Michaeline: What fresh genre is this?

Choosing a genre can be heartwrenching if your story doesn’t quite fit.

I’m deeply suspicious of the writing tool called “genre”. My favorite bookin the universe combines romance with gender politics, politics in general, mystery, thrills, and both science fiction and SFnal realism . . . and I might be missing a few genre-type areas. If Lois McMaster Bujold had tried to pare her fiction down to some sleek genre archetype, I think she would have quickly gotten bored and stopped writing. And from a purely selfish viewpoint, that would have been a tragedy.

Genre is a tool, though, and can be useful in shaping your story. But more importantly,