zen_monk | NorCal for a couple of days

I’m on my way to San Francisco to volunteer at Litquake for a couple of days! Will be in Oakland for a night at an Airbnb but will be around networking events and being with my old high school friend who is letting me crash tomorrow night. Pretty excited since I haven’t been to SF for a few years and also that being in literary settings keeps me motivated.

Crossposts: https://zen-monk.livejournal.com/100591.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sarasa_cat

Just googled litquake- it sounds awesome! Excited for you. Have fun!

A reminder I need to get back to going to good events/festivals/cons of interest.

From:

zen_monk

Thanks! The idea for going was because I was in contact with a marketing manager from HarperCollins Harlequin and I asked him about good opportunities to build skills and he said volunteering at literary festivals or author events were good work experiences. There’s also a robust publishing network in the Bay too, so I might as well scope out the place.

Lots of authors of color are participating and have big networks so going to be interesting what the scene is like.

From:

sarasa_cat

And a good networking opportunity too, fingers crossed.

Hopefully you find yourself in the middle of an interesting and vibrant scene.

From:

sarasa_cat

Curious about your opinions on the new directions in fiction.

Reason I ask is ... complex?

I deep-sixed my drafts of a near future sf/slow-thriller/social commentary trilogy in 2017 bc nothing about it felt relevant after the brexit vote and the subsequent Clinton-v-Trump election and aftermaths of both. Since then, I have read essays by a wide variety of fiction writers— SF, political, thriller, satire, etc — who express various feelings of “where does fiction even fit these days in the English speaking world?” (I’m on my phone so linking essays is a pain... but I could although you’ve probably seen them?)

Recently, I have been trending more towards two very different kinds of fiction: optimism fiction (sff focused on hope) and quirky everyday slice of life fiction.

Not really sure how to phrase me question beyond... where do you see fiction trending these days? Dunno if any of this makes sense. Do ask me for clarification if I am sounding really vague.

From:

zen_monk

Just so you know, I haven't forgotten your reply here and that I am just taking the time to give a proper response to the question. I also went to do some research into what's going on with publishing trends as Book Expo was a while ago, and even then my priorities there were not quite so much on what's trending aside from say, media tie-ins a la "Crazy Rich Asians" or multimedia expansions such as superhero YA prose books as a way to allow new readers, especially female readers who are dominating that side of the market, to find accessible ways into comic franchises and properties. I also am more familiar with business trends and where the market potentially leads. For example, at London Book Fair there was some focus on the Chinese and Middle Eastern markets because both are untapped markets from the West and that there is increasing interest on both sides to open publishing channels. For China, it's because they are hungry for quality English-language books and content because there are parents and kids who are interested in high quality English education materials as well as general fiction interest (the runaway hit "Ferryman" series by Claire McFall, which saw much more success in Chinese readers than her very small attention in the UK where she is from, enough so that she was like kind of their JK Rowling or Susan Collins equivalent there). Middle Eastern markets are also looking to expand their backlists by getting more rights to English language books, but that panel just wants to talk about how metadata was the challenge in trying to understand what kind of trends and markets are in the MENA regions. Online novels and comics like Korea's Web Toons and China's "Webnovel" were also discussed, and honestly I would rather have more foreign properties be normalized as accessible channels that leads to a diverse book market; it helps to complement that "authentic" voice thing that tends to come into diverse books and authors.

Optimism fiction is definitely something that's going to be popular. It's like the rebuilding of a post-apocalyptic future, in that readers want to know if there is a chance to rebuild after intense failure and destruction. This reflects real-world anxieties and desires, and I think it's a natural off-shoot from dystopia fiction that dominated YA for a while. Teens and young adults today are accepting the reality of oppression and dystopia already happening, and want to know what to do to rebuild after rather than just being a part of a burgeoning revolution. This is reflected, sort of, in Margaret Atwood's "The Testaments" sequel to "Handmaid's Tale." A book which I honestly think is a better wakeup call than the tv show, mostly because it doesn't bother to make suggestive anxieties on violence against women and children, and the callous way in which people can dismiss the oppressed while also knowing it could be them too.

I see a lot of slice-of-life fiction in graphic novels, as well as affirmative graphic novels on genderqueerness and sexuality. It's heartening to see, as even though the whole "wholesome content" thing is a large preoccupation on fandoms to the point that it's drawing criticism as thinly-disguised purity politics, it is a demand that is in response to its lack of actual feel-good content featuring queer stories, as well as queer people of color. In that sense, comics publishing is rising up to that challenge and I tend to welcome that more in mainstream publishers than I would be for, say, fanfic writers barring the addendum that fandoms tend to affirm and reiterate tiresome racial and sexist tropes or what have you. In terms of prose fiction, it's not as though slice-of-life fiction doesn't sell, as I can attest to the many iterations of "I am a bookshop owner fleeing real life or my troubles" novels in my local bookshop. I, for one, would have welcomed a quiet family drama of hobbits living in hobbitown doing their hobbit ways and life instead of high-stakes big adventure types. I tend to mostly see that in graphic novels, due to the visual nature of seeing that slice-of-life as part of the immersion. But you never know, the high influx of people who are exposed to some form of slice-of-life settings online whether through webcomics or paperback comics or even middle-grade novels might entice in the same way that Laura Ingalls Wilder did.

I will say that social commentary is never going to be out of style in YA lit, and that it has been a noted topic and trend amongst British publishers as per Penguin Random House podcasts. What I do see is that sometimes there's an inflated belief that cancel culture is stifling voices, and yeah it's not great when writers of color get caught up in Internet drama and scrutiny because people are combing through their ARCs with a very critical lens, but I've heard many a white author just use that as an opportunity to paint themselves as a revolutionary and not really engaging with the seed of criticism that is at the heart of why they're having these are happening in their backyard. It's like a reiteration of Racefail, and it just shows how circular history can be. However, there is a lot of industry support in trying to grant authors from marginalized communities more access to publishing: Rick Riorden made up a whole imprint dedicated to that under Disney's Hyperion, and generally the UK is trying to get more works published even though they are abysmal even by US standards, with just about 1% of children's books in the UK featuring a protagonist of color as opposed to the US market which has at most 5%.