What am I not writing?

Yes, you’ve read it correctly, in this post I am going to talk about what I am not writing. This is my attempt to set out expectations for my future/prospective readers *wink*

Let’s start with genre (and for those who need a reminder, mine is Chinese fantasy or fantasy in a Chinese setting with Chinese characters): I am not writing Chinese historical fiction but more like fantasy vaguely inspired by Chinese history. Basically, I am ‘stealing’ bits of real ancient China as a setting to fit into my story and then giving full reins to my imagination to modify or even change completely. And I am not definitely not writing any genre combination that involves romance (don’t get me wrong, I don’t have ‘a thing’ against the romance genre per se other than that it’s not part of my reading diet) since romance is one of the two elements that will get me into procrastination mode whenever I have them in my story.

The second part relates to style. I am not writing a page turner. That does not mean I’m writing a slow-paced novel necessarily but I am not writing something that is full of ‘hooks’ to get the readers interested in what’s going to happen next and has no other merit to it other than this momentum. I also do not necessarily write succinctly (I actually like what I call flowing prose which others might call verbose. I do not love long sentences for their own sakes but sometimes prose/description I especially like just happen to be full of semi-colons or made up of long sentences) nor do I write graphically (that is related to this aphantasia condition that I talked about earlier that I only recently found out is a thing and that I have, instead I go for what I call impressionistic/atmospheric writing).

And that’s it today. Next week, the second of my Remarkable Women in Ancient China serial comes up and then I will be releasing my novella A Thread of Chance over the reminder of February. So stay tuned.