Die Booth is a long-term friend of mine. They did the cover for ‘Cemetery Drive’ and co-edited ‘Re-Vamp’, as well as helping out in all sorts of other ways with my glorious career. Die and I are also appearing in the forthcoming anthology ‘The Art of Fairytales’, of which much more later. On Friday 13th, Die released debut novel ‘Spirit Houses’. What type of book is it? Here’s Die to explain…
As a writer I always get asked ‘what do you write?’ My default answer to that is ‘horror’, but it’s not strictly accurate. For a while I’d um and ah and hide behind the big golfing umbrella of ‘speculative fiction’ until I got fed-up explaining to people what that actually meant and tired of the ‘well, that’s a bit pretentious’ expression that would inevitably cross people’s faces, if they didn’t just look confused.
How do I describe my work, though? Magic realism? Urban fantasy? All of the above?
I’m having a real issue with categorising my novel Spirit Houses. Even filling in the ISBN form I agonised for a good half-hour on what to put in the ‘genre’ box. It just doesn’t fall neatly into any specific genre.
Like most of my writing, it’s a bit horror – in that it deals with the supernatural and the realms of the dead – but say ‘horror’ and people think of Stephen King and Eli Roth and there’s certainly no slicing up eyeballs in my fiction, at least not on-camera.
It’s a lot adventure too, in that jolly old Stephen Somers ‘The Mummy’ or Hellboy kind of way, but adventure tends to conjure up Westerns and spy thrillers in people’s minds.
There’s also an element of romance to it, but if I were to label it ‘paranormal romance’ I think I’d be giving people entirely the wrong idea altogether.
I could even label it YA if I chose to, because it’s got no gory horror or sex or swearing in it, but it certainly wasn’t written for a YA audience.
It’s also a bit more Literary than most people seem to expect (or like?) their genre fiction to be, but woe betide me if I attempt to class it as Literary – I’ve found out the hard way that Literary Fiction does NOT LIKE GENRE PIECES, especially if they involve VAMPIRES AND WEREWOLVES!
(Funny, really, when you think of all those M.R. James stories…)
In the end, I’m classifying it first and foremost as Steampunk. It’s a handy label that encompasses pretty much all-of-the-above, I believe (hope!) that Spirit Houses will appeal to a steampunk audience.
Even so, it’s not strictly steampunk either – there’re no airships in sight, it’s not set in the Victorian era and there’s minimal brass on display – but I do believe it’s at least got the flavour of the genre.
All of this is really proving a bit of a problem when it comes to marketing my book. Writers are advised to identify their target audience early on and calculate everything to appeal to that demographic, right down to the book cover. That’s why you’ll notice that a lot of genre books are… well, quite similar.
The audience finds what they like, and then they want more of it. Which is great apart from, it doesn’t leave much room for innovation. That’s where I think indie authors come in. It’s a big risk, but we get the opportunity to write whatever we want and be original in the process. So whilst I’m now stuck with the conundrum of how best to promote my every-genre story, I at least got to write exactly the story I wanted to write. I gave it the cover I wanted to give it. It’s my story and I told it. If you read it and enjoyit then please, please recommend it to anyone you think would enjoy it too. And whilst you’re at it, if you discover what genre it actually is, then can you let me know?
Spirit Houses is out now. Would you like to know more about Spirit Houses? Sure you would! Here’s some detail:
How far would you go for your career?
How far would you go for love?
How far would you go for the truth?
This is the time of the evening when the Things come. As the trees close ranks and colours all merge into one colour, the Things start to stir – to dislocate their joints and stretch their limbs; rearranging themselves into new images for the twilight, they taste the air with prehensile tongues. That’s what Manda’s father used to tell her. He knew how little Manda loved to hear of the paranaturals. She got that fascination from her mother, he’d say back then. After, he’d say she got that fascination from her mother, but he’d say it differently…
When Manda’s lab partner Daniel Forbes goes missing presumed dead it’s just another normal day at University Hospital. But the circumstances of his disappearance aren’t quite as straightforward as they seem and take Manda and her colleagues at the Department of Paranatural Medicine on a journey across planes and to the fringes of death to find the truth.
Die Booth lives in Chester in a tiny house with four fire-places and enjoys old things, funny noises and exploring dark places. Die’s work has featured in three Cheshire Prize for Literature anthologies and has most recently appeared in The Fiction Desk, Litro, ‘For All Eternity’ from Dark Opus Press and Prime’s ‘Bloody Fabulous’ anthology amongst others.
You can also read several of Die’s stories in the 2011 anthology ‘Re-Vamp’ co-edited by L.C. Hu. Forthcoming work is due to appear in ‘Gothic Blue Book III’ from Burial Day Books and ‘The Art of Fairytales’ edited by Sarah Pasifull Grant.
To order a copy or to read more about Die, check out their website here