Say the word “genre” to the average person and they’ll either not be quite sure what you mean or they’ll immediately think of the most popular examples: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Romance, Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Horror, and- perhaps -Erotica. The fact, though, is that genre is a tangled, overlapping web of story elements and sub-sets that encompasses not only all of fiction-dom, but reaches far into the bowels of non-ficton as well.  Dig deep enough and I’d wager you could easily find a hundred or more distinct genres and sub-genres .

Why is this? Why can’t we keep it simple and say that if it has advanced science that doesn’t exist in the real world then it’s Science Fiction? If it has dragons and characters with magic swords, then it’s fantasy? If its about a couple overcoming odds to find true love, then it’s romance and so on? I think the answer lies in this quote by Alan Moore:  

Authentic stories- stories that really feel like they’re about people that could actually exist -aren’t going to be easily pigeonholed. Everyone’s life has a little of this and a little of that going on at one time or another. On some level, we all deal with everything,  even if it’s the absence of a thing that everyone else chose. Authentic stories- even ones with dragons, spaceships, and bodice busting true love -need to mirror that confluence of experiences that exists in real life.

There’s a catch, though.

The typical reader doesn’t want real life in their genre fiction. They want the authentic story, they want the characters to feel real, but what they mostly want is that flavor of escapism that they most love. Whether they want to be swept up into a galactic struggle to defeat the evil empire, an epic, magical quest to throw a ring into a volcano, or a love affair on a doomed ocean liner, what readers want most is to get away from real life if only for a few minutes. They want a story that pulls them out of the real and into the warm embrace of something that thrills them or makes them cry or surprises them. Most importantly, though, they want to pulled into something that makes them forget about the stresses and banalities of everyday existence.

Thing is, we all have that sweet spot, that escapist bliss point that pulls us deeper and speaks to us more clearly than the other things do. When we find that, we need to isolate it so it’s easier to find when we want to come back to it. That’s how we end up with sub-genres like Epic Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Hard Science Fiction, Space Opera, Techno-Thriller, Cozy Mystery, and about a hundred others. We are humans and- in a very general sense -humans like labels. Labels make things easy.

That’s where word slinging, story stitching, dream catching people like me come in. We are the writers and film makers and poets and game designers and actors and artists- in short, we are the storytellers, the escapism dealers here to give you everything you need. It’s our job to dig through and add to the colossal genre salad that exists so that the consumers of this imagination salad can always get a fresh bite of what they most enjoy with just enough of a spicy tweak to make it stand out.

The danger lies in the tweaking, though. Once in awhile, something shows up that doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the salad. Some crisp, leafy thing that most people don’t recognize and are suddenly very suspicious of. It’s that new thing that we don’t have a label for and that makes us look away or- in the best cases -cautiously curious. That, dear reader, is where you will find my stories.

Now, I’m not trying to sell anybody here. Truth is, I tend to try and read outside so-called ‘genre restrictions’ and there are a LOT of great stories out there that no one is reading. My current books are about people with superpowers. Not superheroes- no capes, cowls, powered armor, secret IDs or any of the other tropes of pure superhero fiction -but, rather, authentic characters who can suddenly do amazing things and discover truths about the world that were previously hidden from them. There are also elements of the Horror, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Thriller genres. Because this trilogy has so many elements, though, and can’t really be pigeonholed into one specific genre, I have dubbed them “Superhuman Thrillers” thus creating my own sub-genre that- let’s face it -NO ONE gives a damn about.

What if they did, though? No one had heard of Vamperotica until Anne Rice and Laurell K Hamiliton showed us another side of the Horror genre. We can thank Tom Clancy for the Techno-thriller. Nobody knew what a super-spy was until James Bond came on the scene all those years ago. Go back even farther and you can find the birth of Superheroes in the seeds of the Men of Mystery pulps of the early 20th Century.

So, I want a new genre; The Superhuman Thriller. Not campy, not colorful, but authentic. Compare it to Jessica Jones, Heroes, The 4400, Chronicle, The Misfits, and a lot of other TV shows if you need video reference. In literature, you can site any number of examples (and I have in a previous post; Jessica Jones and the Superhero/Superhuman Dynamic). A normal person suddenly thrust into incredible circumstances with an amazing new ability to deal with. I like that. It deserves its own label.

Lastly, dear reader, if you are a person who likes their escapism in one flavor and one flavor only, I encourage you to branch out. Try something you’ve never had before. Romance reader? Pick up a Fantasy novel. Fantasy reader? Try a gritty Noir Mystery on for size. The breadth and depth of Genre Fiction is near to limitless. Dive in, drink deep, and savor as much as you can.

Thanks for reading.

The Paragons Trilogy