Doing The Genre Shuffle

Would you be surprised if I told you I dabble in several genres of romance other than western historical? No? Hmm... didn't think so.

The fact is, most writers dabble in more than one genre. Some may only publish in one, but I'll bet they still play with others that never make it to publication. I can only speak for myself, but I would get very bored if I confined myself to only one setting and one time period. My main focus is on my western historicals, but to break the tedium, I occasionally go play with other works in progress.

To date, here are the alternate genres I piddle with:

1 Medieval Paranormal Romance (It's a werewolf story and I started it many moons ago when paranormals weren't selling. I've always wanted to write a straight Medieval, if I could come up with a plot that hasn't been done to death.)

1 Fantasy Romance (Fun, fun, fun!)

1 Futuristic Romance (Yeah, no kidding, and here's something I learned a while back about futuristics--the big external conflict must be political or they won't work.)

2 Contemporary Romances (One is straight romance and the other is romantic suspense. Jennifer's probably saying, yay! ;o)

So, now you know. Are you a one-genre writer, or do you also dabble in several sub-genres? If so, which ones?

Devon

Drawing From The Past

Tonight, I hope you'll indulge me as I wander back in time because I want to share a little about the first school I attended. It was called Bennett's Branch, though I don't know where it got that name because the hill where it stood was known as Punchin Camp. Both my mother and father, along with a bunch of aunts, uncles, and cousins attended this school. It was just over the hill from my grandmother's farm, and walking to school each day was a jaunt through the woods.

Here's a view of the side of the schoolhouse, along with many of the students. This was taken around 1943 or 44, during the time my mother and father were students. I don't know if you can make out details very well, but that's my mom standing behind her best friend. I drew an arrow. The other arrow is pointing to my dad, the nice looking little fella in the dark jacket. They were all spiffed up to have their picture taken that day. There are also some cousins and others mixed in with the group. Where my mom's many brothers and sisters were that day remains a mystery because none of them are in the picture. The man standing on the left is Tollie Sasser, the teacher. The woman on the far right was the teacher for the lower grades, but I don't know her name. At the time this picture was taken, the school had two rooms. Later, when I started to school, there was only the one room in the stone building and the original log structure was long gone.

When I started school at Bennett's Branch, my cousin, Vondie, and I were the only students in first grade. It was great because we were the older girls' pets. They drew and cut out paper dolls for us and let us sit with them when they weren't getting their lessons. By that time, Mr. Sasser taught all eight grades by himself. Each grade sat in its own row, and he took turns with each row, teaching us the Three R's and other things.

There was no running water, but we had a well. A table just inside the door of the schoolroom held a water bucket and a communal dipper. One of our pet projects between lessons was constructing drinking cups out of our notebook paper. The school proper was only one room, but we had a separate cloak room that was like a long narrow closet where we hung our coats and stored our lunch boxes until dinnertime. Out back, at the edge of the woods, stood the outhouse. During warm weather, we played outdoors during recess. But during the winter, it was sometimes too cold or nasty to go outside. On those days, Mr. Sasser would go out and cut a long branch from a tree and we'd line up and make a game of jumping over it inside the schoolhouse. When mine and my cousin's turn came, Mr. Sasser always lowered the branch so we could jump over and stay in the game with the bigger kids. Another favorite pass time was standing around the pot belly stove and holding our Moon Pies up to the heat so the icing would melt and we could lick it off. Could you imagine kids these days being entertained by something like that!

Mr. Sasser passed away not long after I moved back home, but here's an article I found about him that appeared in the local paper back in 1984.

Sentinel Echo Newspaper

London, Kentucky

August 23, 1984

HE STARTED TEACHING IN 1938, WHEN TEACHERS RODE TO SCHOOL ON HORSEBACK

By Karen House-Combs

~~~~~Tollie Sasser retired from the teaching profession 10 years ago, but when he began teaching in 1938 he rode seven miles to and from school on horseback and had 48 students in an eight-grade one room building. "I told them that there was only one way to handle students, and a girl in the eighth grade who was going to Berea said, 'no Mr. Sasser, there's 48 ways.'""That was my first year," he said, "and I hadn't learned that yet, but I remembered that little girl's advice." Sasser talked about his more than 30 years in the Laurel County school system during an interview Monday afternoon. A graduate of Sue Bennett and Union College, he began teaching at at school in Knox County, located seven miles from his home in the Blackwater community for a salary of $61.90 a month. The next year he was transferred to Blackwater and then to Darrell Jones. Sasser left his third school in as many years for a position at Bennett's Branch in 1941. The school was first opened in 1935 in a one-room log house, with George Sasser as the teacher. A rock school house was built later with the lower eight grades in one room and the upper grades in the other. Sasser said teaching in such a small school and having the same students over several years, enabled teachers to play a larger role in their students' lives than they do today. "I fed them, bought them lunch, sent them to the store to buy overshoes," he said, "and even sent them to the doctor and told them to bill me if they couldn't pay for it. They always managed to sometime pay me back later on." Margie Gray, who lives near Sasser in Blackwater, said she attended Bennett's Branch from her first year of school through the eighth grade. "When you have a student that long," Sasser said, "it's something to take one and wonder if you're teaching them right." Gray said their teacher also played games with the students on Friday afternoon, such as spelling matches and adding races, as well as playing with them at recess. Sasser said the one and two-room schools in the small communities were not closed for snow days like the larger schools today, because the students lived nearby. He said students also began attending classes at an earlier age."One little girl started coming to school when she was three years old," he said, "because her mother had died and there wasn't anyone at home to babysit." Sasser said students in the small schools were also required to cover as much academic material as they do today. "The books were just as thick at a one-room school," he said, "as they are today, and you were expected to get finished with it by the end of the year." He said teachers also kept the same records as they do today, for each class. One Bennett's Branch student, Bobby Ray Cheek, told Sasser that having several classes in one room was an advantage. "If I didn't get it one year," he said about his lessons, "I got to hear him explain it the next." Sasser said each class was taught a 15-minute lesson while the other classes were working on assignments, and since several grades were in one room, students heard lessons from year to year. The lower grades in a two-room school were divided into primer, first, second and third graders. The upper grades were divided in alternating years, into either fourth, fifth and seventh grades or fourth, sixth and eighth grades. Sasser said if a student was supposed to go into the fifth grade, but it was the year to teach the sixth grade, he became a sixth grade student and was allowed to skip the fifth grade. "That was done all over the county," he said, "that's the way they worked it."Sasser said although the schools were small, they weren't lacking academically. His eighth grade students went to Bush one year to be tested with the larger school's eighth graders. The students were tested on four subject areas, and he said Bush Principal Frank Bentley told him his students beat the Bush students in three out of four subjects. Sasser said some of his students later became teachers and some preachers, but whatever they became, he said, after spending all those years with him, it always felt like "they were yours."

The article tells the story, doesn't it. Here's a picture of the school taken in recent years that shows the front view, after it was long abandoned and fallen into disrepair. That's me standing in the doorway.

The story ends on a happy note however. Not long after this last picture was taken, one of Mr. Sasser's relatives (who now owns the property) restored the old schoolhouse. It now has a new roof, floor, and windows. And each year, the surviving students of Bennett's Branch School hold a reunion in the old building. My mom and her remaining siblings usually try to make it to that. Me, I don't go. I'd rather remember the old school as it was when I started that first day, when Vondie and I sat down on the stone steps outside and cried and refused to go inside.

Memories.

Devon

The Big "E"

I wish the subject I refer to in the title of this post was The Big Easy, but it is not. It's the economy. I try not to think about it. I've even stopped watching the news, but I still hear snippets when hubby turns it on in the evening. We're worried. Who isn't? Anyone whose income depends on consumption by the private sector should be worried. Heck, anybody who punches a time clock right now has every reason to be worried. My husband's job is in retail sales. If the public has no money to get out and buy...

As writers, our product is also dependent on retail sales to the public. A public that is now strapped for cash and worried about their own futures. So how do we handle this new, added stress?

In the past, writing has been an escape. The place I went to and lost myself in to get away from the daily worries of real life. My hopes and dreams were there. The dream of being a published author, the hope of maybe someday adding to the family income with my writing. Now, real life has invaded that hopeful, imaginary world. And now people in the industry are beginning to openly talk about the financial crisis and how it's affecting the publishing industry. Within the past few days, Bookends and Editorrent both posted on their blogs about the effect the economy is having on submissions. If anyone has more links to articles or posts on the subject, please post them because now it's like a train wreck and I can't look away. Anyway, according to these agents, submissions are up beyond anything they've ever seen, and they say editors at the big houses are reporting the same thing. People who are out of work are writing and submitting. Authors who have been cut loose are submitting. Yet, after all that, both blog posts try to end on an up note by telling us to keep writing and sending in those manuscripts because books are still being bought. All I can say is, thank God for small presses because without them, too many of us would be left out in the cold.

The market was tight fourteen years ago when I first paid my dues to gain entrance to the romance community. I can't imagine what it's like out there now with more and more authors and fewer and fewer slots. But I have a feeling that as more authors turn to other publishing outlets (small press, e-pub, vanity pub), the alternative market will turn into a veritable swampland that few book buyers will dare venture into. On the other hand, if more recognizable authors toss their hat into the small press ring, maybe it will give us more credibility. Who knows what the outcome will be. People who've been in this business for decades have been saying for quite a while that the publishing industry will have to undergo a complete metamorphosis if it is to survive. Is that time now upon us?

How are you handling the economic news that gets worse by the day? How has it affected your writing? Do you see light at the end of the tunnel? If so, please tell me about it.

Devon

Spring!

Today is officially the first day of Spring! I feel safe in saying, we're all so ready for it. This has been the longest winter in recent memory, so bring on that beautiful weather and all those colorful blossoms. Happy first day of spring, everyone!

Devon

Prologues & Other Things

It seems like 3 out of every 4 romance novels you pick up these days have a prologue. Even contemps. My question is, why? I saw one this past week that was written by an author I have read and enjoyed. Her book was a contemporary romantic suspense. The prologue was nothing more than the 1st scene of chapter one. Or at least, that's what it should have been.

So why all the prologues lately? Do authors (or publishers) think they make the books look more cerebral, more literary, more dignified, or what? Personally, I find them annoying, an unnecessary delay that keeps me from the real story. In my opinion, the only time a prologue should ever be used is when it contains or sets up the big conflict that will carry throughout the entire story. Even then, the scene should take place with a significant amount of time passage between it and chapter one. Not fifteen minutes (as was the case in the book I've mentioned but shall not name).

Having said all that, I have to confess that I've just written a prologue onto the beginning of my manuscript. Believe me when I tell you, I didn't want to, but it had to be done. The setup of the central conflict needed to be shown. I wanted it there so that when the reader begins page one of the first chapter, BAM!, the story unfolds and the fireworks begin without the need for a lot of explanation in the form of backstory.

And speaking of backstory... This prologue came about because I hit the wall this past week with my backstory. The incident that sets up the big conflict was too deep to bridge the gap. No way could my hero come out of the story looking heroic or even remotely sympathetic. But I couldn't figure out how to change it because there was another factor involved that's much too complicated to try and explain, but is integral to making the conflict work. If I took away the hero's actions in the past, it killed the conflict and turned it into a big ole misunderstanding. It was one of those damned if I did and damned if I didn't scenarios. I was ready to pull out my hair! Or shelf the story. I was beginning to question my ability to reason out any sort of plot twist at all. Then today, I did it! And right now I'm feeling pretty darned pleased with myself. :o)

Hope all of you had a productive writing day!

Devon