It’s been five months since the release of The Gathering. Since then I’ve done a fair amount of marketing. Dozens of people have asked me to classify the story. During my last book signing a little ditty started running through my head whenever someone asked me what kind of book it was and it goes something like this. 
         
(Sung to the tune – House of the Rising Sun, but The Animals.)
 
Oh, authors, tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Set your book in an off genre
And marketing won’t be fun

            
I have struggled to define the correct category for The Gathering. Here are the genres in which it might fit with a few comments about each. I’d love some suggestions from my readers. 
  
General Fiction – This seems to be the category that books are placed in when no one is sure how it should be labeled. It’s a generic pool of titles without much in common other than the fact that they didn’t fit anywhere else. I’m just not convinced that The Gathering is the sort of book people are expecting when they peruse this category. 
 
Speculative Fiction – For the most part this the how I’ve classified The Gathering. It
 definitely fits into the Speculative field. One reviewer listed the book as “Reality Speculative Fiction” and that is probably the most accurate classification that I have found so far. The problem with that it is not really an accepted category and then I have to explain the genre as well as the storyline.  In a way this feels like the General Fiction version of the Sci-Fi world. 
 
Sci-Fi – I love this category. This is what I normally write and The Gathering contains
some slight element of the genre. The story is set in the future—albeit the near future—and is in fact an apocalyptic tale in the making, which falls into the category of Sci-Fi. Unfortunately, without any aliens from another dimension, space ships, or high-tech gadgetry that hasn’t been invented yet my book doesn’t read like Sci-Fi. 
 
Action / Adventure – My normal writing style includes a lot of action and a fair amount of adventure. The main story of a typical family in a tough situation doesn’t really cry out for this classification, but the Calvin McCord storyline does. My concern for using this genre is that readers may expect a fast-paced trek through exotic locales and that is not what they will get. 
 
Christian Fiction – Since the story involves an LDS family as they respond to the prophesied events leading up to the Second Coming this is a fair category to place The
Gathering. But does this label set an expectation of a story that has a lot of warm-fuzzies intermixed with a 300 page sermon? While there is nothing wrong with that my intention was to get my readers to think about how they would react to an apocalyptic event.  
 
Thriller – The definition of this genre is a story that uses suspense, tension, and excitement as its main elements. Guilty as charged. At least, that was my intent when writing The Gathering. Here again, I feel that readers will have a different expectation when they see mention of this genre. Perhaps I’m doing myself a disservice by comparing it to North By Northwest, Cape Fear, and Play Misty For Me, but I don’t feel  comfortable placing it in this category.  
  
Pre-Apocalyptic – Since The Gathering doesn’t fit nicely into any of the categories that are available I decided to make a new one. Imagine that—me making something up. This brand new category deals with stories that take place in the days and years prior to an apocalypse. In this case it involves an event that hasn’t happened yet, but I think it would work just as well with great tragedies from our past. A tale of a Jewish family in
Germany just prior to WWII would be an example. Even though I created this category
specifically for The Gathering I feel that it could work as a legitimate genre. Post-Apocalyptic tales already exist so why not this?


Have an opinion on what I said? Leave a comment

            
Since Sunday was Mother’s Day I felt it appropriate to interview Becky Williams. Not only is she a viewpoint character in The Gathering, she is the mother of six children: Robert, Sarah, Lucas, Jesse (twin 1), Elizabeth (twin 2), and Cody. 


Q1: What is the best thing about the Apocalypse? 
 
A1: Really? Does your mother know you ask silly questions like that? If I had to pick one positive element out of this horrible situation it would be that it forces you to think about what is truly important in life. Everything else gets cast aside. 
 
 
Q2:  Several readers have mentioned that you are some sort of Super-Mom; strong, selfless, and highly spiritual. Are you too good to be real?
 
A2:  Of course not. I think the novel just happen to capture me at my finer moments. What the readers didn’t get to see where the times when I broke down and cried over some minor problem because I was having a bad day. I mean, in a book about the apocalypse who wants to see me dealing with bickering kids, a dirty house, and a migraine? 

 
Q3:  You and Sarah look a lot alike. Does anyone ever get the two of you confused?
 
A3:  * Do you mean other than you? Yes, it happens all the time. Sarah is the child that is most like me. She is very strong-willed and definitely her own person. That can be good if you are pointed in the right direction because you allow yourself to be sidetracked. But it makes it difficult to change your life around if you’re headed the wrong way. 
  
* I swapped the names for Becky and Sarah when my beta readers mentioned that Becky worked better as a name for an adult  woman. 

 
Q4:  Now the big question. Which of the kids is your favorite?
 
A4:  I bet you’re expecting me to say “all of them” and I do, but that’s not my answer. It really depends on the individual day. When I got letters from Robert while he was on his mission then Robert was my favorite. Two weeks ago the twins stopped bickering long enough to arrange a date night for John and myself. On that day—no, for that week—they jointly held the top spot in my heart. Each of my children has their moment in the sun where they shine ever so brightly. When they do my joy in them is truly full. 
 
             
If you have any questions for Becky that you’d like answered just go ahead and post them in the comments section and I will make sure she gets to them as soon as her busy schedule allows. 


 
 

The post is a couple of days late this week. Did that make you wonder if
the Apocalypse had started? Probably not, but maybe next time you should. 
              
Okay, on to this month’s question.  

Other than your own  stories which is the best apocalypse movie or novel out  there?
            
Angie Lofthouse,  who I had the pleasure of meeting at LDStorymakers last month, listed the best novel of an apocalyptic nature as Folk of the Fringe, by Orson Scott Card. If it wasn’t also one of my favorite stories on this genre I might wonder if it had anything to do with Card being the keynote speaker at the conference. 
             
The truth is that Card put together a wonderful story of hope as normal people have to face catastrophic aftermath of a nuclear and biological war. I happen to have an autographed hardback of it that is the prize of my book collection. So, good job Angie. 


      

Margot Hovley sent me this response:
 
This is a really hard question for me!

 Instead of trying to pick an overall best, I'd like to mention three works I read as a child that really influenced me. The first has come to be known as The Tripods, a trilogy by John Christopher. The second I'll name is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engel, and the lst The Giver by Lois Lowry. 
 
I'm not calling these out as the best ever--or that they are even examples of apocalyptic stories--just that I happened to read these particular books while a young
girl--by chance--or good luck--or ? These books made me think a lot about how I would react if caught in an apocalyptic situation--about how I hoped I'd react.

 Reading these while young sparked my imagination and got me thinking about what might happen in our future. Since I lived very close to a nuclear facility, growing up during the Cold War, I spent a lot of time worrying about a possible apocalypse.
It seemed like it weighed heavy on everyone's mind. Between the drills at school and the frantic gathering of food storage in my Mormon household, I felt pretty much on
edge. 

I was fascinated by the history behind the War of the Worlds radio program and thought it fascinating that it caused such an uproar as people assumed it was portraying a real occurrence. I thought it so interesting to see how people would
react in a situation like that. 

Now, when I read stories that are attempting to describe post-apocalyptic settings, I find myself being overly critical, perhaps. I watched the TV series Revolution with a lot of enthusiasm at first, but finally gave up on it, as the violence really wore on me. And books like Divergent, while wildly popular with others, hit an off note for me because I couldn't picture government evolving into something like what's described there. As much practice as  I've had with suspending reality (after all, I love Star Trek, etc.), I
just couldn't get past the unbelievability of that political setup. Obviously I'm a minority on that.

 
Wow! I didn’t even know anyone else knew about the Tripod series by John Christopher. Good choice. I loved it as a kid. I am reading it to my children now. Written for youth, it an apocalyptic tale of alien invasion set many years after Earth has been conquered  by a strange race of three-armed, three-legged aliens.  
 
A really great response from Margot. I had the chance to meet Margot for the first time at the LDStorymakers conference. On her website she blogged about teaching classes at the conference. While not the end of the world, it is an interesting read none-the-less. 
  
Unfortunately, the rest of the panel were MIA this month. In Wayne’s case I hope that is not because an ancient virus has been let loose in South  Africa. But since there hasn’t been any news about such an event in the media we’re probably safe. 

Or are we?