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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42604
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 **I have no advice about your mom.** However, I notice that within the question you signal the story is not to your own taste, that beta readers held their noses but liked it ok, and that you are unsure what genre it might be and even if you did know it is obviously "just a niche".

**This is not selling your work.**

In order to make this a general interest question, I suggest that you consider a few angles on how to describe the story. If you feel the setting is so obscure that it isn't a selling point, maybe step back to story fundamentals? It's "an adventure about 2 smart women", in a "Victorian-inspired world" where "magic and technology blur", who use "a fabled machine to hunt a mysterious villain" (this part I quite like).

You can invoke the familiar, "like Sherlock Holmes, but with women and touches of sci-fi" and you can extrapolate the situation: "Complications ensue when they begin to use a legendary device to track a criminal." Say what the story is about, it's conflict and mystery, rather than its setting.

In otherwords, if _steampunk_ sounds iffy, don't use that word. If you have your doubts, don't say them upfront. The _genre_ is actually sci-fi/adventure/mystery (I assume). Steampunk is probably more the _style_ than the genre – but you would know better what your own story's fundamentals are. Sell the story, not the tropes and decor. Writing a blurb is a whole marketing exercise, I'm just trying to point out how many times you've _under-sold_ the story in your question.

* * *

For a while I dismissively called one of my projects "dumb ghost hunters who solve occult crimes" because frankly, I thought the "genre" (whatever it was) was beneath me. The stories would be easy to write because they were pastiche of horror and mystery tropes. I didn't actually feel the idea was "bad", but it was a project I felt I could have fun with – more self-deprecating than insult to the genre. I didn't want to take myself too seriously.

Well, that joke is at my expense because that project is getting more focus now, and as it evolves of course it naturally becomes less "dumb" to me personally. But also I now feel it has some substance as I work out the details and the tone. No one ever asks me about this project, instead they ask about a different project, my "opus" that I bragged about that was going to be highbrow space opera with amazing characters and a totally original setting. Get the idea? I probably sabotaged myself by signaling that one project was aspiring to greatness, and the other was indulging in popular tropes I wasn't too sure about.

Original score: 5