Mitzi Flyte

Oh, dear.
I seem to be involved in another “kurfluffel”. (Well, that’s how I spell the word, so that’s how it’s staying.)
On a loop for woman’s fiction I mentioned that I was in a horror/paranormal anthology and that my book, coming out soon was a paranormal romance.
Uh-oh!!!
The moderator sweetly told me that it was a group for woman’s fiction. Then I was told that woman’s fiction was supposed to “be about a woman’s journey”.
What?
Without reading my stories you made a judgment about their content?
Yes, I indeed labeled my stories. You have to do that to market the darn things.
The anthology was a horror/paranormal but my story was about how a woman couldn’t cope with the death of the love of her life.
The book? Well, it’s about how a woman tries to save the wolf preserve she’d opened. But it does have werewolves and natural disasters but not a true RWA “happy ending”.
So I guess a woman’s journey that doesn’t involve death, love, wolves, natural disasters or werewolves is considered woman’s fiction.
Where’s that woman journeying to? Candyland?
This group evolved because so many women from Romance Writers of America were no longer writing within the confines of traditional romance. Either they weren’t writing the traditional ending of “happily ever after” or they weren’t making the romance the major focus of their book.
So a woman’s fiction group was born to be more inclusive.
Except you can’t talk about paranormal or horror or-I don’t know-anything I write evidently, even though my major protagonists are women.
Just where does a writer like me belong?
At her laptop writing.
I’m a woman.
I write fiction for women.
Sometimes women want to read about the heroine in love.
And sometimes women want to read about the heroine in love with a werewolf and the story doesn’t end HEA.
It depends on the woman.
It depends on the woman writer.