Authors, Kai Strand & LA Dragoni

This month we are exploring the topic of genre. Last week I shared a varied list of favored go-to genres of many of my Facebook friends and fans (yeah, I hate that that term too!). Today I want to talk about Young Adult. Wait?...What?  It’s NOT a genre. I know. I know. BUT…?! ß I’m with you on that. See, young adult is a target audience. When you write young adult (as I do) you are writing for readers between the ages of 12 and 18 or those who like to read books written for that target audience. Middle grade is a target audience. Adult is a target audience. Fiction is a genre. A genre I write, as a matter of fact. Wait – did you just fall asleep on me? Yep, bet you did. Fiction is a stupidly big category that tells a potential reader nothing about your work. So instead I respond that I write fantasy and contemporary fiction. But you know what? I usually qualify it by saying YOUNG ADULT fantasy and contemporary fiction. As do many readers, as referenced i...

The irony of this month’s #InkRipples topic, GENRE, is that I picked it and I don’t know anything about it. Not really. To me, genre is like the math of the literary world. You can explain it to me again and again and I think I understand until I actually try to apply the knowledge and then it all gets mixed up. Because of that, I cannot promise the most educational blog posts this month, but I will endeavor to provide some enlightenment. Or perhaps simply some entertainment. Each time I set out to compose a post, my mind ended up in a twist. Since I know other bloggers will provide far more reliable information this month than I can, I decided to find out what genres YOU read. So I posted the question on Facebook: “Okay, be honest. Go-to genre when you want to escape.” Holy cow I absolutely LOVE how diverse the responses were! If ever I worry that there isn’t enough room in the writing world for me, I’m going to revisit this post! Anyway, here is a compilation of the respon...