Genre Discrimination.

Okay, here is something to try: write a science fantasy novel, and tell people what genre it is. If people are sci-fi fans, you’ll run the risk of them hating it, because it’s not sci-fi enough. If the people aren’t sci-fi fans, you’ll get a polite smile. This polite smile more times than not translates to “Oh god, you don’t expect me to read this.”

When books contain science, people tend to assume it’ll be a book about science.

When I wrote CONSEQUENCE, I tried to avoid telling people the genre, because of discrimination.

CONSEQUENCE is science fantasy, not science fiction.

Take a fantasy novel ~ Say, Harry Potter ~ and describe why it’s fantasy.

Okay, Harry Potter is a wizard; he uses a magic wand to make things happen. There are magical creatures, magical objects, and loads of other awesome stuff.

Try Inkheart. Meggie’s father can bring characters out of books just by reading aloud.

Those are two different fantasy novels. In one, the fantasy is brought by a kind of magic, in the other; it’s a different kind of magic.

In CONSEQUENCE, I don’t have magic. But it is fantasy.

I use science, because in my characters’ world, science is more fitting than magic.

If there was magic, the book would be a good versus evil battle of magical power.
I swear to science that I will never in a million years write a book which is nothing more than good versus evil. (BTW, that last sentence was not insulting fantasy books, I love fantasy, I’m just using this as an example).

In CONSEQUENCE, most of my “evil” characters have something to tip the scales slightly; they’ve done something good in their lives. Not all of them, but the main “baddy” at least.

Science isn’t good or bad. It’s fact ~ nothing more, nothing less. I don’t actually like science that much as a subject, I don’t understand it: at all. But in this book, science is the characters’ greatest tool. It is their making, and it is their downfall.

When people turn up their nose at science fantasy, it really annoys me. If there wasn’t science in my book, it would just be a love story. (I’ll get to romantic fiction discrimination later).

The scientific element isn’t as strong in CONSQUENCE’s sequel, AMEND. In TRENSCEND, the third and final book in this trilogy, the scientific storylines re-emerge.

These storylines are things which will almost certainly never happen in the real world. But in my book, they are “possible” because of science. This is a world where science is extremely advanced.

They don’t have televisions or cars or mobile phones. There scientists work on things far greater than creating an iphone 3000, or whatever number they’ll be making in three hundred years.

 Now for dystopia discrimination.

 Dystopian fiction is probably my favourite genre. I’m fascinated by these horrible worlds. They have these characters that are so strong, and I always wonder how they can be. Dystopian worlds are worlds without hope. I don’t know how people can live without hope.

There is actually a sentence in CONSEQUENCE where my character Phoenix is saying about living without hope, and that comes from my love of dystopia. I always wonder what makes a person keep on living when their world isn’t worth living for.

I also think romance in dystopian fiction is so much stronger than in say chic-lit or something. In dystopian novels, the characters are in desperate circumstances, and it’s so much different from the real world. I think characters in dystopian novels fall in love quicker because, well, basically, everyone they love dies, so they have to cling on to the first living person they like.

Anyway; dystopia discrimination annoys me even more than science fantasy discrimination. Why? Because people don’t judge by genre, they judge by other books.

Someone once said to me that they owned Divergent, but probably wouldn’t read it cos it was “too like the hunger games”. 

As somebody who has read ~ and loved ~ both those novels, this really annoyed me.

Yes, they are the same genre, and they do have similarities, but they are not very similar.

I don’t like it when people judge books that they haven’t read.

What I really hate are people who judge things by reviews. What is a review? Someone else’s opinion.

Okay, for example: how would I review twilight? Well, I would probably give it one star out of five.

That is my opinion.

Twilight was/is incredibly popular, and lots of people love it.

Say somebody was going to read it, and they didn’t because I gave it a bad review.

That wouldn’t happen, seeing as people tend to tune out when I talk about books.

But anyway, this person could love twilight, and they’d never know all because I have vampiraphobia.

This brings me to my next example or genre discrimination.

I don’t read vampire novels.

I read half of twilight, and couldn’t finish it. I read breaking dawn, and did finish it. (I can’t believe I put that on the Internet!)

I also read a book called Blood Sinister. It was by Celia Rees, one of my favourite authors. And I enjoyed it. I think the best part was that it wasn’t a vampire “oh my god, please please eat me!” love story.

See, even that last sentence was discriminatory.

Then, we come to romance.

For years, I criticized romance novels. Well, all that happens is girl meets boy, loads of obstacles happen, girl hates boy, girl realizes she loves boy. Girl and boy kiss, and they all live happily ever after.

The irony is, my favourite singer is Taylor swift. She has been my favourite singer since I was ten years old. What does she sing about? Love, romance, crushes, break ups.

I actually love books with romance in, these days; I hardly read books without romance. I think it shows a softer side to main characters. The female leads in the books I read tend to be a bit…feisty. Having them fall in love softens them up a bit.

I write books with romance, too. But I still have trouble reading ones which are “just” romance. Due to the fact that I know how they end.

I am trying to broaden my taste in books though.

What have we next? Chic-lit.

This is a genre that I also avoided for quite a while. It was kind of a “what’s the point to it?” thing. I didn’t see the point in reading about people’s boring everyday dramas.

If you’ve read any of the books that I tend to mention as books that I like, you’ll know they’re kind of dark.

The truth is, I do read “what’s the point of it?” books every now and again. I can read them in a few hours, they don’t take much energy. The best characters don’t die, and I don’t go to sleep in emotional turmoil, all cos of the books I like.

Then, there are historicals.

They were my favourite genre before I became a full time futuristic dystopian fan.

The first two (extremely terrible) books I wrote were historical.

The funny thing is, I can actually see a lot of similarities between historical and dystopian.

Anyway, I used to read historicals all the time. I also read a lot of history books, combine that with the fact that I like to talk for extremely long amounts of time, you get this result: history lectures. I would talk about history all the time. I have Marie Antoinette’s time of death memorized. In fact, her two hundred and nineteen year death anniversary was just over an hour ago. (Give or take for time difference).

Anyway, people tended to think me and my love of history were a little crazy. I don’t talk about history very much these days, and I don’t read historical novels as often. Genre discrimination stopped me talking about something that I love.

When people get something historically incorrect, I’ll tell them. But I don’t talk about history like I used to.

Instead, I talk about books I love.

(Here is where I should apologize to my family for the fact that I can’t go a day without making a reference to Divergent).

I also talk about the books I write, therefore, I’m always going on about the plots of AMEND and TRANSCEND. It is rather fun when my sister’s like “Do you know that you’re a genius?” I doubt that I am, but hey, it’s a great compliment.

And, because it's the sixteen of October, a picture of Marie Antoinette.