Historical fiction has intrigued me for decades. I love learning something real and true from the context of the story (like how a shift in cathedral architecture happened, as described in Pillars of the Earth.) Love that stuff.
But writing a strictly historical novel has never appealed to me, because I recognize all the research that would be needed to do any given topic justice.
Over the past few days I've had an idea for a story developing in my mind, based on the immigration experiences of my ancestors. Being a SFF person, a little magic is creeping into the story around the edges. I'm not sure where this idea will go, but it keeps rolling around in the back of my head, like the characters are forming and want to be heard.
My question istwofold: threefold:
1. If magical realism is integrated into a historical immigration (think Ellis-Island-type) story, would such a novel still be historical fiction? Would it be magical realism? Is historical magical realism a 'thing?'
2. When I googled around on magical realism, including here on AW, it seemed that it was more associated with young adult novels rather then adult. Is magical realism more suited to young adult? Is there a market for adult magical realism?
3. I imagine if this story developed that I would be able to query HF agents *or* MR agents, and I'd target based on what the agents represented rather than any particular genre labels per se. Does this sound right?
Thanks for any help. It's appreciated.
But writing a strictly historical novel has never appealed to me, because I recognize all the research that would be needed to do any given topic justice.
Over the past few days I've had an idea for a story developing in my mind, based on the immigration experiences of my ancestors. Being a SFF person, a little magic is creeping into the story around the edges. I'm not sure where this idea will go, but it keeps rolling around in the back of my head, like the characters are forming and want to be heard.
My question is
1. If magical realism is integrated into a historical immigration (think Ellis-Island-type) story, would such a novel still be historical fiction? Would it be magical realism? Is historical magical realism a 'thing?'
2. When I googled around on magical realism, including here on AW, it seemed that it was more associated with young adult novels rather then adult. Is magical realism more suited to young adult? Is there a market for adult magical realism?
3. I imagine if this story developed that I would be able to query HF agents *or* MR agents, and I'd target based on what the agents represented rather than any particular genre labels per se. Does this sound right?
Thanks for any help. It's appreciated.