Category Archives: The Teddy Bear Conspiracy

The Problem of Genre

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One of my biggest problems as a writer is that quite often it is very difficult to nail down the genres in which I write. It was easy in the beginning of my career when I wrote Innocent Until Proven Guilty, which was mystery/suspense. But then I started branching out on other types of books and things got, well, kind of confusing. Let me give you a bit of a run-down, and you’ll see what I mean:

Innocent Until Proven Guilty: A murder takes place in corporate America and then an executive frames another for the murder. Works well as mystery/suspense.

Leader of the Losers: A dystopian future where poverty and class distinction has been solved by eliminating the “losers”. Definitely science fiction.

72 Hours in August: During the 1991 August Coup in the Soviet Union, a plan is hatched to start a nuclear war before the coup is over. Suspense, but also historical, and kind of a mystery as well.

Destiny: The Tales of Reagul story that starts the whole series, except it takes place 3000 years after the beginning of the epic. Story begins with a space battle, turns into a fantasy trek across a mysterious land and then ends with another large space battle. Science fiction? Fantasy? Both?

Deadly Deceptions: In South Korea, a counterintelligence agent uncovers a blackmarketing operation that might actually be masking a major espionage cover-up. Guess that’s a suspense novel, or a thriller, or also a mystery.

The Ameriad: A humorous Greek epic that spoofs the Iliad and the Odyssey by turning the icons of American society into the “new” gods. No idea where this one belongs.

Absent Without Leave: A military criminal investigator uncovers a 20 year old crime that started with the framing of his father and leads to the political future of Texas politics. Mystery, maybe? Thriller? Suspense?

The Teddy Bear Conspiracy: A CIA agent, running an operation to defeat the Colombian drug lords, finds himself targeted by his own people, forcing him to finish the mission alone while someone within his organization is trying to kill him and take over the project. Suspense?

Thompson’s Bounty: A time-traveling Coast Guard cutter encounters 16th century pirates and is sucked into a battle between two naval commanders. Science fiction? Naval warfare?

A Season of Kings (my next novel): The first official book of the Tales of Reagul, which tells the story of a planet where science and magic are intertwined. Most of the story is fantasy, but the whole premise comes from an alien experiment, which basically makes it science fiction.

Those are just the tip of the iceberg, and I’m finding it really hard to market my books because none of them really fit into any solid genre. Or few of them do. I won’t even try to figure out where Plato’s Perspective fits in, as it’s a novel with the protagonist named Plato who may or may not be the actual Plato, and the novel’s point in time may be a bit confusing as well. It could end up being philosophy, science fiction, fantasy, mainstream, history, etc. I’m sure you get the idea.

I can’t thank readers enough

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I don’t mean for buying my books, while I’m very thankful for that. But a reader of my latest book noticed a discrepancy that I missed during the rewrite (where I kept one location that had been changed unchanged in another spot in the book). So, I was able to fix that and feel much better about the new novel.

Hopefully, this time the book is exactly what it was meant to be.

On to new projects

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Last night, I finished the last touches of The Teddy Bear Conspiracy, and it’s now on sale on Kindle and will be on sale in paperback in the next few days (had one more run through the edit check and had to fix a couple of things before I could let it go one more time). Either way, the book is done, and it is now available for the masses to read, so hopefully you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Which brings me to my next projects. Over the next few days, I have some outlining to do for my Haven project, and then I’ll be working on The Tales of Reagul, specifically book one, A Season of Kings.  With an aggressive schedule, I’m hoping to have these books released within the next month.

I’m starting to explore new ways of generating reviews, and Library Thing has become my new plaything. I put up ten digital copies of The Ameriad there last week, and then a few days ago, I put 100 copies of Leader of the Losers. Part of what drives a writer’s career these days is reviews, and I can’t even begin to explain how difficult those have been to come by. Which is shocking  because the books themselves have sold enough copies that you’d think they’d have lots of positive reviews, but they don’t. It’s like they’re completely overlooked by everyone, mainly because those who write me and say they loved the book never bother to leave a review on Amazon, which would make things so much more beneficial for someone like me. You know, someone who is still trying to get ANYONE to realize he’s actually publishing books.

Well, only two weeks (and one day) of work left in this job before I’m a full-time writer, and I’m really hoping this works out for the best. Right now, I’m not feeling so great about this decision, but it had to be done, which means it was meant to be, whatever that might actually mean in the greater scheme of things.

Let’s hope for the best.