Mark your calendars! February 27, 2021
10 a.m. via Zoom
Our February Guest Speaker
Paul Goat Allen has been a genre fiction book reviewer for more than two decades, working for companies like PW, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus, BN.com, and BlueInk. He has written more than 10,000 reviews in all genre categories (Apocalyptic fiction to Zombie erotica) and interviewed hundreds of writers, including Anne McCaffrey, Michael Moorcock, Dean Koontz, Terry Goodkind, Laurell K. Hamilton, Patrick Rothfuss, Jim Butcher, and Charlaine Harris. Before becoming a reviewer, he managed bookstores all over New York. He also works as a genre fiction consultant for INKubator, a NYC-based book packaging company. He is an instructor and mentor in Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction graduate writing program.
During Paul’s chat with the Three Rivers Romance Writers group, he will talk about trends in genre fiction—which will include genre hybridization, the increased focus of marginalized voices, and how the increasingly dwindling attention span of new readers has transformed (structurally) how genre fiction is written. Other potentially interesting topics could include the rise of indie publishing and its many challenges, how to utilize reviews to optimize sales, and the monumental significance of networking in publishing.