Peter James Quotes

I didn't consciously make the decision to write an adult novel. I didn't think of it as my riposte to the YA genre.

I have no objection to well-written romance, but I'd read enough of it to know that that's not what I had written. I also knew that if it was sold as romance I'd never be reviewed by the 'New York Times' or any other literarily respectable newspaper - which is basically true, although the 'Washington Post' did get round to me eventually.

My novels are in the literature section as opposed to the romance section of bookstores because they're not romance novels. If I tried to have them published as romances, they'd be rejected. I write dramatic fiction; a further sub-genre would classify them as love stories.

I don't like to talk about work in progress, but the novel I'm working on now is definitely not horror.

I never really saw myself as writing science fiction anyway.

I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

Don't get me wrong, I love literary fiction. It's faux literary fiction I can't stand.

I have done some short pieces that are not horror.

It's perceived as an accolade to be published as a 'literary' writer, but, actually, it's pompous and it's fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself.

The trouble with calling a book a novel, well, it's not like I'm writing the same book all the time, but there is a continuity of my interests, so when I start writing a book, if I call it 'a novel,' it separates it from other books.

In general, fiction is divided into 'literary fiction' and 'commercial fiction.' Nobody can definitively say what separates one from the other, but that doesn't stop everybody (including me) from trying. Your book probably will be perceived as one or the other, and that will affect how it is read, packaged and marketed.

I've been typed as historical fiction, historical women's fiction, historical mystery, historical chick lit, historical romance - all for the same book.

I don't think I will write anything that could be even remotely considered a genre novel from this point on. I think I've graduated.

The crime genre's always been regarded very well by the literary end of the book world, whereas horror, although it had that spell in the late eighties, by and large, it's sort of ghetto-ized, and considered to be exploited literature.

I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters.

The age of the book is not over. No way... But maybe the age of some books is over. People say to me sometimes 'Steve, are you ever going to write a straight novel, a serious novel' and by that they mean a novel about college professors who are having impotence problems or something like that. And I have to say those things just don't interest me. Why? I don't know. But it took me about twenty years to get over that question, and not be kind of ashamed about what I do, of the books I write.

It doesn't really matter what "genre" your book is. What matters is that it's a good book of its kind. Whatever that kind may be.

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.

Because I write realistic fiction, I generally don't think about fixing anyone - I just think about how I want to feel at the end of the book - And I try to write toward that feeling.

Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.

As far as this categorization of books, the way I see it is there are really a hundred-odd categories of books plus one, and on the top shelf at home, I've got the books I love, my favorite books, and that's the type of book that I want to write.

No doubt, there are those who believe that judges - and particularly dissenting judges - write to hear themselves say, as it were, 'I, I, I.' And no doubt, there are also those who believe that judges are, like Joan Didion, primarily engaged in the writing of fiction. I cannot agree with either of those propositions.

The story is everything, so it always begins with a story.And research is a kind of scaffolding built underneath the story as I go along. My enjoyment level varies, but in general, I'm writing about topics I find interesting, so I can't gripe too much.

That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding.

This paper of yours is so lightly written that you must have sweated terribly.