I said I wasn’t going to do this…

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.

What do readers want to read on writer’s blogs?

The idea just occurred to me that I should visit readerly blogs to get an inside view of what kinds of things they like to see and read about on writerly blogs.

I haven’t read anything simply as a reader in years and I’ve forgotten what it’s like. What better way to remember than to delve into that world?

The other way of getting this insider information is to study the blogs of other writers who have a lot of reader interaction. I don’t know who those writers are yet, but I’ll figure it out and get busy studying them soon. I’m taking suggestions

I’ll let you know how it goes…

Right now I’m heading over to the Freshly Pressed blogs to see if any of those are readerly natured.

Paranormal Fantasy

Just finished reading a blog post over at the Barnes and Noble Bookclub - http://ow.ly/Zoft . I liked it a lot because from the sounds of it, my favorite genre is going to be strong for a while longer yet – which is a good thing, because that’s what I’m writing. I want the market to be waiting with open arms when I’m finally ready to start submitting

Horror Scenes

Tonight I am writing a chapter which involves a horror scene. I’m finding it incredibly difficult to describe a transformation in one of the lead characters without using standard Hollywood imagery, probably because it’s the only framework I have to go by. Don’t worry – it’s not a vampire!

Here is where research might be a good thing to do. If I can read mythological stories about the creature I’m trying to describe, perhaps I can find some new phrases to use in my own story. Tonight I’ll be googling the arcane and obscure. If I’m lucky, I might even have a nightmare by tomorrow morning and I can use it to write the scene. Can’t imagine anyone but a writer would welcome a dream such as this, haha.

Cohorts – Read my works in progress!

Apparently Twitter doesn’t sync if I’ve posted to another page. So I’m posting here with a link to the Cohort Reader page. If you are a voracious reader of fiction, or if you just think you’d like to read my works in progress (it would be awesome to convert a non-reader to a voracious reader) let me know.