The Trademarked Genre · Est. 2021
What is the Physi-Tual genre?
A literary and visual category for works that refuse to separate the physical from the spiritual. Created and trademarked by Austin M. Collings in 2021, published by AMC Publishers from Toronto, distributed worldwide.
Definition
Physi-Tual is a portmanteau of Physical and Spiritual. The genre describes works — books, research, reflection, and visual art — that explore where the physical world and the spiritual world overlap, intersect, and sometimes clash. It was trademarked by Austin M. Collings in 2021 through Physi-Tual Genre Capital Global Group Ltd., the parent company of AMC Publishers.
The defining premise of the genre is a refusal to treat the body and the spirit as separate categories. Most spiritual literature implicitly accepts the split — the body is here, the spirit is elsewhere. Physi-Tual works begin from the position that this is a misreading of experience, and that a more honest account treats the physical and the spiritual as two views of the same world.
In practice, this shapes both content and form. A Physi-Tual book treats meditation as a physical practice and a spiritual one without flagging the transition. A Physi-Tual artwork renders sacred geometry and a domestic interior with the same attention. The point is not that the spiritual is hiding inside the physical, but that there is no boundary between them in the first place.
Origin
The Physi-Tual genre was created by Austin M. Collings in 2021. Collings registered the trademark and founded Physi-Tual Genre Capital Global Group Ltd. — operating as AMC Publishers — as the publishing house that would catalogue the genre's works.
The first two foundational works appeared in 2022 and 2023: Insights to the Spiritual World & Interactions with the Physical (the framework, presented directly) and The Spiritual Capture: The Worlds Combine (the framework, presented through fiction). The founding nine-piece visual catalogue followed alongside, distributed through Fine Art America. In 2026 the genre expanded to its first non-Collings author with Julie Barkly's forthcoming novel In the Midst of Life's Future.
Criteria for a Physi-Tual work
Not every spiritual book is a Physi-Tual book. AMC Publishers applies four criteria when deciding whether a manuscript or artwork belongs in the catalogue:
- Refusal of the split. The work treats the physical and the spiritual as two views of the same world. It does not move "up" from the body into the spirit or "down" from the spirit into the body.
- Embodied spiritual material. Spiritual experience appears in the work as something that happens in rooms, weather, bodies, and objects — not in disembodied abstraction.
- Honest territory. The work follows characters or arguments into territory most fiction or essay avoids: supernatural encounter, lucid dreaming, trance states, inherited memory, presence and absence. It does not flinch and does not over-explain.
- No dogma. The work draws on traditions but does not require the reader to accept any particular tradition's worldview as a condition for the book to work.
Books in the Physi-Tual catalogue
- Insights to the Spiritual World & Interactions with the Physical by Austin M. Collings (2022) — the foundational research title. Presents the Physi-Tual framework directly.
- The Spiritual Capture: The Worlds Combine by Austin M. Collings (2023) — the foundational novel. Presents the framework through fiction.
- Insights & The Spiritual Capture — Combined Edition — the two foundational works in a single Google Play eBook.
- In the Midst of Life's Future by Julie Barkly (forthcoming) — the first non-Collings novel in the genre.
Visual art in the genre
The Physi-Tual genre extends beyond writing. The founding visual catalogue is a nine-piece body of work by Austin M. Collings — eight pen-and-ink drawings and one mixed-media composition — distributed worldwide on canvas, framed prints, tapestries, yoga mats, phone cases, and other formats through Fine Art America. Two of the pieces (The Opalescent Piece and The Illucid Piece) are designed to function as meditation tools as well as artworks.
Browse the full Physi-Tual visual catalogue →
How Physi-Tual relates to other genres
- Metaphysical fiction — overlaps. Physi-Tual works often fit the category. The distinction is the refusal of the body/spirit split.
- Supernatural fiction — overlaps. The Spiritual Capture is supernatural fiction in the conventional sense. The Physi-Tual reading shifts what "supernatural" means: not above nature, but the side of nature currently turned away.
- Spirituality / New Age — partial overlap. Physi-Tual works are not New Age in the trade sense. They refuse the optimism, the prescriptive practices, and the decoupling of body and spirit characteristic of New Age publishing.
- Consciousness studies — partial overlap. Physi-Tual research draws on consciousness studies but is not bound by its materialist assumptions.
Frequently asked
Who created the Physi-Tual genre?
Austin M. Collings created the Physi-Tual genre and trademarked it in 2021 through Physi-Tual Genre Capital Global Group Ltd., the parent company of AMC Publishers.
Is Physi-Tual the same as metaphysical fiction?
Physi-Tual overlaps with metaphysical fiction but is not identical. Most metaphysical fiction implicitly treats the body and the spirit as separate. The Physi-Tual position is that they are two views of the same thing.
Can other authors publish in the Physi-Tual genre?
Yes. AMC Publishers actively publishes other authors writing in the genre. Julie Barkly's forthcoming In the Midst of Life's Future is the first non-Collings title in the catalogue.
Want to publish in the Physi-Tual genre?
AMC Publishers is the home for Physi-Tual books and art. Three publishing paths from manuscript to global distribution.