AOBs and genre wars
My family is in the cattle business, and I spent my formative years showing cattle. Yes, showing. Yes, cattle. Steers to be specific. (Do I need to remind you all that I am not normal!)
Well, with the release of This is Not Chick Lit and its rebuttal This is Chick Lit the genre wars seem to be heating up again, and—amazingly—I’ve started thinking back on those early steer showing days.
Crazy, I know, but bear with me.
When people ask, “what kind of cattle do you raise?” my father usually shrugs and says, “I try to raise good ones.”
He’s not being flippant—just honest—because, you see, that’s a loaded question.
Not to bore everyone with a lessen in genetics, but hybrid vigor is a very real thing that happens when you cross-breed animals or plants--the value of the whole can become greater than the sum of the parts.
And the kind of cattle you end up with don't fall in any easy category, so they're shown as AOBs—all other breeds.
I understand the need for genres just as I understand the need for maintaining purebred genetics lines. What I don’t understand is the thinking that one genre is better than another, especially since the really great stories usually result from hopping the fence and messing up the gene pool.
Is Little Miss Sunshine a comedy? A drama? A coming of age story? A family picture? I don't know, and furthermore I don't much care.
Do I write chick lit? Maybe. But Julia James is Bridget Jones’s opposite in every way, so maybe not.
Are my books women’s fiction. Okay. But my cousin’s husband who builds barns for a living (ie… a very manly man) just loved Cheating at Solitaire and has ordered Love You Kill You on audio so that his whole barn-building crew can listen to it.
Are my books for adults or young adults? Cheating at Solitaire is the most popular book at a middle school in western Oklahoma and Love You Kill You is a fave among several retirees I know.
Is Love You Kill You a romance? An action/adventure/thriller? A coming of age story? A school drama?
Yes. Yes to all.
So when people ask me what kind of books I write, it sure would be nice to shrug and say, “I try to write good ones.”
And I do…try, I mean. What genre do I end up with? Well, I guess you’d call it All Other Books.
I just can’t get away from the AOBs.
Now I guess I’d better get back to it.
-Ally
Well, with the release of This is Not Chick Lit and its rebuttal This is Chick Lit the genre wars seem to be heating up again, and—amazingly—I’ve started thinking back on those early steer showing days.
Crazy, I know, but bear with me.
When people ask, “what kind of cattle do you raise?” my father usually shrugs and says, “I try to raise good ones.”
He’s not being flippant—just honest—because, you see, that’s a loaded question.
Not to bore everyone with a lessen in genetics, but hybrid vigor is a very real thing that happens when you cross-breed animals or plants--the value of the whole can become greater than the sum of the parts.
And the kind of cattle you end up with don't fall in any easy category, so they're shown as AOBs—all other breeds.
I understand the need for genres just as I understand the need for maintaining purebred genetics lines. What I don’t understand is the thinking that one genre is better than another, especially since the really great stories usually result from hopping the fence and messing up the gene pool.
Is Little Miss Sunshine a comedy? A drama? A coming of age story? A family picture? I don't know, and furthermore I don't much care.
Do I write chick lit? Maybe. But Julia James is Bridget Jones’s opposite in every way, so maybe not.
Are my books women’s fiction. Okay. But my cousin’s husband who builds barns for a living (ie… a very manly man) just loved Cheating at Solitaire and has ordered Love You Kill You on audio so that his whole barn-building crew can listen to it.
Are my books for adults or young adults? Cheating at Solitaire is the most popular book at a middle school in western Oklahoma and Love You Kill You is a fave among several retirees I know.
Is Love You Kill You a romance? An action/adventure/thriller? A coming of age story? A school drama?
Yes. Yes to all.
So when people ask me what kind of books I write, it sure would be nice to shrug and say, “I try to write good ones.”
And I do…try, I mean. What genre do I end up with? Well, I guess you’d call it All Other Books.
I just can’t get away from the AOBs.
Now I guess I’d better get back to it.
-Ally
posted by Ally Carter at Friday, August 25, 2006
3 Comments:
I'm so tired of classifications. It's purely a marketing thing. But they've spilled over into the mainstream psyche so much, that people believe that everything fits into one solid box.
Even though few things rarely do!
It's why I made up my own genre for my book (hip lit). If I've gotta wear a label, may as well create it myself!
I'm also fine having my book join yours as an AOB. At the end of the day, if people say it's a good book, that's all that matters to me.
That's a perfect line: 'I try to write the good ones!' Very well said.
I'm already thinking ahead to writing my query letters, wondering how to say I'm writing chick-lit style without saying it so I don't get an automatic rejection. But people are still buying and reading (and obviously writing) chick-lit so why the whole controversy? If it's good, it's good--who cares what it's called.
I think the problem starts with the publishers who insist on putting everything in a slot. How many times do you think a publisher has passed on a book they would otherwise have bought just because they didn't know where to place it. It's certainly what happened to mine.
When people ask my what I write, I have to give them this explanation "humorous contemporary romance/mystery hybrids all set in southern Louisiana." Their eyes usually glaze over in the process, but how else would I explain my AOB in a one sentence description?
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