Even at this late date, I'm struggling to lock in the primary genre of my upcoming book. Though it contains elements of dark science fiction and fantasy, at its core is the growing relationship between my two main characters, Brick and Tish, making it, in essence, a romance. The story begins and ends with them.
According to the Romance Writers of America, my novel is a romance. For a year, I was a member of RWA and worked to include a story in the anthology for the Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Paranormal branch.
However, as we swapped stories for first edits and critiques, I found that the stories I wrote used very few of the tropes I found in theirs. This led me to the conclusion that while my tales adhered to the requirements for romance stories, the essence of my works diverged from the likely expectations of potential readers.
At the time, we just lost our furbabies and I lost my motivation to participate in the anthology, so I dropped out.
When I created this ad for Bublish, it drove home for me the fact that while my novel may not be a classic romance, it may appeal to some of those readers because it is definitely a love story. Now, the question remains: What is the difference between a romance novel and a book that centers around a love story?