Turns out that I was wrong about Andrea Rains Waggener and genre fiction. The publisher decided to put her book in the chick lit category because they felt it would sell better. I got an email from the author setting the record strait:


"And it would be lovely if you'd share my real view on genre fiction, which is that I love it and would happily publish a genre novel if allowed to do so. :) The book I wrote after Alternate Beauty was a "dreaded" cross-genre. It's a combo of sci fi, paranormal, and mystery. My editor at Bantam liked the story and characters but thought it would be too difficult to market and so insisted that I write another chick lit novel. Since I'd never set out to write chick lit and had been categorized into that niche quite without consent, I really struggled to write another book like it, but I did so. Probably because my heart wasn't in it, the book wasn't as good as it should have been, and my editor passed on it and then she stopped returning phone calls etc."


I sincerely wish Ms Waggener the best, and I hope some smart publisher picks up her next novel and puts it in the proper category!