The Mystery of Romance

A guest post by New York Times bestselling author, Jessica Park

When people find out that I’m a writer, one of the first questions they ask (usually after telling me that they TOO have always wanted to be a writer, then launching into an hour-long explanation of their top forty book ideas that, you know, perhaps I might want to write for them) is: “What do you write?”

This is when I freeze. And stammer. I mean, it’s a simple question, right? Or it should be.  

But because I’m me, and complicated, and think that I’m all sorts of unique and rebellious (this alternates with extreme self-loathing and doubt, just so you don’t think I’m a total jerk), answering this question is hard.

I could simply say that I write romance. That Left Drowning is a new adult romance, and Flat-Out Love is a young adult romance. But then I desperately want to qualify those genre labels! My books are more than just romance, I want to explain. There’s romance, but a strong literary style, plenty of humor, intense psychological exploration of ... I don’t know how to answer because it’s impossible to feel that a one-word genre label captures what I hope my stories are about. That’s the neurotic, strung-out, paranoid author in me. I’ve learned to live with it. But my neuroses aside, I think I’m on to something....

One of the things that I’ve worked so hard to do in my books is to incorporate as many layers as I can, to give depth and explore a variety of subjects and angles beyond a linear love story. Family dynamics, trauma, mental health, friendship, survival... You name it. And I’m driven to write about how our pasts catch up with us no matter how hard and how far we run. How we cope, and fail, and succeed in many aspects of our life because of our pasts.

And when we start talking about the past—and about hiding the past—we are really talking about secrets. And secrets inevitably lead to mysteries. And clues. And stupendous scenes of revelation and understanding. Themes and plot designs that we typically associate with being only in true mysteries or thrillers are actually often found in so many other genres.

A really good piece of fiction has to keep readers turning the pages, right? What’s next? It’s about how authors dole out information, tease our readers, lure them in, and make them wonder. Much the way mystery and thriller novels work. In my books Left Drowning and Flat-Out Love, both stories absolutely follow romantic paths, but big questions are also raised early on. There are gaps of information, personality quirks that allude to hidden stories, and discoveries made through conversation and experience. There are the equivalents of crimes, clues, suspects, investigative action... You name it, romance can have it.

I’ve been mixing up my romance with mystery, literary fiction, and humor—plus lord knows what else—and having a blast. And it’s why I encourage readers to stretch beyond what they think they love (only romance, only crime fiction, only sci fi); elements we love in one category are so often found in another.

The hard lines that we believe separate genres are often much more fluid than we know, and fluidity can be magic.

Jessica is the author of New York Times bestselling FLAT-OUT LOVE, RELATIVELY FAMOUS, and her latest NA novel, LEFT DROWNING. She lives in New Hampshire where she spends an obscene amount time thinking about rocker boys and their guitars, complex caffeinated beverages, and tropical vacations. On the rare occasions that she is able to focus on other things, she writes.

FInd her at:

https://www.facebook.com/authorjessicapark

https://twitter.com/JessicaPark24

http://jessicapark.me/

Write the Damned Story you Want to Write

By Andrew E. Kaufman

One of the most difficult decisions I ever had to make as an author happened early in my career. I had made the choice to jump genres—that is to say, going from being a perceived horror writer to a perceived thriller writer. I never saw myself as belonging to a particular genre. I just wrote what I wanted to write. I don’t think it was so much a matter of consciousness as a matter of instinct.

Then my audience began to grow, and then I started thinking from inside my head. I became worried that the change might force my readers away, that they might not follow me to the next book. Luckily, I trusted those instincts and the next book did significantly better than the last.

Fast forward to about three years later. Apparently, I still hadn’t learned my lesson. I was trying to decide whether to continue on with a series after the first two books and feeling a similar dilemma: once again, I was overthinking, trying to put my head on the readers’ shoulders instead of keeping it where it belonged. I was worried they would feel disappointed if I didn’t continue on with the story. In other words, I wasn’t following my instincts. A road that by now I’ve learned is always a bad one.

Then one day, while having lunch with a colleague, I explained my concerns, and she gave me what I now consider to be among the soundest advice I’ve ever received:

She said, “Don’t worry about all that. Write the damned story you want to write. Brand yourself, not your books—if you do that, it won’t matter what you write. Your audience will read it.”

It was one of those statements that instantly snaps into place, sticks there, and shorty thereafter, you understand it to be the plain and honest truth. I’ve always believed that, if you feel what you write, so will your readers. After all, it’s not necessarily what you write that matters most—it’s who you are as a writer, what inspires you, and if you stick with that, the rest always takes care of itself.

As with most authors I love, it doesn’t really matter what they write about or what genre their work falls under. It’s their execution and talent that draws me in each time I open one of their books. In those cases, I believe they followed their passion instead of their head, and as my colleague said, they wrote the damned story they wanted to write.

And with the publishing industry being as wobbly as it is, and with the concept of “what will sell” changing all the time, it makes sense that longevity is attained not by following trends or trying to guess what your readers want—it’s attained by trusting your instincts. Books change all the time—but the writer is a constant.

This time, I finally followed that advice, and the result has been one of the most rewarding and seamless writing experiences I’ve ever had. More than that, I’m having the best time, and each new day, I can’t wait to sit down and get back to work. This book is a complete departure from anything I’ve ever written up until now, but somehow it doesn’t matter to me.

Because I’m writing the damned story I want to write.

Andrew E. Kaufman, author of whatever inspires him.
www.andrewekaufman.com

I don't just bump people off

By Gayle Carline

Although I technically write more humor than mystery, my friends usually associate me with my mysteries instead of my columns. I blame this on conversations I have with them, like this one:

Tina: "A bunch of us are performing a hula at the fundraiser. You're a dancer. You should join us."

Me: "I don't know, the hand movements are so precise. One wrong flick of the wrist and instead of describing a pearl in an oyster, I'd be telling them to wrap the body in plastic."

You see how it is.

But I don't always see murder in every gesture, or bodies under every bush. And I confess, I don't always read mysteries or thrillers. I think it's important to read a lot of genres, just as I listen to a wide array of music styles and try foods I've never had. It broadens my experiences as a person, and it keeps my writing from getting formulaic.

One of the blogs I read is not mysterious in the least. It's called Synch-ro-ni-ing. I don't know very much about the author, except her name is Ruth and she writes beautiful poetry and takes pretty photos, and lives where she can have chickens and a lot of space to wander around and think. Hers is the one blog that makes me long to leave southern California for more space and real seasons, except I've already told Dale we can't buy a farm in the middle of nowhere because as we grow older, we'll need to be close to the pharmacy. And I still recall having to dig my car out of the snow and scrape the ice from the windshield, so the whole "real seasons" thing is only a theoretical wish.

Last year, Ruth posted a Nouvelle 55 on her site, based on an Edvard Munch painting. A Nouvelle is what the French call flash fiction, and someone challenged her to write a piece in 55 words, so she made up a genre: Nouvelle 55, flash fiction of 55 words based on a piece of art. She then challenged her readers to do their own.

How could I resist? I love flash fiction. I even have some of my scribbles posted on my website, under the category Fiction in a Flash.

So I took one of my favorite paintings, Woman with a Parasol, by Monet (which I've actually seen in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC).

And here's what I wrote:

Artists.

You use more than paint and canvas.

You consume lives.
"Stand just so - hold it! Don't move."
In the glow of evening, we expect the same fire
Of passion in your arms
But we cannot receive any because it isn't yours to give.
It belongs to Art.
Hurry, finish! I grow tired here.

See? I resisted the urge to throw in a crime to be solved. (But, between you and me, doesn't Monet's wife look like she wants to kill someone?)

Perhaps these exercises are wasteful to some. I could be working on my actual books, for Pete's sake. My reasoning is that any writing I do makes my writing stronger. My use of words is my instrument. This is just one way that I "warm it up" and prepare to play a song.