Readers, today we hear from Bowen Gillings, president of Pikes Peak Writers. This month, Bowen provides a report on Pikes Peak Writers 3rd quarter Board of Directors meeting  Look for the Prez Says Column each quarter as Bowen continues to keep Pikes Peak Members informed and aware.

---

Report on the September 2017 PPW Board Meeting

Continuing with my goal to keep you, the PPW member, engaged and informed about our terrific organization, I present this latest update on the efforts of your amazing Board of Directors.
The PPW Board met at the end of September to hold our annual elections for various Board positions. You may check out our bylaws (available to the public at https://www.pikespeakwriters.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/PPW-Bylaws-2015-09-23.pdf) to know the necessary process for becoming a member of our Board. It is not very difficult, but does require candidates to honestly depict their qualifications, goals, and reasons for wanting to be part of the Board.

This election brought in new Members at Large Damon Alan and Gabrielle Brown for two-year terms. Our new Vice President is Kameron Claire. She is a regular attendee at PPW’s monthly improve writing event, Write Drunk, Edit Sober, so come by and meet her. Also, Treasurer Charise Simpson will continue for another two years, as will Member at Large Karen Fox.
When I became your President in March, I replaced our Immediate Past President, J.T. Evans, who had 18 months remaining on his term. At that time I felt it improper for me to step into nearly a full term as President without an open election. The position of President was open to the entire PPW membership in September, yet no one submitted his or her name for consideration. So, the Board voted to keep me in place until the September 2018 elections when the position will again be open for a new candidate to serve a two-year term.

For a full look at your current Board of directors, go to https://www.pikespeakwriters.com/about/board-of-directors/. These are the people you can reach out to with ideas and concerns regarding PPW.

The Board also took a hard look at our web footprint. In late August, an outstanding trio of volunteers joined forces to become our web team. Todd Gleason heads this group as Webmaster and is supported by Jim Beavers and Liz Jeffries. Together these three have worked with our previous Webmaster to take over the managing and maintenance of our website, our membership database, and our submission portals.  Along with Gabrielle Brown, the new managing editor of our blog, they’re also working to streamline blog functionality as well as our news feed. For a tech noob like me, these seem daunting tasks, but these folks charged right in and set to work.

In the next few months you can expect to see some changes to our site. The team is building proposals to make our site more functional and easier to maintain. With a 100% volunteer workforce, simplicity is key for continued success. The Board will be deciding in November which changes to make and which products to use.

That is it for this installment of Prez Says. If you have questions about PPW and how it works, please reach out to me. The address, again is president@pikespeakwriters.com.

Thank you.
Bowen Gillings
President
Pikes Peak Writers

Today is National Day on Writing. I write because I must. NYT has 650 prompts here  https://goo.gl/Fa0Bty  #WhyIWrite

Is the Time Ripe for Multi-Genre Novels?

Is the Time Ripe for Multi-Genre Fiction?

Today we hear from Steve Janss, who's Dead in a Red Dress can be classified as a dramatic, suspenseful thrilling political spy novel, and more.  Steve shares with us the facts of genres and multi-genres, today and in classical literature.  In addition to working on his second novel, Steve leads the CS Writers group in Colorado Springs.  You can find out more about CS Writers at the end of this post.

---

What Genre is Your Novel?

"What genre is my novel?  Why, it's a multi-genre techno-thriller!  No wait…  Let me explain…"
If this resembles a conversation you've had, I might not be alone.  Have you ever been told, " 'Multi-' is not a genre -- you have to focus your work into a specific genre, or agents and publishers won't know what to do with you."  In an age when most movies and TV shows cross genre lines at will, combining science fiction, suspense/thriller, and action-adventure onto the latest silver and LED screens, I had to ask myself, "Why is the multi-genre approach still not respected in literary fiction?"
Although puritanical gatekeepers will burn you at the stake for crossing genres in fiction, we writers desire to combine elements of multiple genres in our fiction the same as we see being done in other media.  Doing so provides a rich increase to our creative pallets, and if we like it, our readers might like it, too.

Genre, Subgenre, Microgenre, NanoGenre...?

Classic lists of literary genres typically include comedy, drama, horror, fantasy, realism, romance, satire, tragedy, and mythology.  Naturally, as do all good things which have been analyzed to death, these break down into about 21.3 billion genres, subgenres microgenres, etc., so one must be very careful as to whether or not their protagonist's brown plaid jacket seams were hand-sewn in Surrey using a blanket stitch or in neighboring Berkshire with a wrapped backstitch.  While the truth isn't quite that bad, I recently discovered my first novel, Dead in a Red Dress, isn't the murder-mystery I had envisioned after all, but rather, a multi-genre novel with the following taxonomy:
Genre:  Drama

• Subgenre:  Suspense Fiction
  • Microgenre:  Crime
  • Microgenre:  Detective
• Subgenre:  Thriller
  • Microgenre:  Political
    • Nanogenre:  Spy Fiction

Thus, it looks like it's still of just one genre, albeit of multiple subgenres.
Taxonomies of literary genres have grown increasing complex, numbering a couple dozen or so in the middle of the 20th Century to more than 300 today.  If you think that level of hyperfocus is a bit too constraining, you're not alone.  Even so, many writers and most books on writing continue reiterating the same thing:  "Pick a genre and stick with it."  With so many genres out there, however, it's nearly impossible to write a novel that stays in its lane.

Multi-Genre Fiction is Not New

Fortunately, articles such as Considering Alternatives: Multi-genre Literature and Multi-genre Writing (Scully, 2008) remind us that award-winning multi-genre fiction isn't exactly new.  Robert A. Heinlein, for example, has won the Hugo five times, with eleven nominations, even though most of his novels are a mix of science fiction, romance, political, thriller, and even western genres.
So, do you want to allow yourself to be stuffed into a nice, tidy label, or do you want to write about that for which the masses are hungry?  I prefer the latter, and I hope you do, as well.  Even so, we still live in the real world, and if we want to be published, we need to adhere to at least a few standards, including those involving genres.  This doesn't mean that you can't write a book that fits into multiple genres.  You can, and public demand has long been dragging the publishing industry in the multi-genre direction.  Readers like it because it's fun, and people everywhere are usually willing to pay for fun, so until someone crafts a non-purist reason for always coloring within one's genre lines, be creative and pass the popcorn.

---

About CSWriters:
CSWriters meets for camaraderie, study, and critiques at 6:00 PM every Friday night at Agia Sophia Coffee Shop.  Guest Speaker Jeff Gerke will be joining us to discuss his "Hack Your Reader's Mind," October 27th.  Find CS Writers on Facebook or at CSWriters.com to learn more.

---

Steve Janss went to high school and college in Virginia before serving our nation in the Air Force.  He holds advanced degrees in management and business administration, and has been running CSWriters for nearly three years.  He is currently writing Body on a Cold Beach, the second of five novels in a series.

Sweet Success Celebrates F. P. Dorchak

“F. P. Dorchak writes like a hot-rodder heading toward a brick wall. Edge of your seat entertainment! I pondered over each of these stories long after I'd finished reading them. That's what great writing is all about!”
Dean Wyant, Co-Founder, Hex Publishers