**Goodreads Question**
“When writing The Mason List, did you worry about not fitting specifically into a certain genre?”
I always planned to write a “romance” book but I wasn’t really aiming for one genre or another. I know that can often be bad for marketing a book. What Genre is The Mason List? Well…it’s a Contemporary, Coming-of-Age Romance that crosses both Young Adult and New Adult with splash of Chick Lit.
I read all sorts of genre’s. I think for me, all of those blend together in my head. I didn’t have one genre in mind when I set out to write the story. I was just telling the story. Alex’s backstory took over a large portion of theme. That wasn’t the intention but it became 50% of the story.
My core concept: I wanted a story that actually showed the characters together as kids. I didn’t want the story to start as adults with a few sentences that indicated they grew up together. I wanted the reader to feel like they grew up with the characters. To me, the story of Jess and Alex only existed because of the adventures they had together as children. It wasn’t always perfect and they didn’t always make the best choices. But they were together and the reader got to experience those twists and turns along the way.
I worried when I released The Mason List that people would have issues with the first half of the book being told from the young kid perspective since I was marketing in the romance section of Amazon that is full of traditional style New Adult books. I say traditional, because there’s certain elements that are typically present in most New Adult books.
However, most people have embraced the book as a whole. They loved the epic style and didn’t have a problem with the page count. There’s been a few who didn’t like the first half – and I’ve had people who loved the first half but not the last half. I think some of the dislike does come from the jump in genres. I also know that everyone does not like the same books. I’m okay with it. I had fun writing The Mason List. And at the end of the day, I know the published story is the one that I wanted to tell for Alex and Jess. I stayed true to my original core concept.
SD Hendrickson 