My Niche?

“Writing from all regions of space and time.”  I chose this as the motto/tagline for IGC Publishing to be deliberately broad.  While it should suggest an emphasis on the scientific, it should also embrace the speculative, and it conveniently gives me permission to write and publish (from myself or from anyone else) whatever I feel like publishing.  Such flexibility has benefits, but it also means I didn’t define much of a niche for myself, which has its own consequences in terms of focus and finding an audience.  At the time, I only really knew I wanted to write speculative fiction, mostly various forms of fantasy and science fiction, and attempted to present myself accordingly – I was wary from stories of authors who had to completely rebrand themselves anytime they wanted to write in a different genre.  That remains something of a concern, and there are still many genres in which I would like to write.  When I had another story idea the other day, though, I realized that I might have a niche I should try to develop.

An offhand comment from a historian I was reading early in August reminded me how merchants of the ancient world were often explorers, too.  They were the ones who would go to all those places that might not be filled in on the map, interact with peoples who had yet to rub up against the select coterie of civilizations that wrote things down, travel to new lands and territories and facilitate the interchange of goods and ideas.  Even the state-sponsored exploration of the Age of Exploration was largely mercantile in nature and motivation.  The comment set a story idea tumbling around in my mental melanger, another historically-adjacent fantasy story about a merchant-explorer.  No other details, but that’s how most of my story ideas begin.  A recent plane ride offered plenty of time in which to think about the idea further, and it combined with some of the thoughts about narration I had after reading The Rhetoric of Fiction to form a more complete notion for a “found manuscript” style story, ostensibly written by an accountant to one of these merchant-explorers, who becomes the driving force behind a knight’s quest to find a cure for her wounded husband.  Tentatively, this would be an entry in the Tantha Chronicles.

This is not a story announcement, because I do not know when I will write the story – perspicacious readers will note there was no mention of this story in this year’s Intergalactic Update, as I’d not yet formed the idea sufficiently – but it is a story (or perhaps multiple stories featuring this merchant’s adventures) I intend eventually to write.  When I realized that, I also realized that I might have a bit of a niche, as an increasing number of the stories I want to write or am actively writing fit into this idea I have of historically adjacent secondary world fantasy: Impressions, Golems and Kings, Spring of Nations, and now Tantha Chronicles.  These are stories that aren’t historical fiction, are not set on Earth, but are set in a world very analogous to Earth, with strong inspirations from real history, and with “fantastic” elements which are…I want to say subtle, but that’s not quite right.  Tightly integrated might suffice.  The fantastic that doesn’t feel that fantastic within the context of the secondary world.  The fantastical elements are simply part of the world.  For as much as Sanderson’s magic systems are cohesive with the rest of his world building, they always feel distinct, something slightly separate and not taken for granted in the same way.  His characters still tend to think of the magic as, well, magic in the way we think of magic, not the way our ancestors might have.

It’s a step closer to historical fiction than traditional fantasy, but a step closer to fantasy than historical fiction, even historical fiction like The Dragon Waiting with its vampires and magic (although The Dragon Waiting might be a close analog to what I seek to do).  Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn does something similar from a worldbuilding perspective, but its plot is closer to classic fantasy than most of the plots I’m interested in exploring.  We’ve written about these ideas before, but I didn’t realize until thinking about Tantha Chronicles just how many of my story ideas fall into this category.  There are more traditional fantasy stories I want to write, and science fiction stories I’ll write, too, but if there is a niche I would fill with my writing, I think it is this one.

Mostly, this post is to share the realization that I have a niche.  Nothing is really going to change, especially from your perspective.  If anything, this will serve to help me better tailor my writing and publishing efforts to the right audience in terms of readers, agents, publishers, contests, and so forth.  I don’t know how many people there might be out there who would be interested in reading historically adjacent secondary world fantasy, but I know it’s more than zero.  Now that I know those are the readers I should be seeking, I just have to find them.