The promotions gambit is very complicated! But I’m trying very hard to understand it. I signed on to a ‘group promo’ month-long adventure which I thought might get news of Biome NE47: Prequel out to a larger science fiction audience.
Uh-oh. The science fiction police said no. The cover image doesn’t fit the genre (not the cutely inquisitive hare, why ever not?!) and the promotions blurb doesn’t attract the sort of reader who’s looking for ‘hard science fiction’ material (?too much love of the local patch, perhaps?!). Well, this is a fine kettle of fish! What is the genre of Biome NE47, anyway then?
I hesitate to presume, but perhaps, considering my model is Margaret Atwood and her various novels of a possible near-future time, perhaps it’s really ‘literary fiction’ that I aspire to. Couched in a science fiction kind of environment, a future scenario but not that far out into space exploration and star wars stuff. It’s tricky.
Another of my possible mentors is Diana Gabaldon, who took the single gambit of time travel and travelled a very long way with her heroine, in her ‘Outlander’ series. That was genre-busting.
So I’m not really sure which genre I’m into, if I’m honest. I want to write about contemporary life as seen through a filter of a future conceit, to place us in a new setting, see how we as characters deal with a new challenge. By ‘we’ and ‘us’ of course I mean people in general, not anyone specific.
Whatever genre I’m moving into, I know that I have to tell a compelling story, and that’s my primary motivation. Always has been, and no doubt always will be.
And I think, I have to believe, that Biome NE47: Prequel and the main event, are compelling stories of life, love, adventure and finally, survival.
So I’ve looked again at the promotions blurb on Amazon, to try to tighten it up, to address the issue of genre from the outset, and to describe how the story is meant to work.
But the hare stays.
Biome NE47 