carladoria.lasultimasfamilias.com

Tag: post-apocalyptic

  • Is Fantasy the right genre?

    My fantasy book “The Last Families” is a dystopian story that has characters with supernatural powers. But is Fantasy the right genre?

    Almost after 6 months of its release, I have come to this question. Shouldn’t I have properly defined the genre before releasing the book? I supposed I should’ve.

    From the single instant, I began imagining and writing this fantastic world where these characters with talents/superpowers existed, I knew it had to be fantasy. Nothing of that exists or will exist in this world.

    But as I got reviews, most of them quoted “The Last Families” as a dystopian post-apocalyptical story. It got me wondering.

    According to Merriam-webster, a dystopia is:

    an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives

    The Last Families has something of that. It makes sense. It is dystopian because it talks about a future world with less than utopic circumstances. The characters are the last survivors of their world. They are looking for refuge and arrive at a place that is everything but hospitable. Of course, they are fearful as in the definition.

    Is it post-apocalyptic? The definition of post-apocalyptic says:

    existing or occurring after a catastrophically destructive disaster or apocalypse In a postapocalyptic world where nature has become just as violent as humanity 

    So yes, The Last Families definitely complies with this too. The story takes place after their land has been destroyed. We came to assume that these people are somehow future descendants of humans but with certain particularities. Therefore, we could say that this is a future that could somehow exist in the future? I would say overly farfetched.

    Therefore it is a dystopia and a post-apocalyptic story. And it turns out that these two are subgenres of Science Fiction, and not of Fantasy. That is where I was surprised. Being a big reader of Science Fiction, I never thought of The Last Families as belonging to this genre, but somehow it has been categorized under it.

    Now, there is “Science Fantasy”. A new genre. Thank god for new inventions. The definition is familiar:

    Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction that simultaneously draws upon or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy.

    I think that is where my book fits better.

    Unfortunately, like many new genres, you won’t find them listed anywhere. If you look for categories with a Print On Demand service, Listing sites, Literary Agents, and Book Reviewers, you will find Romance, Science Fiction, Mystery, Fantasy, Young Adult, and other “general” categories. New genres and Sub-genres are not included.

    So, does this screw things for how I’ve been listing my book? I don’t think so. In fact, I’ll see it as a new opportunity. Until yesterday, the book was mainly targetting Fantasy categories and keywords. Now I’m targetting dystopian, post-apocalyptic, and science fantasy. Maybe a new refreshing audience to target.

    What do you think? Should I still call it Fantasy?

    You haven’t gotten your copy of The Last Families yet?

  • The Last Families Website

    When I started working on my launch plan, the website was a no brainer. That is the only thing that I would be able to pull it out myself without hiring somebody else. I’m happy to admit that I really enjoyed the process and the website is ready.

    check The Last families’ website

    For any other authors out there that might be seeking into setting up a website for their book, and you are not sure what content to include, after doing some research, this is the content that I included:

    • A Homepage that summarizes most of the website’s content, from the book’s release info, author, contact form, etc. The idea is that most people won’t navigate further than the homepage and won’t even click the navigation menus.
    • An About the Author page. This is a must in a book’s website. I included a short bio- the same that is placed in the back of the book’s cover. I have the belief that it has to include a good picture, people could want to meet/see the author.
    • A link to the Author’s blog, that means to this blog. I don’t think I’ll have a blog section in the book’s website. Maybe in the future. Although I’m not really sure what would I blog about. But in the meantime, I have this blog that has been running since 2015 with over a hundred of posts. So why not link to this blog? That is a good way to get more followers in “The Diaries of the Happy Writer”.
    • A Contact page where anybody can contact me. I’m mostly thinking of people who might be interested in an ARC (Advanced Read Copy) or something like that.
    • The controversial “Fanfiction” page which after some careful consideration in a previous post, I decided to give it a go. It’s not like I’m a world famous author and will get myself into suing readers for copyright issues. The more people that can read my book, the better, and I’m honored if someone ever thinks of writing fanfiction about it.
    • The Reviews page. Although, reviews are preferred in store sites like Amazon or Goodreads, it is still okay for me if people want to leave their review on site. The page will still include, of course, links to the retailers’ sites.

    The homepage links to a synopsis of the story too where I had the chance to use my wonderful illustrations.

    I’m pretty sure this content is not stone-fixed. While this adventure of self-publishing my book continues, I’m pretty sure that I will find myself re-doing certain things. I might need to add other sections to the website that I hadn’t thought before. A blog section could be needed to boost the SEO, for example. But at this stage, I’m happy to say that The Last Families’s website is ready. Please make sure to click the button and subscribe to get updates:

    check The Last families’ website