Recognition

FF&W, numerous blogs, books, Writers Market, Writers Digest...they all recommend finding an author or two to give agents and/or editors something to latch onto about your writing. I've opened this up to those who know my writing as well as having some thoughts of my own. Quite an interesting list has been generated, including Robin McKinley (yay!), Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, and Alice Sebold. I can understand why all of them were thought of, and I agree that I have elements of each (except possibly Stephen King, but I think that suggestion was more in the vein of genre than actual writerly comparison), but something just didn't quite click for lack of a better term. Robin McKinley's Sunshine probably came the closest to doing so.

So. Now. There's a man named Jason in my writers group. He is the aforementioned nice man who thinks my writing feels like horror. He is a good writer. He's a pleasant fellow. He's almost surely an INTsomething on the MBTI. He has also given me the greatest gift of all.

Well, perhaps not. But he led me to something awfully shiny!

It was he who told me that my writing rather reminds him of Neil Gaiman. I didn't quite laugh in his face. Nonetheless, on his recommendation I checked out one of Mr. Gaiman's short story collections, Smoke and Mirrors. I'd only ever read his Stardust and I honestly don't remember it that well. Most of what I know about his writing is that he is all cult figurey and cool. Which characteristics really can't be laid at my feet.

However. I am. I'm Neil Gaiman.

That sounds remarkably presumptuous, so I'll add that I'm perfectly aware that I am in no way at his level, nor will I likely ever be (though I'll continue to try). But all of those things I was trying to figure out -- how does someone combine a sardonic sense of humor with wistfulness, add in a dash of lilting dreaminess, and wrap it all up in not-quite-horror macabre? Or rather, having done all of that, where and how do you market that? -- he's done them! First and better and successfully! It can be done!

I just hope it can also be done by me.