"Reality Fiction" the new genre for the 21st Century

"Reality Fiction" the new genre for the 21st Century.

There's a new genre rising in the publishing world and it's called Reality Fiction. Yes, it already exists in the Performing Arts as a parody of reality TV, but this is no parody. Reality Fiction takes true events and turns them into a novel. It's deeper than your average girl-power/waiting-to-exhale/steel-magnolia chicklit. It's livelier than a memoir. Reality Fiction takes real events which happen to real people and presents it in an enhanced way, and then allows the reader to interact with the characters online - all for the purpose of helping real people change their lives for the better.

Becky Siame, creator of the "Reality Fiction" literary term, founded the movement with her debut novel, The Lighter Side of Large. The story incorporates elements from her life as a cheated on, single mother, overweight, who almost dies and becomes a can't-put-it-down tale which has readers laughing one chapter and crying the next. In July the novel hit #5 on Amazon's Top 100 Free Downloads Best Seller list – forty-five thousand downloads and counting – and #1 in the Humour category. At one point, its free copies were out-downloading paid copies of The Hunger Games series.

"I started out creating a humorous cartoon book about the embarrassingly funny situations I'd been in due to my excess weight," says Siame. "A publisher told me to develop it into a novel. I call it a self-help novel because I want it to be more than a great story. I want it to be a catalyst to help people take back control of their lives."

Readers can follow the main character, Bella White, on the book's website, www.lightersideoflarge.com, as "Bella" (Siame), a newspaper columnist, blogs about issues which affect almost everyone – weight issues (both humorous and serious), abuse, childhood trauma, dating disasters and more. Fans can also "friend" Bella on her Facebook page.

"Bella's story doesn't end on the last page of the book or its sequels," Siame says. "You can interact with her and the other characters online. She's so real because the situations she faces and her attitudes about them are real. They happened to me or to people I know." Siame says she doesn't know of any other book which allows readers to communicate with its characters or relate to them as if the story is real and continuing.

Siame/Bella isn't afraid to tackle the hard-hitting issues, the ones no one talks about. Siame is launching a talk show web series to address those issues, some of which will be canvassed in the sequels to The Lighter Side of Large. "Bella's sister gets a chance to tell her story in the next book, which has some shocking twists and turns which you won't see coming – and all the ideas are taken from reality."

Thanks to Siame's laughs about being large, readers can look forward to a new style of story which is seriously real and really funny.

After all, the truth is stranger than fiction.

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