I should be able to answer that, right? Given that I wrote the thing. Approx 73 000 words and it still doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up.
I've gone with the really general term "Women's Fiction" because it doesn't seem to be straight-forward genre anything. There is a wide thread of romance running through it, but it may touch a romance-genre taboo, there is a little flavour of magical realism, but I'm not sure I've gone in from that angle enough to classify it absolutely 'magical realism'. It isn't sci-fi, and not really fantasy. The setting is contemporary.
It isn't literary, but is it commercial? Would anyone buy it, because surely that is the real meaning of commercial - that it has wide sales appeal?
And because I'm not sure what it is, who will want it? I've combed all sorts of submission requirements trying to decide if it is a good fit for someone.
I've brought myself (and anyone who will listen) a bit of stress the past few days by trying to classify what I've written, and it almost changed how I view it. It nearly went from being an affectionately regarded child to being assigned all the chores and sleeping under the stairs. But then I realised I still like it. I didn't write it with a market in mind, I wrote to be true to the story.
And, besides, I can't devote all of my thinking power to what I've already written when I need to direct at least some of my thoughts to the next group of people trying to find a way out of my head. (I'm not sure there are any lights up there, to be honest.)
So it is what it is, really. And if no one else wants it, it'll have to be that child who lives with me forever.
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