What Goes Around Comes Around

Please welcome the fabulous Jennifer Estep to the SFF Seven! I loved her fantasy (with an awesome slow-burn romance) KILL THE QUEEN, and now the sequel, PROTECT THE PRINCE has released and hit the USAT bestseller list! Highly recommend you check this series out. 

Jennifer is guest-posting this week's theme: Genre predictions – where is SFF headed?

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Hello! First of all, I want to thank Jeffe for inviting me to guest blog. Thanks, Jeffe! J

Where are the science-fiction and fantasy genres headed? Ah, that’s the million-dollar question, especially if you write science-fiction and/or fantasy books.

My first book, Karma Girl, a paranormal romance, was published in 2007. Back then, paranormal romance was *the* hot genre. Everybody was writing about vampires, werewolves, witches, and more.

But like many things, publishing is cyclical. When a genre suddenly becomes popular, publishers want to buy books in that genre. But as more and more books in a particular genre hit shelves, the genre quickly gets oversaturated. It becomes harder and harder for new/debut and even established authors to stand out, and sales of that genre often start to wane as readers turn to other books. Then another genre will suddenly become “hot,” and the cycle will start all over again.

It happened with paranormal romance. These days, you would probably have a much harder time selling a paranormal romance than you would have 10 years ago when the genre was hot.

I’ve seen several genres come and go over the years. After paranormal romance, urban fantasy was hugely popular for several years. Then it was young-adult books. Then new-adult books. In more recent years, thrillers/psychological suspense books have been extremely popular, and 2019 seems to be the year of the rom-com.

So what does that mean for SFF authors? It’s hard to say. There will always be a market for science-fiction and epic-fantasy books, especially since those are the two mainstays and cornerstones of the SFF genre. As for what other SFF subgenres might rise in popularity, well, that is anyone’s guess. We won’t know until it happens.

However, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see other genres/tropes start to mix in more with SFF books, especially epic-fantasy books. For example, I think we could see a melding of urban fantasy and epic fantasy. Kill the Queen and Protect the Prince in my Crown of Shards series both feature a first-person, urban-fantasy-type voice, but in an epic-fantasy world/setting. I certainly hope those kinds of books become more popular. Fingers crossed! LOL.

But I could see other genres merging with SFF – like a whodunit murder mystery set in a castle, or a heist book set in space. Or a dozen other different genre combinations. I also think that SFF romance will become more popular – books that give readers all the action, adventure, and world building of a traditional science-fiction or epic-fantasy book, but with more romance/relationships and happier endings for the characters.

And it’s not to say that these kinds of books don’t already exist – they do. I know several authors, including Jeffe, who write fantasy romance, among other things. But I think publishers will be looking for more and more unique and interesting twists on the SFF genre and that readers will be searching for books that give them more than one sort of story/reading experience – again, something like an epic-fantasy mystery or a sci-fi heist book.

There are no guarantees in publishing, and trying to predict trends is a tricky business, at best. The only thing that is certain is that trends come and go, and that a genre that seems dead right now will probably rise from the ashes like a phoenix a few years down the road.

All it takes is one book to start a trend, so I say write the SFF book that *you* want to write. Who knows, maybe your book will be the trendsetter that ushers in a new wave of popularity for SFF books.

Happy writing and reading! J

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Jennifer Estep is a New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author prowling the streets of her imagination in search of her next fantasy idea. 

Jennifer writes the Crown of Shards epic fantasy series. Protect the Prince, book #2, was released on July 2. 

Jennifer is also the author of the Elemental Assassin, Mythos Academy, Bigtime, and Black Blade fantasy series.  

For more information on Jennifer and her books, visit www.jenniferestep.com or follow Jennifer on Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter. You can also sign up for her newsletter,

Website: http://www.jenniferestep.com/ 

Blog: http://www.jenniferestep.com/blog/ 

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Newsletter signup: http://www.jenniferestep.com/contact-jennifer/newsletter/ 

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/jennifer-estep

Amazon author page: https://amzn.to/2QeDW4j 

Reports of Genre Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Dead Genre: A genre agents and editors claim cannot be sold due to prevailing market trends and/or market glut. See also: Whatever Marcella writes.

Kidding/not kidding on that last one. It seems to be my super power - writing stuff that makes editors and agents wince when I say, "It's a [insert genre here.]" But, thing is, if you survey indie authors writing in that same genre, many of them will tell you flat out that their books are selling very well, thank you. It happened most dramatically with queries I sent out for Damned If He Does. I'd figured I'd get blow back about the heroine being asexual. Nah. It was 100% about the book being a paranormal. From the swift and terse, "Whoa, we don't do THAT." rejections I received, you'd think I'd flung dog poo over the transom. [Runs to check reviews] Nope. According to the reviews the book isn't *that* bad. I'd just fallen victim, again, to dead genre-itis.

Just because publishers declare a genre is dead, it does not mean the truly rabid fans of said genre have given up on it. It means the readers who were reading the genre because it was the 'in thing' of the moment have moved on, yes. But the readers who adore paranormal or who covet vampire porn for their vacation beach read are ALWAYS going to go looking for those things. I loves me nothing quite so much as a skillfully written SFR - which - if you take a quick gander around the paperbacks being released by NYC houses are in short supply. As in: There are zip. NYC drove one of my very favorite authors right out of publishing until recently when she came back shields up and all phasers firing. You guessed it. She went indie. And that's the lesson.

No audience ever totally evaporates. The pond just gets a little smaller until the next lightning strike of 'new and in fashion' hits and readers rush in from the last fad. Core readers of every genre have long since learned not to trust their reading pleasure to the vagaries of the traditional publishing houses. They go hunting for what they want among indie authors.

So if you have your heart set on publishing through a traditional house, you are subject to the dead genre clause - if what you write is something they believe they can't sell because GENRE, you are SOL for a few years until the pendulum swings back in your favor. But if you've written a book you love in a genre everyone tells you is dead? You certainly have the option of self-publishing that book and of feeding the core readers of that genre. Keep that up and those core readers will follow you just about anywhere.

When Your Favorite MInor Character is Evil

This releases next Tuesday. It's something a tad different from me. You can usually count on me to bring the grim and faintly creepy. Also, body count. Pretty much absent from this book.

It is possible that I attempted a bit of comedy. I'll leave that to you to decide whether or not I succeeded. This book has one of my favorite minor characters of all time - I wasn't supposed to like him. I didn't want to like him. But he is awfully charismatic in a way I hadn't expected. No. I am not talking about the heroine's cat. Of course I adore Archimedes.

In this case, my favorite minor character is Satan. Here's a bit of a scene he has with the heroine.





            Fire surrounded her. Everything, even the rocks, burned. Flames circled the jagged black surface on which she stood. Obsidian stairs rose to a dais and a throne fashioned from burning, still living, still screaming, people.

She looked away.

Hell.

“Welcome to my office.” Satan stood beside her, still in the human form he’d presented in the restaurant. “I see you’re indoctrinated well enough to expect the fire and brimstone motif. Trite but effective.”

Fiona quelled and her gaze ran away from him, too, only to find the damned souls being swarmed by serpents. The snakes buried fangs dripping with poison into the flesh of their victims. The wet, ripping sound reached her above the hiss and crackle of the flames.

“Ah, I see it in your face, the same look I see on the face of each soul who lands at the foot of my throne for the first time. Awareness that settles so rapidly into despair. Don’t make the mistake of thinking Hell is about despair,” the Devil said. His voice crashed down, crushing her beneath derision. “Despair is useless to me. Everyone adapts to it. I am about hope.”

He shifted, peeling back the illusion of civility. Of humanity. His skin reddened to crimson. His eyes turned black. No irises. No pupil. Just the endless depth of evil. He grew horns. A tail. A vicious, razor-toothed smile of triumph split his multi-planed face.

“I am the hope that sucks the marrow from your bones. The hope that shatters souls. I am every futile, dashed dream lying in broken-winged tatters at your feet,” he said, obscene relish in his tone.

Fiona snarled at the towering creature. “You’re the reason my mother couldn’t survive that heart attack?”

His laughter stoked the flames surrounding them higher. Screams shoved her to the ground, cowering with her hands over her ears while her skin charred and crisped. Her shriek mingled with the cries of the damned.

“Do you not pay attention?” he demanded. “No. Your pathetic mother’s death was never in my hands. But that tiny, flickering flame of hope that burned you to the ground before she died, that was me.

“No one resists hope. No one adapts to its lies. Futile hopes bring me more souls than any torment ever devised. Get up, you stupid mortal. You’re cooking alive. It’s against the rules you believe you know so much about.”

 

            A fetid wind, slimy and cold, oozed across her skin. Shuddering, she climbed to her feet. From the way she gulped for breath, from the shattering weariness dogging her, she might as well have climbed Mount Everest.


As you can see, Satan, in this book, has no issue with being bad. He actively enjoys it. He loves twisting everything he can get his hands on. And there's just something about that unabashed love of being evil that's appealing. Yet there's no danger that Satan would get his own book. He can't. Not the way the rules of the world work in this book. So he truly is a minor character who gets a few bits of stage time, and who cannot graduate to being the star of his own show. At least, not until he's ready to go to war with heaven again. And we all know how that ended last time.