Blending Genres

David Trammel's picture

One of my all time favorite series of fictional books, is St Louis native Glenn Cook's "Garrett P.I.".

From Wikipedia: "The novels are written in a film noir-esque style, containing elements of traditional mystery and detective fiction, as well as plenty of dialogue-based humor. The Garrett P.I. novels are set in a fantasy universe; the protagonist Garrett, during his adventures throughout his home city of TunFaire and across Karenta and the Cantard, meets elves, vampires, centaurs, trolls, gods, wizards, witches and more. Unlike most fantasy series, the Garrett P.I. novels focus more on the detective aspects of the story and less on the fantastic and magical aspects."

Cook's books are not only a great read, one I've back to many times when I wanted to relax, but a classic example of the "hard nosed and gritty private investigator", one you could easily see someone like Humphrey Bogart play.

The Will Smith film "Bright" is another good example I feel of a blended genre. A police movie set not just in a fantasy element but also a modern time. I know some didn't care for it, but I found it entertaining.

In this week's Ecosophia post A Place For Books, Greer made mention of a new series he is considering.

"I’m exploring a future novel, or possibly series of novels, blending high fantasy with the spy thriller genre, and it’s good to know something about how espionage actually works to give the story the verisimilitude it needs."

I wonder, what other genres could a writer blend to produce a unique and interesting take, especially in the Climate Fiction genre?

My fictional alter-ego (Odessa Moon) writes science-fiction romance set on a terraformed Mars. I really want to explore issues of resource management (Mars has ZERO fossil fuels), how people eat, colonization, and how people organize themselves into workable groups.

This is why I self-publish. No traditional publisher would ever publish me.

If anyone is interested, you can read 'The White Elephant of Panschin' at Wattpad; I'm serializing the novel prior to publishing it in book form. I'm almost done too; it will end with chapter 41.

Here's the link: https://www.wattpad.com/story/181751952-the-white-elephant-of-panschin

Teresa from Hershey

Justin Patrick Moore's picture

Okay. I think I heard you mention that on Ecosophia before. Sounds like a fun romp. Even if a trad publisher doesn't want this kind of thing plenty of indie publishers do. I'm sure you're aware of that... but just sayin' you might not have to totally self-publish. A smaller press may be interested in this kind of thing.

We run our own small press, printing our books via the miracle of print-on-demand as offered by the Evil Empire. I'm doing the final pass now on 'The White Elephant of Panschin', then Bill (my editor, dear husband, and president of Peschel Press) will try to edit out thousands of words to get the manuscript down under 250,000 words.

We already published the first book in 'The Steppes of Mars' series: 'The Bride From Dairapaska'.
I love self-publishing.
Sadly, we are not those lucky people you read about who publish 20 books and earn 50K a year. That's not us at all. We've got 20 titles to date, with more coming but they don't coin money.

Here's our website if you want to see what we do: http://peschelpress.com/

I recommend self-publishing. It's a way of getting your thoughts, your novels, your short stories out there for the greater public. It is work (always spell-check, grammar-check, and edit!) but it's rewarding work even if it doesn't pay.

Teresa from Hershey

Justin Patrick Moore's picture

Speaking of spy fiction crossover genre stuff. I've really enjoyed Charles Stross' "Merchant Princes" series, starting with the Family Trade. It's a multiple-world, SF, spy-thriller with the focus being on speculative economics. I always feel like I want to take notes when reading it, but the story is such a page-turner I don't. Super entertaining. I feel a lot of his ideas could be used for GW stuff -though he is quite the tech enthusiast. It's the economic/political aspects I'm interested. He is super prolific. When the Merchant Princes series ended, he restarted a new one focused on the next gerneration of the characters/families involved called Empire Games. I haven't read his other series, but here is his biblio:

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/buy-my-books/buy-my-books-u...

As for other genres to add in to Deindustrial Fic & Cli-Fi, why yes. Action and adventure & romance are easy as they aren't setting specific. What about Westerns? Home on the range in the late 25th century.

Deindustrial fantasy has been done by John Crowley, and I've written a few short stories in this subgenre too, and hope to continue working in it. I've been a big fan of Charles De Lints urban fantasy, so deindustrial fantasy isn't a big stretch.

I know David has mentioned writing a deindustrial clifi detective fantasy! Why not! I love genre fiction, noir too. So all that would be a lot of fun.

What other genres. Spy fiction as mentioned. There will be states and spies in the future to be sure. And all the tendrils and tentacles of state machinations and secret groups plotting. Add in some magical realism, surrealism, and some other ism... there are tons of kealeidoscopic genres to bend.

I would be happy to send a pdf of my just-short-of-a-novella Western Romance story "Ruinous Love" if y'all would like to read it. Or post it here, if I knew how to upload a file to the Writing Corner. The text below only allows photos to be uploaded, not text. Or I could put it on my website if there is any interest.

Justin Patrick Moore's picture

Hi Teresa,

I will put in a request for for the library I work at to buy your companies titles. I will start with your non-fiction book "Suburban Stockade".

I've done some self-publishing, and used to make zines. I've used createspace & Lulu, etc. Still, I'm looking to get my short fiction placed in magazines such as Into the Ruins and Mythic at this point.

Some of our titles are available through IngramSpark. We eventually want all of them to be available.
IngramSpark lets tiny publishers like us reach bookstores and libraries more easily than via the Evil Empire.
It is, however, yet another hoop to jump through.

CreateSpace was part of the Evil Empire and has been folded into a program called KindleDirect (I believe I have the names correct). We don't have any idea why the Evil Empire made the change but they did. Maybe it was an internal power struggle over competing fiefs. There are some differences between CreateSpace and KindleDirect but not so many that you'll be starting from zero.

Teresa from Hershey