Get Your Chick Lit On! Guest Post by Liz Fichera

It's Friday! And guess what? I'm still editing. Oh yes. I've been in a deep dark cave for almost a month now, but I'm pleased that I may finally be emerging shortly. In the meantime, I'd like to thank all the wonderful authors I've had on my blog recently for pulling me through.
And today, I'm extra pleased to have Liz Fichera here, author of the upcoming novel Craving Perfect. It's a delightful read, and you can see my review here. Take it away, Liz!
It's always perplexed me why books written by women authors about family and relationships are often classified as chick lit while books written by men on the same topics often get literary fiction status. Additionally, literary fiction is sometimes described as character-focused while genre fiction is more plot-based. Not sure I buy that distinction either because I've read chick lit that is both plot-based and character-driven. Never mind the negative connotation of the label itself and the fact that books other than literary fiction are not reviewed in mainstream publications as widely, but I suppose that's a topic for another day. Fair or not. It is what it is.

And you have to wonder if tags like chick lit were used to label books in the 19th century whether novels like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre would still be considered classics today. Cut to present day and we all know that authors like Jennifer Weiner, Sophie Kinsella and Emily Giffin sell boatloads of books that can be classified in this genre. Clearly readers want these stories, when you see how they fly off the shelves whenever there's a new release. In fact, readers demand them. Perhaps that's why you see so many women of a certain age flocking to the Young Adult shelves today. We all know that it's just not teenagers reading young adult novels anymore.

So, can you blame them?

Who doesn't want to escape for a little while inside a great story and imagine those "what ifs"? For my tastes, a story has to press my emotional buttons to get me truly engaged and I can usually find that in chick lit. So call it chick lit. Call it lit chick. Call it x@3XB 8Lu. I don't care! Just make these stories available. Boatloads of them.

So what's your take? Do you care about labels when you purchase your books? Or are you more interested in the story?

About Liz:

Liz is an author from the American Southwest. She writes commercial fiction and young adult novels but mostly she writes stories about ordinary people who do extraordinary things. Her latest novel CRAVING PERFECT has been called chick lit, contemporary romance, and even contemporary romance fantasy. It releases on July 25 from Carina Press. She is also the author of CAPTIVE SPIRIT (2010) and HOOKED (Harlequin Teen, 2013). Don't hesitate to drop by her web site or blog to connect.