Recently, my fourteen year old daughter was, as usual, sitting in the back seat of the car texting to a friend. “Hey, Mom, how do you spell genre?” My husband and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. What fourteen year old uses the word “genre” in a text to a friend? I’m not sure I’d even heard the word until I was a librarian. Readers today are much more aware of the genres of books they read. They are much more likely to stick with one genre and not read others. Go into most modern bookstores and you’ll find the books organized, not by author, size, or color, but by genre. We at the Blood Red Pencil are going to use a few posts over the next weeks to define and discuss genres. The market may be better for some genres than others. There may be different marketing approaches for different genres. You may find that some agents specialize in handling one genre over others. We’ll discuss those all these points in upcoming posts. I’m going to begin the discussion with a relati...