How Did the Osmosis Process Fare in 2011?

We've talked about the importance of reading fiction to train ourselves as writers--to get that osmosis thing going. Personally, I find it hard to squeeze in time to read each year.  I  certainly cannot read books in the volume that I did as a kid when I had no responsibilities. 

But this year I did manage to read 14 fiction titles, which is good for me--that's a lot of reading scheduled around a jam-packed life.  I hope to make it 15 by year's end.

Not much surprise as to the categories they fell into.  My favorite books to read are historical fiction, but I must rule out a lot that are romance driven, which considerably depletes the field of available titles.  So I only read 4 books under the historical fiction category. 

Seven of the titles were suspense--this is my fallback category for reading pleasure.  I like the suspense genre, especially since I can usually read a suspense novel without being battered over the head with a romance thread.  Rounding out the reads were a contemporary romance (very funny), an old and very long classic, and a middle grade novel.

Out of the two primary genres--historical fiction and suspense, two suspense titles I read stood out from all the others.  Those two were John Gilstrap's Threat Warning and James Scott Bell's Try Dying.  Two books which the writers wrote so well it seemed effortless (and I'm sure the authors would disagree with that effortless bit!).  They were a pure pleasure to read and the osmosis got a definite boost while reading these two works.

What about the other books?  The other 5 suspense novels I have literally already forgotten so they would have to go into the indifferent category.  As to the historicals:  One was very disappointing, the other 3 did have some take-away value, just not enough to vault them to the top of the ranks in my reading pile for 2011.

So osmosis did get a bit of a workout in 2011.  Here's hoping for a lot of great novel discoveries in 2012.

Only Unusual Jobs For Female Suspense Novel Protags?

Recently, while my historical writing has been on hiatus, an undeveloped novel concept that has been in the back of my mind for some time (one of those "what if?" questions) has pushed itself to the forefront. The very early stages--I don't have a clearly defined plot, just the what-if question, so I've been brainstorming story possibilities and writing a few paragraphs here and there just to see what would pour out of the brain and onto paper.

And it wasn't historical fiction material. Hmm....

Anyway, that led me to ask my fellow ACFW compatriots a question that had always confused me--what is the difference between mystery, suspense and thriller novels?

In a nutshell, I was told that in a mystery the emphasis is on finding out who did the dirty deed. In suspense, it's more of a ticking clock/someone's in peril and it's about avoiding that perilous end, and that thriller is like suspense, only the stakes are larger (say affecting a whole city or country or other large group of people rather than just one or two).

Okey dokey. So looking at the notes I wrote, while the story concept I have in mind doesn't completely fit the mold, it seems to most closely resemble a suspense concept.

So then off I went to Fiction Finder (http://www.fictionfinder.com), which is a great resource if you're looking for Christian fiction. You can use the site to search for titles under a particular genre, or by title, etc.

I clicked on suspense and pulled up a list of titles. I wanted to know what kind of jobs the female protags of suspense fiction held. I was somewhat surprised to find that, in the 3-4 pages of titles I scrolled, not one of these female protags held an ordinary job. By ordinary I mean a job in which many females work, not the more unusual. All the female protags were FBI agents, helicopter pilots, firefighters, corporate CEO's. And that's perfectly fine.

But what I wanted to know was--where were the data entry clerks? The store cashiers? The secretaries? Where were these everyday workers, the unsung heroes in the lower income spectrum who make the world turn and, not intentionally, get taken for granted?

Not one single "ordinary" job was to be found by a protagonist in any of the titles I screened. Is it that readers are not interested in people in more common occupations? Is it too hard to formulate workable story concepts using your every-day, non-CEO, non-FBI agent?

Maybe it is too hard to use ordinary people. I don't know. I've never tried the genre. But I'm about to find out. Because I want to use an ordinary everyday working stiff as my female protag.

Ordinary people do seem to be more common in mysteries. But my concept doesn't seem to be a mystery. ARGH!

What do you all think? What is the reason only the more "exotic" jobs are used for female protags in suspense fiction? I'd love to learn more about this.