Weird War

Day two. Genres help. Computer games have real-time strategy, first-person shooters, and role-playing games, to name but a few. Books have horror, adventure, romance, etc. It helps the gamer, or the reader, chose their entertainment. That’s a good thing, but a real challenge when it comes to that Strange-World-War-III-Book-That-Also-Has-Creepy-Stuff, which as my two readers (I lost one yesterday) know, I recently finished.

You see, in a manner similar to a pack of Certs, my book is two, two books in one. It’s a military adventure and it is also paranormal horror…although anyone who really gets frightened by a book probably needs professional help. The military stuff is nut and bolt, steel and rivet, real. I like to think that after a career in the military and a lifetime of war gaming, I know how to write convincing battle scenes. I hope the paranormal stuff is as good. Some folks tell me it is. Some of them aren’t even related to me. Of course the real challenge is sliding the book into a genre readers understand. Yesterday I might have found that genre.

It’s called weird war, named after the same-titled DC comic book series. The name says it all. It’s a book about war, but it also has some weirdness in it. The downside is our language and its nuances. Weird is strange, sure. That’s fine. Unfortunately weird is also goofy, and that is several notches less than fine. So, despite the title of today’s blog, the debate continues. On one hand we have weird war, descriptive but with goofy undertones, on the other is paranormal action or paranormal military adventure. Descriptive, but very cumbersome. No doubt genres help, but they also hurt.

Back tomorrow.