Genre-Hopping Heart

I've been thinking about genre recently.

Popular wisdom says that authors should not switch genres on readers. Readers, says popular wisdom, are fragile flowers who should not be exposed to the harsh conditions of genres outside their most-preferred climate, lest they wither like blossom on the vine.

I think popular wisdom in this case may be popular, but not entirely wise.

I'm a reader. And over the last couple of weeks I have read non-fiction on overlooked mathematicians and the social history of bread, an adorable Regency romance, a space opera heist, a brilliant memoir, a coming-of-age historical literary novel, and a bunch of steamy orc fantasy¹.

Then there's the writing. I've written YA urban fantasy and dystopia, a space opera murder mystery, cute fables, gritty third-world fantasy, cozy and clean urban romantasy, spicy workplace romcoms, and currently, romantic suspense.

And that's just the writing I get paid for!

I've also written adorable fixit fanfic and nasty no-happy-endings fanfic, an Avengers fic where the moral of the story is "look after the little guy and fuck Nazis", Leverage OT3 fic and a lot of Harry Potter fic I have mixed feelings about. I've written academic non-fiction on Shakespeare, comic books, and fan communities, on objectification and subjectivity in an softcore porn site, and on my own use of katabasis and mythology.

Genre-hopping, in both reading and writing, is at the heart of me. Give me words, tell me a story, and make it mean something, and which category it's in doesn't really matter so much. There are tropes I dislike and ideas I'm not willing to engage with, but I'm polygenreamorous, and I think a lot of readers are too. More than popular wisdom gives them credit.

That said, I will not deny the allure of the familiar, nor the notion that just because you might like me to bake you my boysenberry brownies², you aren't necessarily so keen on my pumpkin soup. Sure, it's good soup! But you might hate pumpkin, or it's too hot for soup where you are, or you're really in more of a chocolate mood. Hey, it's cool. Stick around the kitchen, and maybe you'll like my next dish better.

My mother, for example, is an amazing person who has read every one of my fourteen books, and my 40 000-word, theory-dense Masters thesis. She is demonstrably supportive, is what I'm saying, but when I described my forthcoming Sparks and Recreation series as "it's hegemony-fighting, community-building and coming-of-age, but it's magic New York and there's magicians and vampires and werewolves," she said, "Werewolves?" and made a face I can only describe as "unconvinced".

"It's going to be fun!" I said. "The main character is a just-graduated historian who makes an accidental oath to a Fae, and she idolizes an older woman at her workplace who's this total legend ex-hunter, and is kind of retired now, but she's still a badass. And also there's a cute working class half-demon, and a clean-cut corporate vampire!"

In retrospect, I might not have strengthened my case.

Still, I'm sure that if she takes just one little bite...

Iiiit's promo time! Love in Bloom has some great looking titles - my Penelope Pops the Question is there, and you can bet I leapt on Stephen Thrill's filthy, hilarious m/m short story "The Horny Ghost Haunting My House", which I think wins the prize for best title, hands down. I'm also looking forward to reading more of MeLisa Ryun's smart and funny Hawaii Can Suck It.

And welcome, new readers! I hope you enjoy Penelope Pops the Question, if and when you get to it, but I want you to know that this is a guilt-free newsletter. If you signed up for my newsletter to get a free thing, and now want to unsubscribe, please know that I do that literally all the time, and I don't want you to feel bad for a moment. I also regularly remove members who haven't opened emails for a while, and there's no guilt there either--we all have a lot of stuff going on, and life's too short for unwanted distractions.

(That said, if you stick around I have been known to drop freebies exclusively for newsletter readers - most recently The Love Labyrinth, which is a Kindle Unlimited novella-length Ariadne-and-the-Minotaur retelling standalone in the Olympus Inc. universe. My newsletter readers got it free and first!)

¹ I am NOT KIDDING about this series being steamy. Also, frequently, sticky. Just, you've been told.

² You really, really want me to do this.