It’s not every day you have a deliciously brilliant author/indie publisher from the UK spend a little word count on your behalf, so when it happens, how remiss would you be if you didn’t share those precious words with your always interested audience?
Please take a moment to enjoy the very funny, astute, and really touching write-up Mr. Mark Barry wrote up about the state of fiction in general, and my fiction specifically.
And when you click over to read the full post, I urge you to take some time to click on Barry’s books posted on his site. The three I’ve read—Carla, The Night Porter, and Once Upon A Time In the City of Criminals—were each incredibly original stories, with fierce wit, enough edge to slice a finger, and utterly intriguing characters and plot lines. Which makes his kudos for my work all the more meaningful.
Thank you, sir; you are a reminder of what a wonderful circle of wagons the indie community can be!
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Lorraine Devon Wilke Reviewed!
by Mark Barry
Contemporary Fiction is the unwanted, bastard stepchild of Independent fiction.
Harsh? No. True. Don’t believe me? Come and join me at the shelter where, just outside the soup kitchen, you can find ten, fifteen, twenty Contemporary Fiction writers huddled around the brazier, polystyrene mug of powdered Minestrone warming fingerless mitts and coating trembling, arid lips.
Contemps just can’t catch a break.We starve for our art.
I’ll go further.
To sell in Indie, you need to be writing genre fiction.
Famous Nottingham author Nicola Valentine held court on this in a debate at the Nottingham Writer’s Studio a short while ago and many, many blogs and analysts on the scene allude to the eminence, the supremacy of genre. Here’s the top four (outside non-fiction and self help).
Vampire – preferably the stuff that sparkles.
Erotica – atm, LGBT erotica in particular.
Young Adult – pick something unreal and it’s likely to be written about: Wizards, Zombies and Gargoyles have been popular recently and of course,
Romance/chicklit – say no more.(The really clever authors who are sitting on biblical piles of paper moolah the size of the Tower of Babel are those who write dirty vampire romances for teenagers. They’re rolling cigars made of crisp twenties and laughing all the way to the bank).
That’s genre.
Unreal. Invented. Other. Escapist.
In fact, genre fiction= escapist. The more fantastic, the more unreal and out there, the more it is likely to sell.
Contemporary fiction writers can usually be found hunting for food in skips outside conferences full of genre authors, which is a shame as generally contemporary fiction authors, as writers, knock genre writers into a cocked hat. These boys and girls can write.
And Lorraine Devon Wilke, who lives just up the road from Brenda Perlin, the “Faction” writer I featured last week, is a damned fine contemporary writer indeed.
She’s written two books. The first, After The Sucker Punch, I reviewed here: Review of After The Sucker Punch.
I loved it. It was in the top three books I read last year and in the top thirty of my lifetime. It is that good…
Follow Lorraine Devon Wilke on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, and Huffington Post. Her article archive can be found at Contently, her photos at Fine Art America, and details and links to her other work @ www.lorrainedevonwilke.com.
Her novels, AFTER THE SUCKER PUNCH and HYSTERICAL LOVE, are available in ebook and paperback at Amazon and Smashwords. Her short story, “She Tumbled Down,” (ebook) is available at Amazon. To view the After The Sucker Punch trailer, click HERE.
Be sure to stay current with her adventures in publishing here at her book blog at www.AfterTheSuckerPunch.com.
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