What would happen if the Gryffindors were all confined to their tower because of a dragon pox outbreak? A bunch of rowdy teenagers with all that pent up magic...
In this episode of A Book and A Dream, Megan O'Russell shares her top five predictions for post-pandemic works of fiction.
What would happen if the Gryffindors were all confined to their tower because of a dragon pox outbreak? A bunch of rowdy teenagers with all that pent up magic...
In this episode of A Book and A Dream, Megan O'Russell shares her top five predictions for post-pandemic works of fiction.
Like a lot of these are going to come out real dirty with words that I don't say in my books even though you know I curse a lot. There are some things I avoid.
Announcer:Welcome to A Book and A Dream with Megan O'Russell: An Author's Adventure in Writing, Reading, and Being an Epic Fangirl.
Megan:My name is Megan O'Russell and welcome to episode 23 of a book and a dream. I want to talk to you about my top five post pandemic book, niche predictions. Now we're going through a global event right now. Everyone in some way or another is being affected by the stay at home orders, the pandemic, the work from home, the social distancing, whatever it is. We are all affected. This is a global experience and there's no way that it's not going to affect the media that we have coming out of the pandemic now before we get into my predictions, a little update about me. I've now been social distancing slash staying at home for like more than 40 days. I've moved past the dying my hair blue stage to like probably going to like shave my head pretty soon. Also. Definitely gonna get a tattoo when I get out of here. You know where we all are a little stir crazy and potentially making some questionable decisions, but we're all in it together, which is comforting because then if I do shave my head, I won't be the only one with like a questionably shaped head coming out of this cause that's real cute on some people, but I don't know if I could pull it off. So while we're all going through these things, consuming media, a lot of us to say media, there's going to be some universal experiences that are going to start working their way into fiction. Now. I don't have time to write any of these into my books. My writing schedule is filled for like the next 18 months. So I'm totally gonna miss this wave. So if you're out there and you need something to write about, feel free to take these because it needs to happen. And I'm going to be so disappointed if all of these top five do not come to fruition. My number one new niche prediction for the post pandemic writing world tigers. It's going to happen, especially in Waianae. There is going to be like weird tiger King influenced books. There's going to be a whole new subset on Amazon just of tiger books and some of them will be like modern where it's like sort of like the tiger King only. There's like this young teenage heroine who sneaks in to save the cats and then there's like FBI and everything and some of it's probably going to be like fantasy where it's like a weird reverse harem but she's in charge of all the men who care for the cats or like an actual harem where I don't know a dude manages to convince two straight to marry him in exchange for meth, you know, whatever it is or not math cause it's fantasy like theory, crystals, whatever. But there's going to be so many more tigers and protecting tigers and tigers eating corpses to hide them. We're going to be seeing a lot more of that. My next prediction there's going to be zoom romances all over the place. It's going to be in YA, it's going to be in regular romances and there's like a couple of ways where I'm betting this is going to take shape. First of all it's going to be the whole like, Oh we know each other from work or from school and now that we've chatted on zoom without physical attraction, I know that I'm in love with his soul, like that kind of thing. I'm also predicting like how would kids hack their classrooms, zoom to like flirt with each other on what if they were flirting with like the wrong screen name and then they found out that they were really in love with the loser in the class, but they're like spirit is so bright. They love it anyway. That's totally going to be in there. There's also probably going to be some like weird meet cutes where someone signed into the wrong chat room and left and whoever was supposed to be in that trip room like instantly fell in love with a dude. But now it's a misconnection and they don't know how to find each other. All these things are going happen and there was nothing wrong with it. Take the weird zoom tropes that are gonna come out of this and embrace it. You can beat it to the market. I have faith in you right quickly. You got this dude. Okay next. This is a little dystopian but I feel like it's going to happen kind of like five feet apart. Only everyone in the world has a shock collar. So if you get within six feet of anyone you get zapped. So like the government's controlling everyone and everyone's getting shocked by their collars and people are desperately in love but they can't even touch fingertips cause nobody's arms are really that long. So that could be really interesting if someone was like, I've never gotten to touch you. And now like they've hacked your necklace monitor. So like all of a sudden you get to touch the person that you've been desperately in love with from six feet away or like how are you going to go on a rescue mission if you can't carry anybody's body? Cause they're like shock collar would shock you. So I feel like you could do a lot of this and I feel like someone's going to, we're going to see some sort of government mechanism that keeps people more than six feet apart. It's coming. That was my number three prediction. We are going on to number four. This is also a little dystopian but like maybe it could work in a fairy tale setting. There could be orcs involved. It's fine. There is going to be a bunch of stories coming out where there's a coveted position that you're battling for and the position is supply runner. So everyone is trapped in their village or their like dystopian hovel or whatever. And you have to compete to be the supply runner because it's a dangerous proposition and the supply runners have to get all geared up to go out and it's like this place of honor going out into the dangerous environment to fight or cause or zombies or you know, germs, whatever. And so there's going to be competitions to see like who's the fastest and who has the best endurance to get to, you know, go to the grocery store. It feels really real right now and someone's going to put it in a book. Now my fifth prediction, and I'm sure it's already, it's already popping up on Amazon, it's gotta be the locked-in romances. Now this is going to be like a lot of romances that are not in my genre. Like a lot of these are going to come out real dirty with words that I don't say in my books. Even though you know, I curse a lot. There are some things I avoid, but there are going to be a lot of romances where they just so happened to be forced to spend months on end spending all their time together and tight quarters and then sparks fly and you know, that'll be like a lot of the adult books, but even if you look at the Academy genre, like lights go to like the easiest way to relate it to what everybody knows. Let's go to Hogwarts. Everybody knows how it works. Even if it's just the movie version, you know what I'm talking about. So picture this. A virus has invaded Hogwarts to protect the students. They lock all the Gryffindors in their tower, romance ensues. This is going to happen. There is going to be like boarding school lock-in stories. There's also going to be like weird things like, Oh no, my stepbrother's non-related cousin had to come shelter at the farmhouse with us to escape Manhattan. I hate him. But now we're falling in love in a haystack. Like these things are going to happen. You're going to get locked in with characters and then they're going to fall desperately in love or in lust, which you know is perfectly fine for fiction sometimes, but we're going to see those books. Also, I'm going to be really disappointed if no one writes a Harry Potter fan fiction where like all the Ravenclaws are locked in together and realize that like they're all just a bunch of annoying smarty pantses and then they have to realize that they need to have true human conversations with each other and not just brag about their intelligence and then, I dunno, Everybody falls in love with everybody. It's going to happen. Also, you'd want to be a Hufflepuff in that case because you'd be closest to the kitchen and so they'd probably be better snacks. Yeah, you'd want to be a Hufflepuff if you got locked in there. Totally, but those are my top five predictions for the weird little niches that are going to come out of the pandemic. I'm sure there's more. I am sure there are going to be all sorts of things. There are going to be like erotica books with people wearing face masks. It's going to happen. It's coming. I can feel it coming. The Amazon algorithm is already brewing how to like niche those together, so keep an eye out. If you start seeing books like this, please let me know. I want to know when they start coming out. I don't want to miss it because it is a global experience and so funneling that into art is such a natural, productive, resourceful way to deal with it and I am so excited to see how people come out of this. Also, if you like me are getting to the point where you're like, I'm probably going to shave my head just because I can't stand the fact that my hair is touching my shoulders and it's driving me crazy every time I move my head. Let me know that too because I don't want to be the only one who like makes bad decisions. Or maybe you could talk me off the ledge. Who knows? We'll see how this week goes. But anyway, comment below or send an Instagram picture of your shaved head or the book that you've found. Comment on. Quit Twitter, comment on Facebook. Don't forget to like, subscribe, share, depending on your platform and hang in there y'all. I'll see you next time.