I’d like to know what genre this is, please.

I’d like to know what genre this is, please.

I think it’s a fiction, thriller/espionage novel. I don’t know. I’ll give it a try here to see if anyone can tell me what it is. I can’t find understandable direction on the subject anywhere on the net, or here on these forums.

I’d also like to know if this type of genre requires more than 70000 words to be marketable. Is there anyone who knows this?

Here is my short synopsis:

My novel, “THE LIFE OF A TERRORIST ASSASSIN” is a story of the life and death of a young Palestinian woman whom at the age of 16 fled Beirut Lebanon during the end of the Lebanese Civil War, about 1987. Ara Hasimi had been jolted awake in the middle of the night when the Israeli forces forced their way into her home, went to her parent’s bedroom, and shot them.

Her life changed drastically as she fled, running in the shadows, reaching for safety over the Lebanese mountains to the Syrian boarder. She was directed to Sab Abar Syria and then to a terrorist training camp at Karbala Iraq for training. It was then they learned of her abilities. The FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group labeled her The Ghost and the ghost came alive with visions of nuclear explosions throughout the United States. Ara Hasimi had decided to become a radical Muslim terrorist, assassin. Her luck changed when her pursuits started to fail drastically. She had been pursuing her own targets and was assassinated by her own people to end her unofficial activities thus saving America from a nuclear death. She died on her 28th birthday. It’s easy to be caught up in her cause, but the reader is constantly reminded of the wrong she had done to the United States and Israel.

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My novel, “THE LIFE OF A TERRORIST ASSASSIN” is a fiction novel and its main category is of fiction. The only thing in my novel that is not fiction is the historical time-line and the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s and 1980s in Beirut Lebanon, that’s all.

Throughout the rest of the novel it is mainline fiction. However, on some agents lists of genre they have subcategories of everything from soup to nuts. EI: fiction/romance, fiction/horror, and fiction/this, that, and even historical/fiction.

I don’t think, or I never considered it to be mainstream/literary, who knows? This is all so very confusing for me.

My novel could be called a thriller, I don’t know. It could also be labeled espionage too. My main caricature, Ara Hasimi is a PLO main assassin paid for by the Islamic terrorist network; therefore, I think it may be called thriller/espionage.

There seems to be agents, and perhaps publishers who require the genre of a subcategory if there is a subcategory. I think that’s what I’ve read somewhere on some agents web sites. I think subcategories might open the door easier.
Oh, it is written third person, past tense. And in going over it this afternoon, I have edited some things and added what was needed and it is now over 70000 words using MS word count.

Maestrowork:
I don’t think I could post it on here. It’s too big. Though I may at times post some things, so to cry for help. I’m stumbling over additions right now; I may post it tonight, or tomorrow and cry for help. I’ve received more than my share of help already, thank you all.


Cathy C:
My caricatures are totally fictional. I Googled the timeline and pulled up more material than I could cast in the back of a pickup truck. I only have three paragraphs covering the history of Beirut Lebanon and I needed a timeline of events and some of the history on Beirut. Believe me, I’ve forgotten so much since I was a young man, in the Navy on board the USS Forristal anchored off shore from Beirut in 1955 when a navy task force was rushed there to rescue those people who were working at the United States Embassy in Beirut. That particular time, things cooled down and they threw a party for those who went ashore for the pending rescue. I was one of them. I was on the beach as a Navy communications Radioman and I remember the stray bullets swishing overhead. I also remember the pretty young girls in that embassy who danced with us and provided the delicious hamburgers. I met one of them in Orlando Florida about thirty years ago. I remember the city streets, the gem stores, and how beautiful Beirut was before it was destroyed too.

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<< EDIT >>
I had to edit some of this I wrote yesterday, it made no sense what I had written before. Oh well.
<< EDIT >>
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Oh, and there’s some romance throughout, and a little hot love too, but I don’t think I want to label this on as such.

Sassenach said:

Caricature? Please tell me you mean 'character'. And please don't use the term 'fiction novel'...that's what novels are. It's redundant.

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Sassenach:
Do you expect a 70-year ol man who’s never been able to spell right all of his life, to be able to spell now? Even when he’s wasted his money buying Stunk and Whites book on the Elements of Style, The Chicago Manual of Style, Roget’s international Thesaurus, and a big ol blue dictionary that must weigh in at least a hundred pounds? You’ve discovered why some people call me a dumb azzz. I had hopped I could hide that fact. Shucks!

I suppose my friends could be call me a Caricature, not because I’m strange, perhaps because I’m Phunny.

Thanks for your definition on Fiction and Novel. This is what I’ve been waiting breathlessly for. I still am just as confused as I have been from the get go. I guess I’ll just write “I don’t know” in my submissions where I need to describe the genre. Think that’ll do it? Think that will keep me out of the slush pile?

I could edit that mistake, but I won’t


Wideawakesoh:
No, no. She’s not called the ghost because she has supernatural abilities. The FBI has nick named her that, because she appears suddenly, wrecks havoc, and disappears into the depths of the cities of England and the United States...hiding. Just as a sleeper terrorist, assassin would do. She’s moved about, only to stay a short time, and moved again; over and over.

Yes, I was compelled to write on terrorists, something fierce was tugging at me. This is the second one I’ve written on this subject. My first one on this, “Dogs Of War” was started three months before 9-11-01 and it resembled that tragedy too closely, I had to change it and rewrite it. I’m honing that one down little by little as I work on getting this one ready for submission. I don’t think any one of the two will be a great book. I’d be lucky if they even made the market in paperback.

In my journeys on these tasks that I’ve taken on, I learn every day of how little I know and the list grows longer each day. Thanks.

Sassenach said:

I expect someone who's calling themself a writer to be able to spell, yes. I think your poor writing will probably keep you in the slush pile.

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Sassenach:

themself ??

him self s/b himself
your self s/b yourself
her self s/b herself
them self s/b them self
them selves s/b themselves

As I asked at the beginning of MY thread, “I’d like to know what genre this is, please.”

As I have told you, “This is what I’ve been waiting breathlessly for.”

I don’t recall a need to qualify myself as a writer. I introduced myself in the Newbie forum as an aspiring writer.

That means I’m hopeful...very hopeful.

I continued to the end and added:
Thank you, everyone for making this place what it is and helping those of us, like me, to learn how to write and what follows that.

That means...well, that means what it means; like those of us, I’ve come here to learn and there’s a lot to learn, an awful lot, and I’ve received more than my share of help here on this forum from some very knowledgeable people who have much more experience than I on the other world of writing.

I don’t recall when I joined here that I had to check with you to see if I needed to qualify to participate. Should I have? Such a heavyweight writer as you, perhaps I should have being a lightweight as I am.

I do recall seeing rules, rules that pertain to just what you are doing now and in reading your many posts for many years on here, what you’ve done in the past.

May I suggest that you not hijack my topic, my request for much needed information, or any other post I participate in? It’s easy. Just don’t read it. Oh, and thanks for all the information you give.

Buy, buy, now. Go play elsewhere.

Thanks mdmkay.

Thaniks James D. Macdonald.

I can’t keep up with all the good information I’m getting and respond to them. Thanks ever so much, all of you.

I have no one who can read my material and correct it for mistakes nearby.

I have a lady friend who lives in Orlando Florida I send to sometimes. She’s a retired principal of Orange County Schools and teaches English, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Russian, and gosh I don’t know what more she teaches and she speaks them all fluently.

The only thing is, now she’s almost blind with cataracts and so am I. I also have macular degeneration in one eye and a little in the other eye. I can still drive, but not that Orlando traffic.

So every once in a while she hollers at me to come and get her where as she stays for a couple of days and we huddle over what I’ve sent her. She’s a damn good editor and we have lots of fun with writing.

I have no idea what a beta reader is, though I think I seen it somewhere in here, someplace. I better go look for it soon.

I don’t know what I could do without all of your help.

Thanks Marty:
I just got back and found it by using the search function.