This story sounds great, Chris, thanks for your really thoughtful outline and comment!

Why, thank you very much, Jenny. Coming from you that compliment means a lot to me!

Thanks for sharing your story, Ray. It's astonishing the travails we go through to bring our stories to the readers. Good for you for sticking with it, and congratulations on your success!

That's such a wonderful feeling!

Thanks, James! And I had forgotten that you wrote sci-fi!! Isn't the world so lucky you moved to mysteries. 🙂

Thanks for adding to the discussion, Denise, and pasting this in here! I am absolutely a romance reader - I love a great HEA, and I adore what I call "escape reading" because life has enough downer stuff without me having to add to it with my reading choices!

That mystery about killed me, Bob! I had a week and, while I understood the story, I simply couldn't understand the genre. I have gone back and tinkered with that story several times because I feel like it needs to be more. Not more of a mystery -- definitely not that -- but more emotional and fleshed out.

And I'll bet you could totally write a romance if you wanted to. 🙂

It is. It brought with it a focus to my writing that had been lacking.

Thanks, Virginia! I'm glad it was helpful. Romance can end in a happy-for-now place but the couple must be happy TOGETHER. The interesting thing about women's fiction is that it is about the protagonist's emotional journey but that protag doesn't necessarily have to be female. However, most people will categorize that type of book (with a male protag) as mainstream fiction.

I struggled with this question too, Christina. For ages. It affects the way you pitch and who you pitch to, how you describe your book, etc. It's so nice to be found, isn't it?