Four words that evoke memories of princesses and goblins, of fables and fairy-tales. They have become an archetype, harking back to a time when the word novel was synonymous with fantasy. In fact, English literature was forged in the fires of sorcery and unreality. Think Faerie Queen, Dr. Faustus, Gulliver’s Travels. Sound familiar? Where would you look for these stories in your local book store? Certainly not in the fantasy section. Back when Moby Dick was published there were no fantasy and sci-fi, no mystery or romance, only novels. Alexander Pope did not worry about cross-genres when he composed The Rape of the Lock. And Robert Louis Stevenson was not catering to horror fans when he wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

When did literature become a slave to labels? Who else but marketing managers profit from categorizing literature? Certainly not the consumer. Fantasy buffs head straight for these shelves, but how many great fantasy stories are missed, because they are classified as “literary” instead?

Likewise, how many readers that might disdain genre-fiction also unknowingly abstain from quality literature? In the new big-box publishing industry, many great writers fall through the marketing cracks simply because their writing falls through the genre cracks.

As a reader I’m all for an errant knight epic or a sexy vampire thriller, but the books that stick with me, the stories that I find myself reviewing on sleepless nights, are those that break the barriers. As a writer, I strive to avoid stereotypes by writing a great story first and worrying about classifying it later. Unfortunately, writing in the gaps has its drawbacks too. I once sent the same story to two different editors, receiving polite rejections from both, one claiming that my story was fantasy and his magazine did not publish this genre, the other that the story was not fantasy and he only published such. Same story.