The other week, my grandmother turns to me and asks, "Why do you always write historical fiction?"

Granted, ever times she asks me what I'm writing, I tell her, "Something historical." Because I feel stupid when I talk about my book in depth. It never comes out the way I want it to. I prefer writing about my book. Actually, I prefer writing over talking.

So, my typical answer for what I am writing is, "Something historical."

My grandmother said to me, "But not many kids want to read about history."

I said, "Well, it's not like it's a history lesson. The story is just placed in a time other than our own."

She still gave me that look that said, "Okay, do whatever you want."

But I love her anyway. And I will admit that if I maybe wrote a book set in present times or a futuristic everybody's-starving-and-poor world, I might have found a literary agent. I have been told my writing is good. But the setting is not. "We don't do westerns."

I stopped calling my book a western then and just called it a historical fiction. But it IS a western and just because I don't say its a western doesn't mean it changes the entire genre. The book is set in Wild West times and it revolves around Wild West events (outlaws, lawmen, stagecoach holdups...stunning, beautiful, young blonde gunslingers....*sigh*).

I finally told my grandmother this as a reply to her question, "I don't want to write about contemporary fiction, because I live in contemporary fiction. I don't want to write about my life or someone else's life that could be happening today. And I don't want to write about my life or someone else's life in the future, because that's where we're headed, and if things are really going to turn out that awful, who wants to read about that now?

"I want to write about my life or someone else's life the way it could have been"

So that is why, Grammy :)