Mixing Urban Drama with Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

URBAN DRAMA

Amazon best-selling authors can typically be found in the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense category.  This is a popular category because many readers love to devour this type of fiction.  It doesn’t matter whether they buy it from the Kindle Store or some other type of digital download, or if they purchase a traditional print publication.  When it comes to curling up with a good book, there’s nothing better than enjoying Mystery, Thriller & Suspense.   

But what happens when you throw a lot of urban drama into the mix?  You end up with a dark coming of age story like:  Skipping Childhood:  A Novel (From Abused Foster Child to Adolescent Serial Killer).

When you think of an urban setting, you couldn’t ask for a better one than a rundown apartment on the south side of Chicago.  As for drama; is a twelve-year-old serial killer enough drama for you?  Needless to say, this story contains some other weighty content so you can expect profanity and violence.  With heavy subject material like physical and sexual child abuse, not to mention murder, why bother trying not to curse?  In fact, the entire raw and gritty tone of this African American novel is what makes this fictional piece of urban drama an interesting read. 

If you typically enjoy browsing through Amazon’s Mystery, Thriller & Suspense category for a good read, why not try a little urban flavor in the mix and check out my new novel: Skipping Childhood:  A Novel (From Abused Foster Child to Adolescent Serial Killer).

Book Talk: What Comes to Mind When You Think of Urban Drama

URBAN DRAMA

Are you an avid reader who enjoys combing through a variety of fiction book genres?  If so, what comes to your mind when you hear the words urban drama?  Perhaps you get an image of families arguing, fussing, fighting and putting their business in the street.  Maybe you envision street thugs having beef over drugs and territory.  Or maybe you picture some of the hot steamy romance books that I’ve found a lot of under the book category of “urban” fiction.  In fact, I can’t help but notice how a large number of novels in Amazon’s urban category (both in the books and the Kindle Store section) focus on black romances usually gone bad.

I hope this doesn’t sound like a generalization on my part because I’m not saying this as a complaint or as a negative in any way, just a personal observation.  I think the reason I’ve been able to make this particular observation is because I was purposely looking for books that don’t focus on this particular aspect of urban drama.  While I know that romance stories sell big time, even the gritty ones, I also know that urban drama can center around other issues besides romantic entanglements and the rough gangland street life.

My new title Skipping Childhood:  A Novel is an urban novel and falls into the African American fiction category, among other things.  Some Amazon category listings make it hard to pinpoint where exactly to place your book title.  For instance, Skipping Childhood is a coming of age story that has some suspense elements, as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts.  But because of the story line, my form of suspense is not as dramatic as a scene that you might find in one of the more typical urban books.  My romance and sex related scenes are not the highlights of the book.    

This is by no way to suggest that my new novel:  Skipping Childhood:  A Novel (From Abused Foster Child to Adolescent Serial Killer) doesn’t have a romantic angle because it does.  In fact, my main character and her “Romeo” have a very strong bond that spans throughout the book, but their romance is not the driving element of the story.  I guess urban drama is no different from any other drama, regardless of a person’s background, because the reality is:  Drama is life, and life is drama, urban or otherwise.

Check out a copy of:

Coming of Age Novel with a Dark Side

COMING OF AGE

A popular form of fiction are coming of age stories; oftentimes due to the similarities we all seem to share when growing up.  Some readers look for things they can relate to when reading about someone else’s upbringing.  But there are also readers who like getting a glimpse into someone’s life that was completely different from their own.  Typically, coming of age books focus more on the journey and the path of the main character as well as their successes and failures along the way.  But sometimes certain events in a character’s life will manage to overshadow their overall journey.  When this happens, you end up with a novel like Skipping Childhood:  A Novel (From Abused Foster Child to Adolescent Serial Killer).

A Dark Side

Skipping Childhood is an urban novel that can be classified into a number of different genres.  The book definitely qualifies as a coming of age story because it spans from the main character’s birth (Deandra Baxter), up until she becomes an adult.  But this particular coming of age story has a serious dark side.  Events begin to unfold with more and more momentum.  Once Deandra resorts to murder as a solution to handling her problems, the suspense starts to mount.  This element to the book makes the title worthy of qualifying in Amazon’s Kindle Store:  Mystery, Thriller & Suspense category.

Hopefully, these two categories won’t somehow end up canceling each other out.  The two categories may seem like an odd partnership, depending on what a person wants to read.  The same can be said about the topic of sexual and physical child abuse.  Such subject matter might be more expected in a coming of age story, but perhaps not so much with a thrilling suspense story.  Yet, despite not necessarily being what readers might typically expect, Skipping Childhood:  A Novel has:

• All the ups and downs of a coming of age story
• All the tears and pain of an abuse story
• And all the excitement and anxiety of a suspense story

Pick up a copy today, and see for yourself what a surprisingly enjoyable blend this book is.