The gulf between my dreams and the market

One of the sessions at Gollanczfest discussed perfecting book pitches.  Inevitably, someone asked the panel what books they would like to see in their inbox a as submissions. The replies included: small-town horror, a new twist on vampires, and a really good pirate book.  This produced a huge sigh from me, and reminded me of how large the gulf is between my dreams and the market.

I neither read nor write horror.  The same goes for vampires.  I have completely managed to avoid  reading Twillight, even though the book has sat on my shelf for several years now.  I've also avoided seeing the movie.  The same fate awaits all other vampire books.  The only person I'd read writing about vampires was Terry Pratchett, and I defy anyone to make a vampire more original than his.

Pirates... well, I do have a few pirate villains in Starfire, the book I've just finished editing, but they're antagonists, not the subjects of the novel.  I might conceivably be able to write a pirate book if the pirates were "moral", I,e. they'd turned pirate to right a great injustice, but otherwise no.

The thing is, I don't care about any of those subjects.  And I certainly couldn't bring myself to spend a year writing a book I didn't care about, on the slim hope of attracting the market's attention.

It wouldn't do that anyway.  It would never get bought.  This isn't the Imposter speaking this time.  It's the knowledge that readers can sense when you're 'going through the motions', when the writer isn't invested in the story.  I've read a young adult series that ended up like that. The first book was fantastic, and had an original premise.  But by book three the series had twisted that concept so far it had fallen flat.  I could sense the writer's enthusiasm had waned.

Any book I tried to write to target one of these trends would reveal that my heart wasn't in it.  These days I've outgrown wanting to copy others' work,  I've found my voice, and the issues that matter to me.

Far more hopeful for me is the trend for 'up lit', and the joyous positivity of Becky Chambers' books.  There are many similarities between my stories and her books: a positive outlook on life, an ensemble crew going about their daily work, human/AI relationships.  I'm looking for the market that wants a new Becky Chambers, not one that wants horror and vampires. My heart's just not in them.