Michele Lee

I’m not terribly involved in the writing community much anymore, but one of the people I will always follow is Jason Sanford (who I met when we were both baby authors and I got to read an early version of his novel Plague Birds, which remains one of the best books I’ve read, so go buy it.) Jason writes a comprehensive monthly SF/F genre column and the January edition just came out. One of the major events is the budding genre discussion of “Squeecore”. Jason begins by saying:

“The discussion started after a Rite Gud podcast in which R. S. Benedict and J.R. Bolt offered “A Guide to Squeecore.” When I say the original take felt condescending and simply a way to attack fiction you don’t like, this is what I’m referring to. I agree with Marie Brennan who said squeecore appears to be defined as “books the person using that term doesn’t like.”

In this world of global, instant interconnectiveness the discussion quickly expanded. From Jason’s column:

As Camestros Felapton said in a must-read summary and analysis, according to Benedict and Bolt’s podcast squeecore “tends to be very uplifting and upbeat. It is didactic. It has a young adult fiction tone to it, even when it’s supposed to be for adults. Central characters can feel weirdly young, like they always think and act and feel as though they’re in their late teens or early 20s. They’re kind of inexperienced, naive, still very full of wonder. It has notable influence from films and a lot of influence from mainstream commercial narratives… One such influence being three-act structure screenplays and the ‘save the cat’ style narrative. Central characters can feel like they are intended to be reader-inserts like video-game RPG protagonist.”

I’m starting to feel the weight of my time in the writer world. This debate has been going on for a very, very long time and “Squeecore” is just a new term to set people off.

As a baby writer there seems to be a point in your career where you have to choose between two major paths. (Of course, for some people there is no choice because they know what they want.) Do you want to be A Genre Writer, one of the people who influences the arch of the genre, embraces the concept of literary arts, confronts human truths, advance knowledge…(and win awards)? Or do you want to be The Escapist Author, whose works are usually more profitable, more forgettable, flash in the pan, and tend to appeal to more readers versus more industry people. See, there are two kinds of readers, The Readers and the Reader-Authors. All authors *should be* voracious readers. But a lot of authors who are readers crave a different kind of book, one that has a higher artistic value, be it in concept or prose or theme. Author-Readers are drawn to Books That Change Lives. (And this is a beautiful thing. I love a lot of authors like this.)

Readers aren’t always though. The majority of readers want escapist fiction, entertaining fiction. A lot are expressly looking for stories that are the same because their lives are already changing so much that they find peace in the stability. For my most solid point I present: The Entire Romance Genre (and the long, sexist and frustrating history of completely crapping on it as a “valid” form of reading, something I have been guilty of myself.)

There is a lot of leeway for authors to appeal to both. Neil Gaiman is not a poor, broke, unknown author after all. Speculative fiction (SF/F/H/R) went through a bit there where it was looked down upon to read them. They were considered trash books and gatekeepers, like professional reviewers, literary awards, historians, and college level writing programs, dumped on them. In college I was told I would be a great writer if I dumped the genre trash. Gods love all the beautiful writers out there who have proven in the last 25 years that a book can be a beautiful work of art *and* genre.

So what we see here is that for some reason (higher education crisis, pandemic, wage crisis, housing crisis, political division, threats of civil war, etc.), I can’t imagine why, SOME readers and writers are shifting away from the darker takes. Urban fantasy has been waning for a while. Zombies and post apoc stories are played out. Grimdark has found its audience and isn’t adding many new readers. Story consumers have enough dark dark horrifying awfulness. Their tastes are changing.

Sometimes escapism comes from whimsy. Amusingly enough Jason and I met at World Fantasy Con and the theme was “Whimsical Fantasy”. So we see characters that aren’t stalwart survivors of horrors or magic. We see characters who “feel younger”. Not to mention that YA has not been written just for young adults for the entirely of the time I’ve been doing this. I will be forty two this year and I never stopped reading YA. I run a review blog on it. And I’ve seen some of the stories I loved that got me into reading and writing become more books, movies, t.v. shows and hook new people. The young adults who started on more recent YA like P.C. Cast and Suzanne Collins and Scott Westerfield are most definitely adults now and therefore looking for new stories on new shelves.

The reader base is shifting away from those of us who started fandom on message boards and zines and fan fiction, and toward readers who always had the option of that kind of interconnected, immediately validated fandom.

Personally after trying for 10 years to be that serious writer taking a serious role in the community I burned out, started focusing more on taking care of myself and part of that was writing stories that were less about contributing to the artistic aspects of the genre and stories…I just had fun writing. Some people can do both. I enjoy writing short stories of that style still. I love reading stories like that.

But, honestly…

In the last week I’ve assisted with eight euthanasias at my day job. One of my daughter’s friends moved in with us because he {and his dog) was being heavily emotionally abused by his parents and they were trying to add financial abuse onto it. Being in the vet field we have been busier than ever and while the world quarantined and struggled with isolations and pandemic stress, The people in my field not only never stopped working, we’ve been busier than ever AND taking lash outs because of the anger and panic of societal stress for our current culture. I’m fucking tired, y’all. I’m sad. I’m trying not to be burn out. I held a dog who was nothing but love and joy while the doctor injected her to stop her heart because her leg bones were literally disintegrating from cancer last week. I have heard seasoned doctors say “Oh my god” and “Oh shit, I haven’t never seen anything like that before.” Too many fucking times.

So I revamped my Instagram to share pictures of all things I find beautiful, from street art to architecture to plants and, yes, food. And I buy a lot of erotic romance that I would have dismissed as totally cliche and “well written, but predictable” before. And I write sexy vampires go back to college books. Because while I completely value art that questions and changes the shape of things and confronts deep truths and believe the world definitely NEEDS those stories, we need escapism too. We need happy endings, and whimsy, and main characters who still have a sense of wonder. I need the cat to be saved.

A way, way long day ago, when I was first trying to be a writer for the public I read a quote that I have long since lost, where in an author said that a woman being treated for breast cancer read her books during hospital stays and the books helped her cope. The reader wrote the author to thank her for “being there for her” and to tell her what the books meant to her. And the author said that is why she writes.

Me too. I’m not writing for the bros who want to see the art being taken seriously and tackling big topics anymore. I’m writing for the person who just held another beloved pet as it passed and desperately needs to be outside her own head for a few hours. And there’s nothing fucking wrong with that.