Thank you, Rhobin, for allowing me to select this month's Round Robin Topic:
When writing contemporary fiction, are you including the topic of COVID or the Pandemic? If so, in what manner: as a plotline, part of the day-to-day reality of your characters? Or, is the topic excluded? If so, why?
While researching this topic, I discovered there is a newly coined (for lack of a better label) sub-genre: "Pandemic (and Post Pandemic) Fiction.
This came as no surprise to me in the 'historical sense.' In my Native American historical novel, a subplot was the diphtheria epidemic in the 1880s. Tanayia--Whisper upon the Water.
While the"Pandemic/Post Pandemic Fiction POV perspectives vary from historical novels to science fiction. Responses are just as varied: scientific ingenuity, unreasoning paranoia, defeated acceptance, heroic sacrifice, or sheer survival at any cost. And writers have long employed plagues and epidemics (historical and imagined) as the background or subject of their fiction.
Publisher's Weekly has a list (published in 2020) of 13 Essential Pandemic Novels.
None of which I found exceptionally light or escape-from-reality-fiction to read when one could be worried about a friend or loved one.
To quote Elle Magazine: Romance Novels Are The Antidote To Pandemic Life.
I agree.
Since I write mostly Romance and YA novels, I'm more inclined to mention a 'shelter-at-home event' or have a main character remove/choose a mask.
I will touch on politics in historical novels. (I include both sides of a topic because I did not live within the norms of that time),
However, I do not include politics in Contemporary Romance novels. Why? Because #1 politics are not romantic, the storyline's focus is #2 Romance with a HEA (happily ever after) conclusion.
Thanks for stopping by today,
Connie
XOXO
Visit the talented writers in today's Round Robin Blog Hop to read more!
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com
Marci Baun http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-2wY
Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Robin http://rhobincourtright.com
Helem Fairfax https://helenafairfax.com/blog/
