I always try to avoid looking at the section where my books would be shelved, but I do know that my most reliable neighbor to the right is Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening', which is dispiriting. That's a book I don't want to re-read.
Are you kidding? I'm supposed to put my books in this filthy tin coffin?
My books are shelved in different places, depending on the bookstore. Sometimes they can be found in the Mystery section, sometimes in the Humor department, and occasionally even in the Literature aisle, which is somewhat astounding.
My editor picked out the name she wanted. I was either going to be Kim Harrison or Lisa Harrison, because she wanted me shelved right next to Hamilton.
Genres do exist because frequent users of any large bookstore can instantly tell what any piece of fiction is supposed to be about by its title, its cover and its location in the shop.
I have always had a special affinity for libraries and librarians, for the most obvious reasons. I love books. (One of my first Jobs was shelving books at a branch of the Chicago Public Library.) Libraries are a pillar of any society. I believe our lack of attention to funding and caring for them properly in the United States has a direct bearing on problems of literacy, productivity, and our inability to compete in today's world. Libraries are everyman's free university.
I had a library of maybe 1,000 books in my room in Buenos Aires. I did have the sense that everything there was organised in the right way. You'll probably think I needed serious psychiatric treatment, but there were times when I would not buy a book because I knew it wouldn't fit one of the categories into which I had divided the library.
I worked in restaurants, and I worked in the Cambridge Public Library.
With literary biographies, you're either shelved with other biographies or next to your subject's fiction.
I think I'm less and less labelled a 'horror writer'. The books tend not to go on horror shelves any more, and when they do, I tend to take them off.
For a while, gently bumping into my nightstand meant a pile of 50 books clattering onto my head and the floor. After the 10th time this happened, I moved most of the books to a shelf in the spare room. Now, my nightstand is sort of like a bookish country club. And not all books get in.
My books - I kid you not - are very often shelved between DeLillo and de Sade. Which not only completely cracks me up, but it seems like an encouraging message from the universe: between those two, there's a lot of wiggle room. I feel just fine there.
I'm just going to write whatever I'm going to write, and whatever shelf or section they end up on at the bookstore is just going to be that, and I'll let the marketing people pull their hair out and worry about it.
I have no personal agenda in whether or not a library keeps 'Whale Talk' or 'Athletic Shorts' or any of my books shelved.
I never think about genre when I work. I've written fantasy, science fiction, supernatural fiction, and am now working on a suspense novel. Genres are mostly useful as a marketing tool, and to help booksellers known where to shelve a book.
