Are viral zombies "paranormal?"

Living people with virus is not paranormal. Sounds medical/scientific. Sci-fi zombies.

You have a sci-fi novel. I kid, I kid, but to me, the virus thing lends more to science fiction than paranormal or horror. To me, anyway.

Horror zombies - undead for unknown reasons
paranormal zombies - undead raised by magical/mysterious means
sci-fi zombies - virus/bacterial infection

That's just my personal categorization going on here though. Others may feel differently.

Is there such a thing as a "paranormal agent"? I'm presuming you don't mean a ghost who harasses publishers at night to force Scrooge-like changes of heart.

Whether viral zombies are strictly paranormal is surely not the issue. It's seems to me that it would just be a matter of where an agent thinks it fits into the marketing slots of publishers. There's no harm in querying an agent or two who deal with SF/Horror if you think they might consider it a better fit.

It is an issue when one is trying to determine genre so that the author may submit to agents. Not all agents are willing to look at anything so long as it is speculative fiction. You would not want to send your science fiction novel to an agent that takes horror simply because you think it might possibly could be horror if you stretch your imagination. Researching the agent helps, sure, but not if you don't even know what genre you are in. Write in a query letter that you have a novel that "may be horror, may be science fiction, but it could possibly be paranormal suspense too, I'm just not sure" and you won't be taken seriously.

Every query letter I've ever drafted or seen drafted has a line that reads something like:

I am contacting you today seeking representation for my novel, TITLE, a work of horror (or whatever genre) complete at approximately 93,000 words.

Note that says one specific genre, not a possibility of three genres. Agents are busy and the last thing they want to do is spend their time considering a novel in a genre they don't even represent. Agents don't have contacts in every genre of fiction - not all of them do anyhow - and most often are looking for specific things. An agent actively seeking paranormal suspense wouldn't want to waste time with a science fiction novel if they have no idea where to even send a science fiction novel.

Yes, determining what genre your novel falls in is important.

Oh no, I wasn't trying to determine the genre of the story by those classifications. Just the... genre of the monster, if I may be given a little bit of leeway there. I was talking specifically about the monsters.

leahzero said:

I pretty much agree with your classifications. The thing is, the cause and nature of zombie-ism shouldn't be the only thing to define the genre of the work, IMO. Just because you have a scientifically plausible monster virus doesn't mean the story is sci-fi, unless the narrative focuses primarily on pathology etc.

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Nope, it just means you have a sci-fi zombie. Delivery counts for a lot in genre fiction. A suspense story is told very differently than a romance novel, for instance. But I dunno how you wrote your story. What genre of fiction seems similar in delivery? I don't know much about your style of writing - I don't even remember if I've ever read anything you've written... so I couldn't comment there. But yes, there is definitely more to the genre thing than the monsters.

But the monsters are indeed a part of that, too. You mustn't discount them in determining what genre the book is either.

leahzero said:

Were you replying before I ninja-edited? I dunno, I wouldn't mind having, say, Edward Cullen trying to sell my book. All he'd have to do is turn on the sparklies and cha-ching.

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Yes, although I'm not even familiar with the idea of "paranormal" as a category label that an agent would represent. There's paranormal romance, paranormal "non-fiction" and I've occasionally heard it attached to other categories as a qualifier like paranormal YA and paranormal thriller, but as a standalone paranormal fiction category, not so much.

@OP: Yeah, there's no such genre as "paranormal." If you have a viral zombie, that's sci-fi/horror. Sci-fi because of the way the zombies came into being; horror because, since you mentioned 28 Days Later as a comparison, I'm assuming you have some kind of dystopian/end of world/survival theme going on. As previous posters said, it depends on the delivery, but most--MOST--stories with any kind of zombie in them will lean towards horror.

If you're worried about agents, a quick search on AgentQuery.com will point you to plenty of folks who rep both sci-fi and horror--and fantasy also, if you're not sure whether your zombies are viral or not.

Also: Read Mira Grant's Feed.

EDIT: Just realized it was an agent who told you that zombies were "paranormal," which tells me that either whatever you told him/her in your pitch didn't set up your zombies as viral-zombies clearly enough, OR said agent doesn't know zombies well enough to represent you properly. Either way, that's not true. Keep looking.

if i wanted to read about viral zombies i'd look in the sci-fi section. not the horror, paranormal, urban fantasy, etc. sections.

leah, I'd send your story to whom you think will get THE BOOK the best.


Just because the query sounds one thing or another doesn't mean you should re-qualify.


Paranormal is a SUB-genre now. It can include zombies. However, they can also be in many other genres and sub-genres. Every author is crazy different. Paranormal itself is pretty stinking wackadoodle. It basically is just a stopping point between Fantasy (elves/medievelaish Tolkien-style stuff) and Urban-Fantasy where everybody kicks-ass and the clothing is mostly leather. In Paranormal, settings are modern, creatures are odd, and rules are bent. PERIOD. After that, who knows.

Could that be your book? Maybe.

But I bet your book is probably horror because I KNOW you love the bloody nasty stuff. LOL. I wouldn't class anything as sci-fi unless it is off-planet. Maaaaaybe spec-fic. But zombie/virus/bloody guts? Horror.


On a side note, I had family of zombies in my book and it was paranormal. However, I did not go into details about them and they did not eat anyone. Of course, you know me. They weren't gonna be normal zombies anyway.

Rhoda Nightingale said:

@OP: Yeah, there's no such genre as "paranormal." If you have a viral zombie, that's sci-fi/horror. Sci-fi because of the way the zombies came into being; horror because, since you mentioned 28 Days Later as a comparison, I'm assuming you have some kind of dystopian/end of world/survival theme going on. As previous posters said, it depends on the delivery, but most--MOST--stories with any kind of zombie in them will lean towards horror.

If you're worried about agents, a quick search on AgentQuery.com will point you to plenty of folks who rep both sci-fi and horror--and fantasy also, if you're not sure whether your zombies are viral or not.

Also: Read Mira Grant's Feed.

EDIT: Just realized it was an agent who told you that zombies were "paranormal," which tells me that either whatever you told him/her in your pitch didn't set up your zombies as viral-zombies clearly enough, OR said agent doesn't know zombies well enough to represent you properly. Either way, that's not true. Keep looking.

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I agree.