Following a New Blog

If you look to the right you'll find links to the blogs that I commonly go check out. I've added to the list recently. I've found that most bloggers who run their own blogs, as compared to blogs that have a host of writers who write an article once a week or once every two weeks a la The Kill Zone, are far more apt to stop posting for several weeks even months at a time. This is an occurrence that I try to avoid.

Nevertheless whilst rambling around Thriller Ink I found this article by James N. Roses entitled Maybe I Write My Book Backward. It's a really good article. It was good enough, anyway, to make me eschew reposting an article on writer self discipline that was posted on The Kill Zone.

Mr. Roses is experiencing a bit of an author identity crisis. He's not sure what genre his books truly fall into. He says:

I guess I could always label my books as dramatic, contemporary thriller/mystery fiction novels, but I’m yet to come across that section in the bookshop.

Then goes on to say:

I feel it is important to just tell the story I want to tell. So far my novels are based in the real world, no sci-fi as yet, and because of this, my work will always include the highs and the lows, the problems and the solutions if there any, and good and the bad, the serious and the funny.

So, why do I find this compelling? Years ago while shopping around Toe the Line I ran across an agent who disagreed with a premise in my query. I wrote imagine Dick Francis with a focus on adventure racing instead of horse racing. Then later I wrote that it was a mystery. This agent said that I was wrong in choosing mystery as a genre and saying that I write like a thriller writer like Dick Francis.

I remember I chose mystery for a reason. I read many many books on writing and publishing (see here) and most of them identified or defined mystery in a certain way and thrillers in a different way. I chose mystery for a specific reason. Among many other reasons I remember an editor I had defined Thrillers as needing to have international destinations and globe trotting protagonists.

Slightly simplistic? Sure. I found it funny that that editor, who had several oddities, his thriller definition not at all the strangest, but that there are so many blurred lines in the industry. Does Dick Francis write thrillers or mysteries? Does Diane Mott Davidson write thrillers or mysteries? Its a funny, blurry line in so many cases.