What Genre is My Mermaid Story?

The Twighlight Manor series. A set of horror stories about a bizarre little vampire-like merman and his equally bizarre family whom lives in a haunted mansion. The Twighlight Manor series stands out among mermaid tales because it is not in the fantasy genre, but is instead in the horror and science fiction genres. (Different volumes have different genres.). Why is that odd? Well, because no one ever writes mermaids as anything other than fantasy, which is also why no one ever asks the question: What genre is my mermaid story? Every one thinks mermaid = fantasy and just leaves it at that.

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Which genre is my book? You want to know but you are not sure, all you are really certain of it that it is about mermaids.

The basic genres are: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Literary, Mystery, Romance, Satire, Science Fiction, Western

Within these genres are several sub-genres... some genres have as many as 20 different sub-genres.

For example, inside of Horror, you will find: Dark Fantasy, Goth Lit, Gothic Horror, Gothic Romance, Halloween Stories, Splatter Punk, Suspence, Thriller, and more.

There are many cross-overs to confuse you even more. The most common of which is Chick-Lit. Chick-Lit, is a category outside of genre in which the basic genres become sub-genres. In other words, Chick-Lit can be any genre: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Literary, Mystery, Romance, Satire, Science Fiction, Western, etc.

In other words any genre and any of it's sub-genres can be Chick-Lit. What makes it Chick-Lit is the fact that the main character is a female (or a chick). She could be a housewife, a career woman, single, married, widowed, divorced, laid-back, out-going, a teen, a young woman, middle aged, senior, a farm wife in the 1800's, a globe trotter of today, a time traveler, a vampire, or even a mermaid. Usually there is a tone of romance in the story, and usually there is the attitude that this woman is the greatest, best, most able to do whatever it is that she has to do. Though Chick-Lit is considered to be a genre, it is the only genre that is determined based on who the book is about. So, if your female main character happens to be a mermaid, than you may find that your mermaid story is actually Chick-Lit.

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In genre, horror horrifies your readers and romance romances them, while science fiction takes them on journeys through time and space, mysteries intrigue them into solving a puzzle, and Westerns take them to the wilds of the old west. (Has anyone ever thought about writing merman cowboys vs starfish-folk Indians . . . both riding on seahorse?)

So, as you can see, the genre is determined by what the story is about, not who the story is about.

So, as you can see, the genre is determined by what the story is about, not who the story is about.

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The main character throughout most of the Twighlight Manor series is a merman, however his species is the type of merfolk that has legs not a tail. They have slippery always wet fish like skin, webbed fingers and toes, and long goldfish like veil-fins on their arms and legs. They are *traditional* style merfolk in that they prey on humans in vampire like manner and lure them to their dooms. The Twighlight Manor series is M rated because it deals a lot with the sex life of the merman and he to lure humans to him set up a whore house-boarding house for girls, with himself as the *drag queen* head mistress of the place. For these merpeople sex and reproduction is pretty much the same as it is for mammals/humans. The have sex with humans to lure them in to be eaten, while they have sex with each other to reproduce more of their vampire like kind.