The Romantic Times has just posted their review of The Immortal Prince online and given it 4½ stars. I’m thrilled to bits that they like it. I mean, what’s not to like about a review that says “The story is fast paced and draws you in from page one. Snappy dialogue and intelligent characters will keep you riveted. The story gathers momentum, the witty and believable characters catch you up in the flow and you're left breathlessly awaiting the next installment.”

But I’m also a little nervous. Should I really be bragging about this? I mean, ego-tripping aside, there's a hidden trap in being feted by a genre you're not really writing for, even though your story has elements of a number of different genres, (as the majority of epic fantasy and sci-fi stories are wont to have).

There is a reason for my dilemma. I have a friend, you see, who is an award-winning author. She wrote a book a few years back that garnered heaps of praise and won, much to her astonishment, a romance award.  I was congratulating her on her many wins last year, and shared her amazement at winning the romance award, because it's the last thing I would have considered her to be up for. She let out a mournful sigh and lamented, “It was great to win it at the time, but God, if I had my time over again, I’d refuse the award.”

I was gobsmacked. “Why?”

“Because the day after my publisher sent out the press release announcing I’d won a romance award, booksellers all over the world took every book I’ve ever written, regardless of the genre or the subject matter, and plonked it in the romance section of their stores. It killed off half my audience overnight* and it doesn’t matter what I do, I can’t get it out of the heads of booksellers that I write anything other than romance. And worse, as I don’t write romance, the readers who shop in the romance section aren’t buying my stuff either, because it’s not what they’re looking for.”

That really made me think about how booksellers perceive the books on their shelves. I’ve been shortlisted for a couple of Aurealis Awards, but that’s fine because they’re awarded for sci-fi and fantasy and that’s exactly what I write. No shelf-shuffling is likely to arise from being shortlisted for that award.

But what if I was nominated for something else? The first line of Wolfblade is “It's always messy, cleaning up after a murder.” Suppose I somehow, (in some alternate reality) got nominated for a crime award? Would they move all my stuff to the crime section, taking it out of the sight of the spec-fic readers, where it would do nothing but irk a reader looking for a good whodunnit?

If I wrote a YA novel, would my backlist be moved or would my YA series languish in the adult spec-fic section, and never reach its intended audience? If I was nominated for an award celebrating feminist fiction, would I lose my male audience?

If you win a children’s or YA award, do you risk losing adult readers? Does a gay award endanger your heterosexual audience? (And vice versa for that matter)

Which reminds me, when I went looking for Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, I found it in the crime section of the book store and had to point out to the staff that it was a fantasy. They were stunned. They’d read the blurb on the back and thought it was a murder mystery.

It’s an interesting dilemma. What is better, do you think? Would you knock back an award for a genre you didn’t necessarily want to be associated with? (By the way, I'm not talking about awards that attract large cash prizes, of which there are a few. No author in their right mind knocks back significant amounts of cash - not for any reason. LOL)

To be honest, I’ve no idea what I’d do in this situation. Fortunately, I’ve not been nominated for anything that’s likely to cause me to lose any sleep.

Maybe that’s the secret. Just don’t write anything that's going to be nominated for an award in the first place…hehehe

*as in, well, all men, who wouldn’t been seen dead holding a romance novel, let alone reading one:)

You don't write romance. The book has elements of it but jesus is a jumpsuit - if any bookstore put your work in the romance section I would be concerned.

You could battle the categorization through on line media I suppose but if I was your friends agent I would be mounting a campaign

You would think it would be in a publisher's own best interests to ensure book sellers placed books in their appropriate genre. Perhaps putting the genre in big black letters on the consignment order, so there's no guess work for the staff who don't know about genre, at all?

My latest is SF/humour with crime, mystery, romance and horror. Oh, and it's adult/YA crossover.

I can hear the bookseller's mystical category-sorting computer blowing fuses from here.

My first was entered in the library system as adult. The second as YA. The third as adult. To this day you can walk into any library and find books one and three in the adult section, and book two in Junior Fic. Is that nuts or what?

Fortunately, booksellers lump them all together.

Yes, I see what you mean. I know that I won't be caught dead in the romance aisle, let alone holding one, let alone reading one. But you don't have to worry: I'll always buy your books, no matter what section they're plunked in. :)

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