In literature, there is often a disdain for genres considered commercial or popular that has never existed in film, not even among pedantic snobs and sophisticated specialists. There are quite a few critics, academics, and journalists who specialize in literature, however, who adopt a somewhat condescending attitude whenever they read a detective novel, an adventure novel, a horror novel, or one with supernatural or thriller elements. As if Dumas and Stevenson weren't creators of incredible characters and worlds, as if Raymond Chandler's prose weren't among the best in 20th-century English, as if the terrifying Shirley Jackson and the visionary Stanislaw Lem weren't first-rate writers—in style and ideas. I mention these names, and I could mention so many others. These condescending readers are unaware that writing a genre novel is incredibly difficult.

As a general rule, first novels don't stray too far from their authors' lives. There's a natural tendency to begin by explaining what one has experienced firsthand, not always successfully. Exceptions aside –Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Nothing of Carmen Laforet either The watchman in the rye field of J.D. Salinger– these first contributions to literature do not usually have much literary interest because writers are not born, they are made.