Is our writers learning? Comps

One of the more frustrating parts of selling a book is “comps” — comparable novels or authors you can use to position yourself. You’ve seen them, I’m sure, the “perfect for fans of Jim Butcher/Lee Childs/Seanan McGuire/Nora Roberts!” recommendations in ads.According to this agent’s advice, and others, when you’re querying agents (and I presume publishers) you want to mention specific titles, preferably recent. This doesn’t seem to apply with ads where the comps are invariably author or occasionally movies or TV; one rom-com ad with a political background declared it would appeal to fans of The West Wing. Given the show is now 20 years old, I wonder if that indicates they’re targeting a demographic in their thirties and up or that they couldn’t come up with anything better.

If so I feel for them; this shit’s hard. As I’ve mentioned before, Southern Discomfort looks like an urban fantasy but in many ways it’s closer to intrusion fantasy, where there’s just one odd magical element and the world is otherwise normal. Does that mean if I pitch to urban fantasy fans I’ll hook them — it’s not quite the same old sort of thing — or annoy them by missing key genre elements?  If b, then what should I compare myself too? As the book’s set in 1973, would historical fiction be a better choice? And I’ll have to ask the same questions when I put out Let No Man Put Asunder.

To see if I can get a handle on the answer I’ve started reading books with an eye to finding comps: Southern fantasy, rural fantasy, small town fantasy, intrusion fantasy. The first of which was Caitlin Kiernan’s ALABASTER, which I first read several years ago.

Protagonist Dancy Flammarion is “an albino Boo Radley” (the protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird) who first appeared in Kiernan’s Threshold (which I haven’t read). Assigned by a terrifying angel to track down monsters in a Southern gothic landscape, Dancy wanders through trailer parks, deconsecrated churches, decaying mansions and creepy gas stations with little enthusiasm but a determination to do god’s work.

I think I can cross this one off as a comp. It does feel more intrusion fantasy than urban fantasy — the monsters are an aberration, even if there are a lot of them — but it’s a much darker and freakier setting than Southern Discomfort. Pharisee Georgia may be going through hard times but it’s a nice place to live, which can’t be said about anywhere Dancy visits.

Kiernan’s prose style is also much more literary than mine, more so than on her first book, Silk (which I may reread too). She’s very good. Just not much use for this project but it was still good to reread her.

The one flaw in the book is that the introduction refers to The Well of Stars and Shadows as taking place in “the swamps of Okaloosa County, Florida.” I didn’t register that originally, probably because the story only references “North Florida” but as a former Okaloosa resident this has a very WTF quality. We do have swamps, but they’re on the federal land managed by Eglin Air Force Base, not anywhere people live. Even referring to “the swamps of Okaloosa County” as if it were a familiar landmark, like I’d say “the beaches of Okaloosa County” or “the Destin docks” sounds wrong — swamps are not an important part of the county at all. Which is part of why both Southern Discomfort and Let No Man Put Asunder are in imaginary cities — I’d just as soon not make mistakes like that.

Will I find a comp before Southern Discomfort comes out next year? Stay tuned …

#SFWapro. Covers by Lee Macleod (top) and Ted Naifeh, all rights to images remain with current holders.