In 1980, I moved from Los Angeles to Denver and took my second job in journalism, working for The Rocky Mountain News. A friend worked there. He was someone I knew from my youth in the suburbs of Boston. My friend, Phil Reed, turned me on to mysteries. And I started reading them with abandon….
Tag: genre fiction
What is literary fiction, and should I write it?
According to the Huffington Post, “In essence, the best genre fiction contains great writing, with the goal of telling a captivating story… Literary fiction is composed of the heart and soul of a writer’s being, and is experienced as an emotional journey through the symphony of words.” Well then. This explanation comes from Medium: “The…
Fictional Vision
When I first started writing romance, I read many books by popular romance authors, trying to understand what made them popular. What was it about their books that appealed to readers? There were some whose success I simply didn’t understand. To me, their writing seemed average, their characters trite and boring, their plots predictable. It…
Genre by any other name…
Hi, my name is Cindy Skaggs, and I write genre fiction. As ridiculous as it appears to readers, this kind of genre-as-vice mentality is an ongoing battle. Having worked in a large public library system while I finished my education, I know for a fact that librarians don’t care where something is shelved except as…
Something Extra
I recently read a women’s fiction novel by an author I’ve enjoyed before, Lisa Jewell. It had the usual things she does well: interesting characters, complex relationships, an appealing and well-developed setting. But it had something else, a suspense plot. This “something extra” made it an even more compelling book. The book worked as women’s…