Last year, when I was a guest of the Singapore Writer’s Festival, Julliet Marillier, with whom I was sharing a panel on writing fantasy, announced that she—of the multiple Aurealis Awards for Best Australian Fantasy—doesn't actually write fantasy. She writes, so she claimed, “historical fiction with magic in it”.

Don’t worry, I didn’t get the distinction either. And didn’t really care, right them, because just after that, she announced to the room full of eager fans, “and  clearly, I take my writing much more seriously that Jennifer Fallon”. Ouch!

Now, besides the fact that I am apparently having too much fun as a writer to be taken seriously, I thought her attempts to distance herself from the genre that keeps a roof over her head, just a little bit, well, odd.

But then another author made a comment to me recently, which threw some light on the situation.  This second author told me the worst thing that ever happened to her was winning a genre award. (Obviously, she doesn't live here in the NT, was my first thought)

I was intrigued by this strange take on the idea of winning critical acclaim for something you've written, which seemed right up there with accepting an all-expenses-paid trip to Singapore to appear on a fantasy panel, just so you could tell everyone you didn’t write it.

The problem, my friend explained, was that it was an award for writing a brilliant romance, which she didn't think she'd written. She thought it was a crime thriller.

You see, proudly boasting of her achievement, the publishers shipped her books with stickers on the covers announcing the win... where they were promptly stuck on the shelves in the Romance section of the bookshops, where a good two-thirds of  her regular readers (i.e. like, you know...men) wouldn't have ventured, even had their life depended on it.

Even worse, they keep putting her subsequent novels in the Romance section, now, regardless of the subject.

So maybe that’s what Juliet was getting at. If you call yourself a fantasy writer, people will think you write fantasy. Give it another name, another genre, and you'll increase your audience tenfold.

And I can't say I blame her. Read Margaret Atwood’s, A Handmaid’s Tale. Nowhere will you find a word about it being science fiction, and I've heard she vehemently denies that’s what she writes, too. And she wins major literary awards.

I suspect it’s the publishers as much as the authors who are guilty of this disassociation. When I went looking for Neil Gaiman’s, American Gods at my local bookstore, I found it in the Crime section with nairy a hint of what the book contained, other than a hundred word blurb about unsolved murders on the cover.

In light of all this, it is with some trepidation, that I announce the Romantic Times loves me. Their review says things like "Fallon merges epic fantasy with political intrigue and delivers a thrilling, page-turning saga."

And ”...the complex characters and plot twists are perfect for those who like their sword-and-sorcery on a higher level."

How about "This is an ambitious, detailed epic whose end rips readers from a world they won't want to leave."

Okay. So I’m having too much fun. What the hell...

And yes, I do write fantasy:)