What Genre Am I In?

When you walk into your favorite bookstore, do you roam about looking at all the books in all the sections? Probably not. I’ll bet you head for the area labeled with your favorite reads: romance, mystery, teen fiction, etc. Genre labels were created so that bookstores would know where to shelve the books to enable readers to find the books we love the most.

With the popularity of cross-genre books today, have you ever been confused about what label you should put on the book you are reading or writing? Literary agent Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency gives a great detailed explanation of genres and sub-genres in this blog post.

Luck of the Draw

The Nashville Film Festival is celebrating 40 years of independent films. The festival is the fourth oldest film festival in the United States. 258 films are being shown over the next week. Click here for more info.

Last night at the festival, I won a deluxe box set of the movie, Casablanca, from the Nashville Scene. Maybe my luck has turned! Can a publishing contract be next?

Reality TV in Music City

Tuesday night, DH and I attended the taping of Season Two’s first episode of Country Music Television’s show, Can You Duet? Think American Idol, but with duos. We were free for the evening in Nashville. We had to go out and hear some live music, so why not take the opportunity to be part of a TV audience? You never know when this experience might be called on for research purposes.

Can You Duet? is being taped at the famous Wildhorse Saloon, a three-story warehouse turned restaurant/club/TV studio. The venue has been the host to over 4,000 TV shows. If you are writing a story about reality TV, the music business, Nashville, or anything remotely related, get down to the Wildhorse any Tuesday this month. You might be inspired, but you’ll definitely enjoy the show.

(Lance Smith, host & house band, Sixwire, warming up the crowd.)

Another Chinese Dinner

Last night, the Parker family had plans to go out for Chinese food, but those plans were derailed by tornado alerts. I have confessed on this blog before that every time I finish the first draft of a manuscript, I must have Chinese food for dinner.

Why? Here’s your multiple choice quiz.

A. I am a tad superstitious, insisting on maintaining the same routine to keep up my string of Unpublished Works.

B. I love Chinese food so much that it’s the carrot-in-front-of-the-horse incentive I need to keep writing towards the end.

C. Since my manuscripts are unpublished, I need some type of reward for continuing to write and for not giving up.

D. All of the above.

If you picked D, you are correct.

The first draft of my middle grade Natchez Trace journey manuscript, complete with a ghost, is done! It’s the roughest first draft I’ve ever written, but at least I have a framework to build the story on, a place to start the revision process.

I see Chinese food in today’s forecast. Do you have any traditions you observe or rewards you look forward to at the end of a project?