Beasties and Stitials

[mrissa]

Sinus pain is back in full force. Oh, the joy. Oh, the merriment. Oh, the call to an allergist. Sigh.

The snow is also back. So I hope our driveway clearing fellow is back, too, and in somewhat better time than he was Monday, and doing a somewhat more thorough job, too. If not, well, we will have A Discussion.

But I have made up a nasty for smiting in Chapter 6, and I'm afraid I may have tangled the plot in the meantimes, as it is almost certainly a significant nasty, but that's okay, there's plenty of book left in which the plot can come untangled. Ah! And just typing those sentences has done some significant untangling for me as regards the denouement, so hurrah for the brain left to work on its own unpressured.

There is an interstitial anthology coming up, and I would like to submit something. I like substantial fractions of what they point to when they say "interstitial." Unfortunately, I don't entirely understand why they're pointing. Most of the time I nod and say, yes, that's a fantasy novel. Yes, that's also a fantasy novel. Oh, look! Also a fantasy novel. Hey, there are some fantasy short stories. Good deal. And then some of the people who have read Thermionic Night are pointing at it and saying interstitial, and I am confused. Apparently it's something you can do accidentally. I had considered TN fully stitial: witches casting spells, case closed. Apparently the vacuum tubes confuse things, or maybe it's the spies. If I knew, I'd be several steps ahead of where I am. Anyway, "interstitial arts" is on my lj interests list, because I'm fascinated by poking at it with a stick: good stuff, why did they call it that?

So I will send them a story, and they will send it back and say, no, no, silly girl, this is not interstitial. And I will say, oooookayrightthen, and I will keep poking at it with a long mental stick. Or else they will say, yes, interstitial, hurrah, we buy your story! and I will beam at them in confused happiness: I did it! What did I do? Or, I suppose, they will say, yes, interstitial, but not for us, and I will still be confused and will continue with the poking.

I have often said that my main skill in life is being able to get the wrong end of the stick in an interesting way. This is not always an asset.

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

This seems to me by far the most sensible way to approach the interstitial thing.

As far as I can tell, 'interstitial' means 'crossgenre (or sometimes not) work that we happen to like.'

Which works great for me as far as finding stuff to read goes, but less well for, y'know, having conversations about it.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Hope you feel better soon. Also hope the problem is allergies, and not something that compels you to go back into Dante's Antibiotic Inferno.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Boy, I'm glad someone else is as occasionally confused about (other people's definitions of) genre boundaries as I am. I'm also glad it doesn't affect your perseverance.

Unfortunately I tend to assume it means a rigged game - that if I write a story which is somewhere in intramural genre limbo, no one will buy it because each editor will apply their own fish vs flesh vs fowl test, and each will flunk it individually.

I'm still waiting for someone to give me a succinct way of describing stories which are essentially set in the real world except for one or two patently unreal things happening which alter the whole complexion of everything else. I tend to assume that one fantastic event throws the whole thing into the fantasy barrel, but the problem is that "fantasy" has come to have a specific meaning and the primary audience for real-world-with-oddity stories is NOT readers of "fantasy" the genre label - too tame for them - but is readers of mainstream fiction who are okay with occasional weirdness protruding into their drab world.

(Hmm. verbose, cynical, AND possibly misguided. Hat trick. I'll shut up now.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, the real world except not thing can be fantasy or magical realism in my book. I don't really think "fantasy" has come to have as narrow a meaning as some people seem to think it has, though.

As for perseverance -- well, so I don't sell every story I write. So I don't sell every good story I write. Eh. These things happen. It would probably be unnerving if everyone fell upon my every word with cries of joy and wonder. Make it difficult to converse and all that.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I am filled with wonder at the rapturous joy this comment filled me with! Oh goddess of words, I bow before you!

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Librarians cheat by shelving SF and fantasy together.

We do get a bit kerfluffled over where to put the mystery/romance, horror/romance, fantasy/romance hybrids, though. (And the, um, embroidered type of memoirs...)

[greykev.livejournal.com]

In our library we recategorized that memoir as fiction after Oprah confronted him. (because patrons kept coming in looking for it in Fiction since Oprah said it was :P) We also leave the romances and horror safely mingled with general fiction. Separating 'mystery' from 'thriller' from 'suspense' is enough headache.

Then there's the folks wanting Christian fiction (or its PC cousin "gentle" fiction) to be shelved separately from the regular, godless/satanic books we usually buy...

Interstitial

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

I've had much the same history with "slipstream".

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Yay Oprah! Yay patrons!

When I worked in a public library, we had two loose rules for mystery vs. thriller/suspense. If there was more than one organizational entity involved, especially across national borders, it was thriller/suspense. And if the ultimate pressing task wasn't figuring out what had happened but stopping what might happen, it was thriller/suspense.

In the public library I worked at, any patron suggestions that Christian fiction should be separated out would most likely have concluded with "so I know not to pick up any of that boring and/or offensive stuff." (Not that there isn't interesting Christian fiction. I work in a church library now, I should know. But that was the perception.) That's what happens in the darkest blue part of a blue state, I guess.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Fiction and lying are not the same thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

As I just said to mkille, fiction and lying are not the same thing.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

No, but there isn't a classification for "lying" in libraries. Withdrawing materials is the only other choice then, and believe me, back when Edmund Morris' biography of Ronald Reagan came out, that was a seriously discussed option.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Followup: In libraries, the question is always where materials fit best. Sometimes the best option isn't actually a particularly good option, in and of itself.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There was a thread on Making Light about this when it first hit the news, like so (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007215.html). I think pnh is right on with it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My argument with the fiction classification is not that it's not perfect but that it's suboptimal among the categories available. But the Making Light entry pretty much says what I want to say in that regard.