Jaid Black’s talking about labels. (No permalink so you’ll have to scroll down a couple of entries) Interesting topic and it led me down a sidepath called “never say never”. As a writer, unless you stick to nonfiction or autobiography, you will be confronted with characters who say and do things you wouldn’t, that shock you. Okay, even in nonfiction and autobiography that’s probably true. So I can’t say “I would never write X in a book” because I might. I might find myself writing a story with a character where X is true and necessary.
As a reader who’s also creative, I don’t pick my reads by labels; I’ve read books with all kinds of subjects handled beautifully. But I’m pretty watchful on tone. I avoid dark books, books that will be full of disturbing things, because I won’t forget the minute I set the book aside and that sort of thing can throw me off my creative stride. Which I can’t afford. These books are pretty easy to pick out. Linda Howard, normally an autobuy for me, wrote a book about a mother who has her infant stolen by a ring of child stealers. I will never in a million years read that book. I don’t doubt it’s well written, but I don’t need the nightmares. But am I looking forward to Jaid Black’s next Trek installment? Certainly, because we’re getting really close to the big conclusion and I can’t wait to see how it’ll all turn out. The dark evil overlord is going to expose himself. How will they defeat him? It’s like Star Wars with more sex, and I’m totally hooked on the story.
So for readers who’d pass on the Trek Mi Q’an series due to same-sex instances (they’re so small a part of the story anyway), they’re really missing out, I think. But who knows, maybe they’d find that as disturbing as I find the idea of a ring of child snatchers.
Onto careers and branding. My branding shift has been going on already. Subtle, huh? The site started out bright and colorful, representing my romantic comedies, which were the first books I wrote and had published. However, I turned a corner as a writer and now my stories are still funny but also full of shadowy places and strange things, things that go bump in the night, things from outer space, and sometimes bad guys lurking in the shadows. My site redesign reflects that, I hope. Nothing very dark because that’s not a place I like to visit even as a reader, and as a writer you have to spend FAR more time there to complete a book.
My career, it’s clear to me, will not be built on straight romantic comedies but on more complex erotic stories that range the worlds of speculative fiction served with humor. That’s not just where the market is, although that’s a happy accident for me, it’s where my voice has gone and where my talents seem to lie. Maybe I need to add something to the site that says funny, though. Put a stone troll in the garden? Hmmm…
All that said, my romantic comedy Catalyst goes on sale next week. It was terribly fun to write. I set out to do a Doris Day/Rock Hudson sort of story and I’m happy with the results. I hope readers enjoy it, too.
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