The Paperback Pursuer: Guestpost: Kellie Coates Gilbert on Women's Fiction

SO, WHAT IS WOMEN’S FICTION ANYWAY?

Kellie Coates Gilbert

Recently, I was asked how I personally define women’s fiction. To me, women’s fiction is very different from any other genre. Unlike general contemporary fiction, women’s fiction is a story about a woman (or women) that tells more about her inner journey than her outer experiences, where relationships are key and the journey evokes a lot of emotion.

As an author of women’s fiction, I am on a bit of a soapbox about this topic. So often I hear a category romance author or someone who writes high adventure claim their stories fit into the women’s fiction category. I disagree.

Authors like Kristin Hannah, Cassandra King, Elizabeth Berg and others know that readers who long for stories that focus on a strong character arc, where the woman protagonist journeys through a plot and becomes someone different in the way they think or feel by the end of the story,is paramount to satisfying true women’s fiction aficionados.

Don’t misunderstand. In my novel, Mother of Pearl, there is a strong plot as a backdrop. The story is about a high school counselor who learns the football coach has been inappropriate with her daughter, and how she risks everything to bring him to justice. There are plenty of twists and turns, and surprises as the reader turns the pages. But, as protagonist Barrie Graeber journeys through the events in this story, she changes. An inciting incident pulls her from her regular world and thrusts her into a situation she never expected, was not prepared to deal with—a situation that made her face her worst fear.

By the end of the novel, Barrie is forced to examine the inner landscape she’s always relied on and instead must look outside herself for answers. She releases her tight grip on her own abilities and steps into unknown territory. Not that she has pat answers, but she leaves the novel different from the woman she was on the first page.

And, if I’ve done my job as an author . . . so does the reader.

About the Author:

Kellie Coates Gilbert is a former legal investigator and trial paralegal who writes with a sympathetic, intimate knowledge of how people react under pressure. Kellie’s books tell emotionally poignant stories about women in life-changing circumstances. She writes about messy lives . . . and eternal hope. Kellie currently makes her home in Dallas, Texas.

Her latest book is the Christian fiction, Mother of Pearl.

Visit her online at www.kelliecoatesgilbert.com.

Connect with her on Twitter at: https://www.twitter.com/#!/KCoatesGilbert

Like her at Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/kelliecoatesgilbert

Purchase your copy of Mother of Pearl at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Pearl-Kellie-Coates-Gilbert/dp/1426733437/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1348334991&sr=8-2&keywords=mother+of+pearl

Pick up your copy of Mother of Pearl at the publisher’s website: http://www.abingdonpress.com/forms/DynamicContent.aspx?id=160&pageid=698

Purchase your copy of Mother of Pearl at Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mother-of-pearl-kellie-coates-gilbert/1108857097

About the Book:
Barrie Graeber has two great kids, a loving husband, and a respected job as the high school counselor in her close-knit community. Then, without warning, everything unravels when her teenage daughter, Pearl, is betrayed by friends and lashes out.

Barrie’s attempts to steer her daughter back on course fail. Nothing prepares this mother for the helplessness that follows when Pearl shuts her out . . . or when the unthinkable comes to light about her nemesis, the football coach.

Mother of Pearl is a story that puts absolute truths and convictions to the test. It’s the emotionally riveting tale of a woman who finds she must recognize her own vulnerability and learn to trust in something much bigger.