Gentle readers, today I’ve been in a swirl of words, not all of them having to do with NaNoWriMo. Not only am I writing Wisdom Court Book 3, All In Bad Time, but I’m also marketing and publicizing the first two Wisdom Court Books: Edge of the Shadow, and A Signal Shown. (This while falling short in the promotion of my two mysteries, Scavenger Hunt, and Obstacle Course. My bad.)

This is the day Edge of the Shadow has been featured on EReader News Today, and I’ve been sharing that fact through Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin. Once again I’ve noted that my Wisdom Court books carry a lot of labels. There are a lot of different elements in my books and they come from different genres.

All of the books I’ve written have been categorized as cross-genre. That means several things, some complimentary, some not. Historically books have been sold by genre, meaning bookshelf space given to them is ideally in a specific bookstore location. Mysteries with mysteries, romances with romances, paranormal with paranormal, etc. It gets murkier with mainstream novels, which get away with including various aspects under the umbrella of mainstream. Whatever that means.

The stories I like to tell myself involve more than one template. In the case of the Wisdom Court books the two things that intrigued me in the initial phases were first, the idea of a woman getting what she’d always wanted most, the chance to be totally supported for a year while she worked to make her biggest dream come true. Second, to observe the relationship among the five or six women living at Wisdom Court while they all got to be stars. The protagonist meets a lovely man. So, women’s fiction with an element of romance.

But then I began to wonder about paranormal events getting in the way of such an idyllic set-up. A problem that must be solved. Mystery, right? My belief that our memories and regrets are like ghosts haunting us as we age had me wanting those women forced to deal with scary supernatural stuff while they were supposed to be setting the world on fire during their year at Wisdom Court. Paranormal, supernatural, Gothic, horror, ghost story.

Thanks to the rise of independent publishing, I’ve been able to get the Wisdom Court books into print (POD) and on-line as ebooks. But as for promoting them, the old rules apply, because readers want to read what they like. So here’s my challenge to those of you who’ve read Edge of the Shadow and/or A Signal Shown. How would you describe them? How many genres would you have to mention to let readers know what they’re getting? I’d really be interested in having you weigh in. Thanks.