Crossing lines. And ear-worms.

Before I move on to my topic of the day, here’s a question. At what point does a song you love going round in your head stop being a song you love going round in your head and become an ear-worm?
Queen’s Love of My Life has been a fixture in my mind’s ear ever since I rediscovered it at the rock concert nearly two weeks ago. I find myself humming it on my morning walk; my toes tap out the rhythm as I eat breakfast; and the rest of the day, sitting at my computer, it seems to be a permanent mental soundtrack to my life. Mostly I don’t really mind; I love the song, had forgotten just how much until Brian May brought it back to life for me. But I have a feeling that may change; I don’t want to stop loving it, but if it remains a constant presence it may begin to stop me focusing on other things. And there’s no known cure for an ear-worm. Is there?

Moving on... For the moment I can still listen and think, and I’ve been thinking a lot about cross-genre novels, largely because I’ve just finished reading a rather clever one.
When I was publishing, and these days wearing my editorial consultant hat, I tend to advise against crossing genres. I’ve spoken to many literary agents and commissioning editors who live in dread of the submission that arrives with a covering letter describing a ‘historical romantic mystery with a futuristic slant and a little bit of fantasy, and written in a literary style’. You have to admire the author’s ambition, but if I’m being painfully honest I have to say that in my experience this kind of novel tends more towards unfocused mish-mash than innovative brilliance.

But sometimes it works, at least on the page. Crime and mystery are often in there somewhere. Historical crime has taken on a life of its own. Crime with humour can be delicious. So-called ‘literary’ authors often consider themselves above mere genre, yet it’s amazing how many ‘literary’ novels are based around a crime. And J D Robb’s In Death series invented a whole new genre – futurecrime – though perhaps sub-genre would be a more accurate label.

The book I’ve just finished, which set this train of thought in motion, took the What if...? premise to a whole new level with a fantasy element unlike any I’ve ever encountered before in any genre. The plot was indisputably crime; the writing was the best kind of literary: carefully thought out prose which chimed so perfectly with the subject matter that I hardly noticed it was there until I stopped to wonder why I was still reading something I hadn’t expected to enjoy. Three genres for the price of one – and it worked.

That’s what I mean by ‘it works, at least on the page’. If it’s well done, it does work, whatever the genre. The problem is marketing it.

When I was publishing, discounting the historical strand we introduced in year three I took on three ‘cross-genre’ titles. Two were futurecrime; the third was LGBT (actually just L with a little G) with an element of erotic. All were well done; since I was publishing new authors, I couldn’t afford to take on anything that wasn’t, and anyway that was the whole point. But they didn’t sell well.

Being something of a rookie in the business, I took advice from some people who understood these things. The consensus seemed to be that booksellers didn’t know where to shelve them, and since the average bookshop always has too little shelf space, their solution was simply not to stock them. No matter that the plot in each case was distinctly crime – one had a murder on the first page – and that the publishing company had the word CRIME in its name; futurecrime could be science fiction, and the LGBT title had a naked girl on the cover, and that was enough to confuse the issue.

Have things changed since my day? The book trade certainly has. Maybe the problem I encountered no longer exists. I’d like to think so, because surely writing a good novel is more important than writing a novel which booksellers know where to shelve.

Comments

[Marilyn Thiele]

Lynne, this is still a problem. But if a novel is well-written I will find a home for it, and steer the readers I know will like it in the right direction. A problem I've run into lately is incomplete or misleading information from publishers, who seem to want to classify the books into the genres they think will sell. I recently was sent an ARC of a book by an author with whom I was unfamiliar. It was the third in a series,and looked interesting. I bought the first, because I like to start at the beginning. Great detective story; I was caught up and thinking this was definitely an author I would stock. The book jacket summaries, on all three, indicated a police detective solving crime in the big city. Then I got to the last quarter or so.The murders were more and more bizarre; the connections between them less and less obvious. A madman? No, I was reading not about Joe Detective but Joe Demon Hunter. Aaargh! This is not my cup of tea, and I would have passed on the book for my own reading, but possible not for the shop. Many readers enjoy this type of plot. I find it cheap; why have a logical solution when you can have a supernatural being defying the laws not just of man but of nature? If I had shelved this by the jacket copy,I would have had a lot of unhappy readers like myself. I felt deceived by the publisher, and now I have a bias, if only subconscious about the author and the publisher. My advice: be up front about the
mix of genres. A bookseller will find a place for and even promote the book -- to the readers who will enjoy it.