Not Every Book Easily Finds its Spot on a Bookstore Shelf by Janet Roberts
It began when I checked the wrong box on the Novel-in-a-Year application to The Story Studio in Chicago. I’d written and self-published two books by then, both women’s fiction with domestic suspense, instinctively mixing genres with little understanding of the craft of writing. Sales were minimal. The class seemed like a good way to improve my writing.
About that box I checked…
Running a global cybersecurity education program for over fifty hours per week often meant focusing on multiple directions at once. An email acceptance to Novel-in-a-Year Speculative Fiction, landed in my email inbox while I was in Japan on business and battling a debilitating head cold. I actually had to look up “speculative fiction” to verify I knew what fell under that label. Sitting on the hotel bed, a box of tissues next to me, I laughed at my error.
Despite my stuffy head, I channeled the same determination that drove me to change my focus after beating cancer at age 40. The result, obtained ten years later, was the successful career I now enjoyed. I was at the top of my game in my field. Yet I’d dreamt, since age 10, of becoming an excellent writer. Whether delirious with sickness or simply willing to challenge myself once more, with a phone in one hand and a tissue in the other, I fired off the fee for the class.
Playing with magic
I write female protagonists who awaken to the discovery of their inner strength while facing adversity. I saw my genre as strictly women’s fiction.
Initially, speculative fiction proved difficult. Other students arrived with manuscripts near completion. I started from scratch. I was a square peg in a sea of round holes! After the first class, I went home wondering if, just before signing up, I’d lost my mind. I looked back at the speculative fiction I’d read, realized I like magic and a good ghost story, and decided it was a start.
A voracious reader from the age of seven, I read every book I could get my hands on. Early on, I gravitated toward fiction with magic. I was often reading Alice in Wonderland, Nancy Drew, and Little Women in the same year. Later, I mixed The Hobbit, The Dune Trilogy, and Broken Girls, with Leon Uris, Ken Follett, and Kristin Hannah novels. I was a cross-genre reader not aware that I should be writing cross-genre fiction.
Eventually, I left Illinois and the Story Studio class to move home to Pennsylvania, taking 75 pages of Wired For Magic with me. I’d had fun writing about an ex-model turned photographer with a creepy but powerful stalker and inherited magic she is untrained in how to use.
I threw in the ghost of her mother who she communicates with. It felt more like goofing around than writing. I put the pages in a laptop file and moved on to finish What Lies We Keep, the first book in which I incorporated cybersecurity and which won five awards. But I’m getting off track.
When writer friends see what you cannot
I was 60 years old when I moved home to Western PA. I viewed Wired For Magic an interesting adventure in trying new things despite my age, until a friend who writes speculative fiction asked to see those 75 pages. I said they weren’t very good or worth the read, but he insisted. His feedback? “This is the best work you’ve ever done. The voice and POV are really clear.” He pushed me to admit that writing it was never a struggle or a slog. It was always fun.
I took his words into consideration. I’m a pantser, not a plotter. But an entire plot easily emerged in my mind for this book. Despite having most of my time consumed by my job and finding a publishing path for What Lies We Keep, I gravitated to noodling about Wired For Magic again and again. Once I retired, four years later, I fully took on developing the book to completion.
What I didn’t expect
I launched Wired For Magic this year. It’s a cross-genre novel in which women’s fiction, thriller, and magical realism come together – and, of course, cybersecurity. I traveled to other countries for research, read technical white papers on deep fake, and worked with a developmental editor who writes speculative fiction. I think it’s my best book yet and may become a series.
But in a world where books are labeled in alignment with a bookstore shelf, it’s swimming in the sea on its own. Four- and five-star reviews plus a finalist spot for The Eric Hoffer Award haven’t nudged open a space on the world bookshelf for this novel. It never occurred to me it wouldn’t be immediately embraced.
I’ve taken many career risks in my life, all of which led me to better self-awareness and to finding my own voice and personal power. I unapologetically disagree with voices parking the book in one genre. Wired For Magic just might create its own bookshelf where it can sit proudly, even if it’s alone.
Like my career changes, reinventing my writing has built confidence and taught me to believe in myself and the writing path I’ve taken.
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Janet Roberts is an award-winning author of fiction set wholly or partially in Western Pennsylvania where her roots run deep. Its lush green mountains, warm sunny beaches, and salt of the earth kind of people populate her writing as they do her life. Her cross-genre, suspense/thrillers feature a woman on a transformational journey to find her own personal power. A former globally recognized expert in cybersecurity education, she often includes elements of cybersecurity in her writing.
What Lies We Keep (2024) is the winner of the 2025 International Impact Book Awards Winner – Realistic Fiction; 2024 Literary Titan Silver Book Award in Fiction; 2024 PenCraft Seasonal Book Award Summer Competition for Fiction – Suspense Genre; 2024 Firebird Book Award for Fiction; 2024 TAZ Award Winner – Mystery from Pittsburgh’s The Author Zone. It was a Finalist for the 2024 Hawthorne Prize from American Writing Awards; 2024 Best New Fiction from American Best Book Awards; and 2024 Best New Fiction from American Bookfest Best Book Awards.
Wired For Magic (2026) was named a Finalist for the 2026 Eric Hoffer Award.
Website: https://www.booksbyjanetroberts.com/
WIRED FOR MAGIC
Rowan Campbell has a stalker. Only her magic can stop him.
Her stalker’s obsession goes beyond Rowan’s natural beauty: he wants to control the magic she struggles to admit she possesses. More than anything, Rowan longs for normalcy. But the stalker’s unlimited resources and unrelenting pursuit force her to accept that leaning into her magic is the only path to a chance to free herself. Angry and desperate, Rowan builds a plan to break free of her pursuer that requires her to come out of hiding, return home to America, and learn to use her inherited abilities. To do so, she’ll enlist the help of her white hat hacker brother, Griff, and her aunt, the only living connection to her magic. Before she’s ready to face her stalker, Rowan must evade capture, learn about her magical legacy, and accept that she can only prevail if she believes in herself and embraces her power.
Wired For Magic is the fast-paced story of a woman’s journey to come to terms with her personal power in a battle for her life, freedom, and the chance to open a path to love.
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Category: On Writing
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