But I’m posting today anyway.
So yesterday I shared a link I’d found about the differences between magical realism and fantasy. The author of the post gave a spread of titles to span from far left (surreal fantasy = *I’m assuming* magical realism) to far right (pure fantasy).
I’m trying to find books both recent and older that are comparable to the book I have written. This is called a ‘comp title’ and I’ll want to know a few to reference in my queries and pitches for Symbiosis.
I picked two titles, one from the left, (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and one from somewhere near the middle right, (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell).
Only Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell was available as Kindle, so I ordered it and began to read right away. And I don’t like it. This is nothing like what I write, so it won’t work as a comp title. The other one won’t be in for a few weeks (print version).
I hope the other book is a better comparison. I’m not going to read the one I started just for the sake of reading because I have a TBR-list of books my friends have written and I’d like to begin working on that.
Commenters on my post from yesterday gave me lots of other suggestions to try, too. So I think I’m going to start going through them, reading until I’ve either decided I don’t like them or they aren’t a comp title. If either I’m enjoying the read or I think it’s a comp title, I’ll keep reading.
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update: Thanks to Scott’s comment on yesterday’s post today, which I copied to the comments of this post, I’ve suddenly made a lot of progress in finding comp titles. At least old ones. Now to find some recent ones. Older references will include Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles and Carlos Castenada’s Teachings of Don Juan.
