It’s a well-known fact that the human brain craves new experiences. We like the safety of familiarity too, which explains genre loyalty, but even the stodgiest armchair critic can be tempted out of their comfort zone with the promise of a dopamine hit of novelty. Use this to your advantage, and be the author who gains new readers by offering them something genuinely new.
What do you want as a writer? To produce great work and find your fair share of readers – that’s a given – but what about on a deeper level? Are you the type of writer who wants to change the world, or do you just love words and take joy in making them dance?
It shouldn’t be surprising that ‘new weird’ fiction has a relationship to ‘weird’ fiction. In fact, it has a relationship with many other subgenres, including ‘bizarro’ fiction and ‘slipstream’ writing.
With his Western novel The Sisters Brothers currently enjoying a big screen adaptation and his ‘tragedy of manners’ French Exit beloved by the literary establishment, Patrick deWitt is both a proven author and one to watch.
