Catch a tiger by the toe

I had all kinds of fun stuff going on today, from job interviews to super-amazing zucchini cakes, but I didn’t forget about this week’s Road Trip Wednesday at yaHighway!

Our topic this week?

~How do you choose your genre?~

I mentioned to the girls when we chose this topic that it might be better to ask “how does your genre choose you?” I didn’t choose a genre when I started my first book, and now that I’m working on it again, I’m still not quite sure what to call it. (I think I’ll play it safe and stick with “speculative fiction.”)

With Social Upgrades, I just picked up an iPhone back when they very first came out and were the most amazing things ever, and while I was playing with it I started thinking about a story that involved iPhone-like phones that could do seriously advanced stuff, like download info into your brain. I started writing down ideas, and decided the story was about three triplets separated at birth that lived in different countries. Then I realized they weren’t triplets, they were clones – and bam, I had a sci-fi novel in the works.

(Granted – downloading stuff into a human brain is already a pretty high-tech, Matrix-like thing. But at the time I just didn’t think of it that way – I never thought I’d be researching all kinds of techie terms, and, heaven forfend, learning scientific jargon. But that was the best part – I learned so much by researching everything from the biotech industry to mind uploading. Very fun.)

I have no plans on writing another sci-fi. But I would be thoroughly unsurprised if a little idea took hold and I discovered that’s just what it was. I really don’t think you choose the genre – or at least, I don’t. A story about three identical boys separated across the globe could have turned into anything: contemporary, historical, fantasy, horror, supernatural, mystery… It just depends on the way the story grows in your mind, what little elements stand out and take hold.