News & Reviews for the Self & Small Published Reader in all of us!
News & Reviews for the Self & Small Published Reader in all of us!
At first glance, Fantasy and Science Fiction couldn’t be more opposite genres. One is set in the past (ancient, medieval, or recent) while the other is set in the future (near, distant, or even alternate universe). And yet, if you take a closer look, you'll realize they have a lot more in common with each other than any other genre.
Sometimes a simple question leads you down a rabbit hole. That was the case when I puzzled over which historical genre categories I should assign to the books in my new series. It started as a binary choice: Victorian or Regency? Alas! Stories set in the 1830s fit in neither category—if I pay attention to actual history—should I? It depends on your point of view.
Recently, I strayed from my genre of Romantic Comedy to take a stab at writing in the Western arena. It may seem like a huge leap…except that I, like so many others, was raised on John Wayne, Bonanza, The Virginian, The Rifleman, and such. If Dad was watching the television…chances are it was a Western.
2011 was The Year. By April 2011, we had buried three family members in eighteen months—okay, four if you count our old, red dog (and she counted, believe me). It was a hard year. On my fifty-first birthday, I stood in the rain and listened to them auctioning off my in-laws’ house. It was the culmination of everything I’d been doing for years.
So, what exactly is fantasy? The main ingredient in this wildly popular genre is escapism. Don’t we all sometimes dream of escape from the dreary routine of our everyday lives? Most of us try to take a holiday every year and go somewhere completely different from our normal habitat.
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