic, and paranormal.

Duarte presents a third way, not a neutral center, but a bridge to connect the end and the beginning. Her stores are like surf crashing on rocks.

Lorna is an optimist, but hardly a Pollyanna. Just because she likes reading about expanded mental abilities with an eye on solutions rather than dysfunctional relationships and political corruption, doesn't make her less valuable as a reader and consumer.

She takes the only copy of Margaret Duarte's novel Between Will and Surrender from the shelf and places it dead center on the table displaying the current best sellers.

It's time more people step into "the between."

###

 





First, I imagine my future readers as female (though I hope to attract male readers as well). After all, I write about a woman's struggle for psychological freedom and her yearning to discover a path based on meaning and purpose rather than income and security.

 

But then I take it a step further and add an emerging subculture called Cultural Creatives as my ideal readers.

A Cultural Creative is someone who:

• Loves nature.
• Cares about self-actualization and spirituality.
• Wants equity for women.
• Wants to be involved in creating a new and better way of life in our country and our world.
• Dislikes emphasis on getting and spending.
• Likes experiencing and learning about other ways of life.
• Is optimistic about the future.
• Walks his/her talk.
• His/her sense of the sacred includes personal growth and service to others.

As an author, how would you describe your ideal reader?

Or, if you're a reader, how would you describe yourself and your preferred author?

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Visionary Fiction by Free Association

Defining visionary fiction is tough, because the genre means different things to different writers.  So in coming up with my own definition, I used a technique often used in psychoanalysis called free association.

As a result, I came up with the following words and phrases:

• open door
• entry into the between
• not a place, but an attitude
• openness
• curiosity, questions, seeking, longing
• non-judgment
• freedom
• growth
• uncomfortable, unstable
• beyond rules, tradition, and authority

My next step was to cut and paste until I came up with an original, one-sentence definition.


Here it goes.

Visionary fiction opens the door to the space between, where questions serve as stepping-stones along winding paths that circle back to a starting point, leaving the reader changed.

by~MoniCarlo

Although I didn't incorporate all the words and phrases, I like the definition I came up with. 

At least for now.

The definition will likely change each time I try to peg down what visionary fiction is.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Margaret

Visionary Fiction Alliance

I'm proud to announce that I've joined a group of talented writers in starting a website aimed at raising awareness of and interest in the genre of visionary fiction.

Though visionary fiction has been around for a long time - think shaman stories of ancient times - most agents, publishers and big book buyers don't recognize it as a genre.   "No interest," they say.  "It won't sell." 

Well, we at Visionary Fiction Alliance hope to prove them wrong. 

In a world riddled with fear, misunderstanding, and lost hope, we believe there are people prepared to transcend the boundaries of their five senses and open to new thoughts and ideas.  In other words, we believe the audience is ready for fiction that heals, empowers, and bridges differences.

In previous posts, I've written about how important it is for writers to find their own niche and identify with a specific audience.  I also wrote about how difficult it can be for writers to categorize their work.  Well, thanks to my friends at VFA, I have found all three.

Why not visit us at Visionary Fiction Alliance and see if visionary fiction is for you. 

As always, thanks for stopping by. 

The Angel and the Brown-Eyed Boy/Visionary Fiction

I just finished reading the first seven chapters of Sandy Nathan's The Angel and the Brown-eyed Boy and enjoyed them tremendously.  This Indie Excellence and IPPY Award winner is an example of Visionary Fiction, and she's giving it away FREE today on Amazon.

In an article titled "Can I Achieve Fame and Glory by Giving Away an Angel? --Does Amazon's KDP Giveaway Program Work?" Sandy writes about her struggle to market her well-written novel.  Yes, I say well-written, and as a fellow author of visionary fiction, I'm picky about what I read and what I pass on to my friends.

Here's a short synopsis of the story:

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy is a story about a girl from out of town–way out of town, another planet––who drops in on a mission to save her planet. Little does she or anyone on her world know, things on Earth have reached a very bad state. So bad that we’ll blow the place up––all of it, every living thing––the next day unless someone does something right away.

Eliana doesn’t know this. She knows she must find “the Golden Boy.” She does this effectively, finding him at an upscale high school for the arts in New York City. But he isn’t who she thinks he is. And there the plot doesn’t just thicken, it explodes.

Hurry, if you want a free copy for your Kindle from Amazon.  Today is the last day!

 

Upmarket Fiction, Straddling Genre Lines

It's important for fiction writers to be able to categorize their work, if for no other reason than to help agents, publishers, marketers, and retailers match it to what readers want.

One of the first fiction category breakdowns is easy, since it's determined by word count: Flash fiction, for instance, is usually 1500 words or less; short stories under 7,500; novellas, 7,500-17,500; and novels between 80,000-100,00.

The next fiction category breakdown, deciding if the work is "commercial" or "literary," is a bit more complicated. Commercial fiction, often called "genre fiction," has a wide audience, distinct plot, and characters actively pursuing a goal or overcoming a challenge. Literary fiction, on the other hand, has no standard genre classification. It's slower paced and puts less emphasis on what happens and more emphasis on the character's reaction to what happens.

Genre (or commercial fiction) categories include: horror, mystery, thriller, psychological thriller, sci-fi, humor, memoirs, romance, and women's fiction. Such labels help bundle books together, creating a checklist of expectations to which authors must conform. The rules that govern each genre are often quite specific, such as optimum length, number of subplots, satisfactory endings, and so on.

Often when writers try to produce "commercial" works that violate genre restrictions, they run into serious marketing problems. For example:

Publication/Think it Real

In his book, Infinite Possibilities, Mike Dooley says, "Manifesting our dreams isn't about hard work--it's about belief, expectation, and above all, knowing the truth about our place in the universe."

Dooley's words are the perfect introduction to an exercise we were asked to perform in my seventh Plug In class with Janet Conner:  

Visit and fall in love with your book's neighborhood.

 by bookchen

Yes, even for those of us who aren't published yet.  Especially for those of us who aren't published yet.  This exercise is one of intention and creative visualization to help get us there. 

The first part of the exercise goes like this:

• Walk into the store where you'd like your book to appear and up to the exact spot where it will be displayed.  This is your spot.  Study it, name it, fall in love with it. 
• Check out what other authors are there.  These are your neighbors. 
• Study the authors' names, the names of their agents and publishers; study the books' titles and subtitles, their key messages, appearance, layout, font, and design.
• Now, visualize your book in this neighborhood--your neighborhood.  Believing leads to feeling and feeling makes it happen. 

Your book's publication is only a thought away.

I write Visionary Fiction, and because this genre does not yet merit its own shelf space, it's housed in the Metaphysical section.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), this section of the bookstore is almost exclusively made up of nonfiction.  The only only Visionary writers I've seen there are Paul Coelho (The Alchemist) and James Redfield (The Celestine Prophecy) . Ever heard of them?

Anyway, when I walked into Borders, the authors I found in my immediate

neighborhood (other than Paul Coelho) were of the mind-body-spirit variety. To my left, Mike Dooley (Infinite Possibilities) and Larry Dossey (Recovering the Soul, A Scientific and Spiritual Search), to my right, Allison DuBois (The Medium), John Edward (Infinite Quest), and Jonathan H. Ellerby (Return to the Sacred, Ancient Pathways to Spiritual Awakening).

I liked this neighborhood.  I felt comfortable there.  The book shelf became my vision board, showing me the end result of what I wished to experience.

I imagined readers (spiritual seekers, women, men in touch with their divine feminine) coming up to my spot on the shelf, selecting my books, opening them, smiling, and then taking them to check out. 

From bookshelf to nightstand.  Yes!


The next part of the assignment goes as follows:

• Start visualizing your work in your neighborhood. 
• Draw your work inside your neighborhood on a piece of paper and stick it on your wall at home and label it by a name that speaks to you.
• Design an ad for your work.
• Say thank you in advance to your neighbors for welcoming you there.
• Act as if you belong.
• Read your neighbhors' books, let them know you appreciate their work, friend them on Facebook, become their fan, follow them on Twitter, visit their websites, read their blogs.

Define your dream in every imaginable detail, using your imagination as a tool to reach your goal.  Pretending is powerful.  Think it real. 

I bought Mike Dooley's Infinite Possibilities and Jonathan Ellerby's Return to the Sacred.  A quick scan of their work told me we were on the same page.  I couldn't wait to dig deeper.

Now, for the last part of the exercise: 

• Put your belief in motion.
• If you haven't already, start producing work for your neighborhood. 
• Rededicate yourself to your craft. 
• Set goals and start moving toward them.
• Focus on the end result.

In other words, get to work! 

You have the power to achieve your publication dreams.  Once you think it and believe it, look out world..

For more on Janet Connor and her Plug In class, visit: Writing Down Your Soul.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Upmarket Fiction; Where Commercial and Literary Fiction Meet

It's important for fiction writers to be able to categorize their work, if for no other reason than to help agents, publishers, marketers, and retailers match it to what readers want.

One of the first fiction category breakdowns is easy, since it's determined by word count:  Flash fiction, for instance, is usually 1500 words or less; short stories under 7,500; novellas, 7,500-17,500; and novels between 80,000-100,00.

The next fiction category breakdown, deciding if the work is "commercial" or "literary," is a bit more complicated.  Commercial fiction, often called "genre fiction," has a wide audience, distinct plot, and characters actively pursuing a goal or overcoming a challenge.   Literary fiction, on the other hand, has no standard genre classification.  It's slower paced and puts less emphasis on what happens and more emphasis on the character's reaction to what happens.

Genre (or commercial fiction) categories include:  horror, mystery, thriller, psychological thriller, sci-fi, humor, memoirs, romance, and women's fiction.  Such labels help bundle books together, creating a checklist of expectations to which authors must conform.  The rules that govern each genre are often quite specific, such as optimum length, number of subplots, satisfactory endings, and so on.  

Often when writers try to produce "commercial" works that violate genre restrictions, they run into serious marketing problems.  For example:

When I entered my novel, Between Now and Forever, into the Amazon Breakthrough Awards contest, I labeled it Contemporary Fantasy, in part because I was still uncertain of how to categorize it (since it falls somewhere between commercial and literary and also between genre lines), and in part because no one seemed to recognize my first choice, Visionary Fiction.

There is no delegated space for visionary fiction in major bookstores, for instance, (though Amazon does offer this category).  Visionary fiction, such as novels by Paul Coelho, are shelved under New Age, or Metaphysical, which houses mainly nonfiction, making this type of fiction hard to market.

Unfortunately, by categorizing my novel as Contemporary Fantasy, I put the reviewers who decided its fate, in the wrong frame of mind. They were looking for something that wasn't there.

One reviewer called my story a "sci-fi drama" and called the protagonist’s use of visualization, affirmation, and alert relaxation as "arts and crafts, field trips, and trivial words of encouragement."

Another reviewer suggested that the characters in my story use their powers in more “productive ways,” which I assume meant in more "magical and dramatic ways."  Granted, I could, for the purpose of increased drama, hype-up the use of their powers (which I may yet do), but that isn’t the sole purpose of my novel. Instead, I hope to show how people with special gifts can rise against the social taboos that are used to make them feel like freaks and failures.

So where does that leave me?

Although my novel is mainly character driven, it is also driven by plot, and by no means would I consider it "intellectual."  So that leaves out Literary Fiction.

Problem is, my work doesn't fit neatly into any of the categories of Genre Fiction either, including:

1. Contemporary Fantasy: stories set in the real world in contemporary times, in which magic and magical creatures exist, either living in the interstices of our world or leaking over from alternate worlds (Wikipedia).

2. Magical Realism: an aesthetic style or narrative mode in literature in which magical elements are blended into a realistic atmosphere in order to access a deeper understanding of reality. These magical elements are explained like normal occurrences that are presented in a straightforward manner which allows the "real" and the "fantastic" to be accepted in the same stream of thought. It has been widely considered a literary and visual art genre (Wikipedia).

3. Paranormal Fiction: includes elements beyond the range of scientific explanation, blending together themes from the genres of traditional fantasy, science fiction, or horror. Common hallmarks are romantic relationships between humans and vampires, shape shifters, or fantastical beings (the Fae, Elves, etc.).  Beyond the more prevalent themes involving vampires, shape shifters, ghosts, or time travel, paranormal romances can also include books featuring characters with psychic abilities, like telekinesis or telepathy (Wikipedia).

4. Women’s fiction: an umbrella term for a wide-ranging collection of literary sub-genres that are marketed to female readers, including many mainstream novels, romantic fiction, "chick lit," and other sub genres (Wikipedia).

5. Visionary Fiction: (Not really considered genre fiction, but here's a defintion anyway.)  Fiction in which the expansion of the human mind drives the plot. Visionary fiction is not science fiction, yet it can be connected to the new neural sciences—neuro biology, neuro-psychology, neuro-physics. All visionary fiction is driven by new and uncanny experiences (mystical, spiritual and paranormal) in the neural web. The new sciences have shown us over the last three decades how vast and limitless is the increasing power of the human mind. As in so many eras of human life, where our science goes our literature follows. A new genre is developing, one that parallels the new neural sciences and helps to chart the vastly uncharted human mind.”

See my dilemma?

Okay, I can eliminate:

1. Contemporary Fantasy because my protagonist’s experiences are more mystical, spiritual, and paranormal than the magical and do not involve magical creatures.
2. Magical Realism because my novel’s style is not aesthetic or literary enough and, as I noted above, the events are mystical, spiritual and paranormal rather than magical
3. Straight Paranormal Fiction because common hallmarks of the paranormal genre are romantic relations between humans and vampires, elves and fairies, which my book is not.

Which leaves me with:

1. Women’s fiction with paranormal elements, because my protagonist’s journey is one “of the mind,” where she discovers latent psychic powers which give her the freedom to walk her own path, live her own story.
2. Visionary Fiction. Because the expansion of my protagonist’s mind drives the plot.

To my relief, I recently discovered another category that blends the line between commercial and literary fiction.  It's called Upmarket Fiction.  Upmarket (or mainstream) is the kind of fiction that "infiltrates book clubs and starts conversations" and includes such writers as Jodi Picoult, Sue Monk Kidd, Anita Shreve, and Anna Quindlan. 

Now we're talking.

Upmarket is not a genre, because genre is more defined, yet it's too commercial to be considered literary.  I guess you can say it's the perfect blend of both worlds.

Problem solved.  I will categorize my novel Upmarket Fiction, and if I'm asked to be more specific, I'll add, Women's Fiction with Paranormal Elements

My question to you is:  Do you have a favorite genre, or do you prefer to push past boundaries and straddle genre lines?

(Illustrations:  Magic Box by Brenda Stan; Tolkein Tribute by Desiree Delgado; Universal Power by Desiree Delgado; The Magic Stairway by pareeerica; For Your Eyes Only by pareeerica; Mental Cage by Desiree Delgado; Crystal ball by assbach.)