In my last two posts, I mentioned that yes, Contentnea Creek Books sells fan fiction (as a fundraiser); and yes, the writers here are actually all the same person (so far). While that might hurt sales, I felt like it was important to be upfront and provide full disclosure.
But that naturally leads to questions about my writing process — including why I write in these particular genres.
Not every writer makes the same choices I do. But for me, in the end, it was simply a process of evolution. I started out writing “shippy” fan fiction for science-fiction franchises. Crossing over into science fiction romance is simply the next step.
Like many avid readers, I’m a fan of several genres, and two of them are science fiction and romance. Because I grew up in a rural area, it wasn’t until my teens that I discovered that these two genres were often treated as incompatible: the science fiction fans in my life derided romance as “sloppy” or “easy” writing; and the romance fans declared that science fiction was “boring” and “unrelatable.”
By that time, I myself was a fairly opinionated person, and my opinion in that matter was firm: there is nothing wrong with being a fan of multiple genres, including those two in particular. The very existence of “shippy” fan fiction seemed to prove the point. When I saw that derided as “mushy woman stuff by authors who don’t actually get it” or “teenage wish-fulfillment,” I began to suspect that at least part of that divide reflected broader assumptions about what men and women were supposed to enjoy.
My answer to that assertion was equally blunt: it’s possible to be both a “girly girl” and a science fiction fan at the same time. One does not cancel out the other.
However, to my dismay, I discovered that these attitudes spilled over into the publishing world. Many science fiction publishers emphasized technology and plot, seeing characterization as secondary at best. Many romance publishers focused on characters and relationships, often at the expense of plausible plots. There were exceptions, of course, but it wasn’t always easy to find them. It still isn’t.
The rise of romantasy gave me hope that readers were becoming more open to cross-genre stories. But most romantasy is still firmly fantasy rather than science fiction. I have nothing against fantasy, but it’s not where my interest lies. One of my favorite aspects of science fiction was that it often serves as commentary or speculation about current issues and social change. I wanted to write about that, through the lens of characters and relationships.
For a long time, I thought I was the only one, and so I stuck with fan fiction. But then I discovered Christine Michels and Susan Grant. Grant’s work has no fantasy elements; and Michels’ work grounds many of the fantasy elements in science fiction concepts. I’ve since found many other writers who do the same thing, but these two are the ones I always look for first.
Here they are, I realized. These are the books I want to write.
That realization has shaped everything I’ve written since. I don’t see science fiction and romance as competing genres, but as two different ways of exploring what it means to be human. One asks how technology, society, and the future change us; the other asks how we change one another.
Those questions have always belonged together for me, and they’re the stories I want to tell. If that means my books don’t fit neatly into a single shelf at the bookstore, I’m perfectly comfortable with that.
After all, they never really did.