What do I Write?

Interesting question from a friend.

Recently a friend asked me what I wrote. Of course, I immediately came back with my quick pitch along with the observation that most of my work fits into two main genres, dark fantasy and supernatural mystery. He nodded, then asked, “Your fantasy is like Harry Potter?”

I smiled and hesitated. I told him no since I don’t normally write young adult stories and haven’t really used wizards and witchcraft. I did mention that I have a lot of monsters in my stories. At that point, I’m fairly convinced that he thought I wrote horror. We didn’t go much further in the conversation about my books but it did get me to thinking about how much of my work crosses over into other genres and other thoughts around classifying a book.

While there’s a need to put similar books into a category for uploading your works into the Amazon system (or any other publishing site that I’m aware of), the genre itself is so broad that it requires further subgenres (along with associated categories since the term becomes interchangeable). But even with a dozen, I’ve found my novels don’t easily fit since the story might cross into other genres (just look at nuances between categories like thriller, mystery, or suspense).

My dark fantasy or sword and sorcery Clovel Sword Series could fit under several genres at the same time (fantasy, epic fantasy, dark fantasy, grimdark, etc.) but limited by the publisher (generally 2). Yet, I’m convinced that I could also put the series under mythology (heck, I’m world building in the series with gods), or even go old school and call it speculative fiction since similar stories can be found in 1930s pulp magazines. But that doesn’t solve my quandary of the type of fiction I write.

Comparison with well established authors is often the method I see for marketing of books. However, by calling my Clovel Sword series a cross of Robert Howard’s Conan the Barbarian with Vinland Saga by Makoto Yukimura, I might be closer to an answer but it still remains vague. Beyond that, it could very well be incorrect to a reader’s viewpoint. In the end, I still haven’t come up with an answer. I’ll call it a work in progress.

Speaking of my books, here are a couple that are really crossovers. Infinite Loop is a mix of modern paranormal fantasy along with a touch of suspense.

On the other hand, A Shot of Irish is a combination of hard-boiled pulp with supernatural/occult suspense.