Have you ever considered changing genres? Or did you try but it turned into an utter non-starter? As I head into my next major genre leap, I asked some fellow jumpers five basic questions about their ideas, successes, and fu—, uh, hard lessons learned.
The jumps
Some say that writers’ brains are wild, entropy-driven vortices. Based on the jumps these folks have done, that is an accurate assessment.
First, there are the small sideways slides: Barbara Keiler (aka Judith Arnold) shifting from decades of romance into women’s fiction. Neil Plakcy offers the general non-starter of a single nonfiction work that was a complete break from his normal romance, mystery, and adventure (already genre jumping there, Neil).
Cait London confines herself to subgenre jumping across pretty much all of romance, which, at last count, included more than 40 subgenres on Amazon.
Others made bigger shifts.
Jennifer Ashley slips from historical romance to historical mystery. My own mid-career shift from military romantic suspense to thriller also fits this category as does Patricia Rice moving to include paranormal elements into her Regency romance. But then she entered the next level with a jump to urban fantasy.
There are also those who’ve found success with larger leaps.
Brenda Hiatt “slipped” from short-and-sweet Regency romance into lengthier steamy romance a long time ago. When historical romance hit her limits of interest, she then made the big leap all the way to young adult science fiction romance to prove to herself that writing could still be fun. (“It was.”)
Some other tectonic shifts: Jane Thornley flipped her historical mystery thrillers into pure fantasy. Blaze Ward has added straight thrillers to his massive space opera catalog. His wife, Leah R. Cutter, publishes in so many genres (urban fantasy, sci-fi, thriller, mystery…) that she doesn’t even sort them that way—instead she tracks heat level vs. reality level. Jenna Bennett strolls across the entire range of mystery and romance from historical to sci-fi.
These authors consistently do not limit their storytelling by genre.
The whys
These vary from the most extreme: Cutter’s “I don’t know what I’m going to write until I start writing it” and my own “I’m shifting from a decade of romance and a half more in thriller to SF because it’s my first love as a reader … and it will let me tell the next story I want to tell.”
“I’m a hardened genre jumper,” Thornley said. “I do it because I love to read across genres and love to write across them likewise. Also, I bore after years of writing the same thing.”
Ashley said the same.
Others want to just keep their writing fresh. Keiler noted that she “…ran out of ways to keep the romance fresh, so I began writing women’s fiction.” Which was the main motivator for my own move from mil-rom-sus to thriller.
Ward’s answer? “It sounded like fun.” What better pursuit as a writer?
Bella Blair stands out because she saw the waning of her primary SF romance market and meticulously researched market forces. As a result, she consciously created a new pen name—Bella Ray—who loves mafia romances.
Millie Copper is making a similar choice for different business reasons. She’s planning a year of travel around the United States and loves in-person events. Due to a scarcity of post-apocalyptic events, she is adding romantic suspense to her repertoire.
One pen name? Two? Five?
Cooper will also be keeping her first but changing her last name. She—and all others who responded who use multiple pen names—keep them open rather than carefully segregated.
Blair/Ray maintains two separate personas on the web, social media, and newsletters—but with occasional cross-posting between them. Rice is slowly merging her publisher-mandated multiple names into one website with hooks to both names. Also publisher-mandated, we find Jennifer Ashley for romance, Ashley Gardner for mystery, and yet another for fantasy, but she’s merging that last into J.A. due to thematic overlap and is comfortable with J.A. and A.G. vying for her attention.
Hiatt figured multiple names would be too much trouble, back before there were algorithms and also-boughts. Given the foreknowledge of those, she remains unsure on which would be the best course.
The majority of responding authors chose to maintain a single name across all genres.
Yes, Bennett noted, her contemporary romance readers won’t typically cross to her sci-fi romance, though they do go the other way.
Keiler stated the primary reason that most authors noted for sticking with a single name, “…they’re written in my voice. Regardless of the genre, my voice stays the same.”
We want them to follow us anywhere the muse takes us. Yet each author I asked still, as Hiatt noted, second-guesses whether a single pen name for their brand is the best choice in this digitally driven marketing world.
Feeding the herd
Keiler declared that she is finished with romance permanently. She is the only one who has made such a choice.
Several authors embrace both—all—of their genres. There is the thoughtful approach, such as Blair and Copper, who are doing a considered transition of feeding the old (yet well-earning) lion while the new cub is being nurtured to pay its way.
Some are dragged back by the throat, kicking and screaming the whole way. After three years away from romance, my characters insisted on a new series, above and beyond the thriller series I was writing.
Making it graceful
The final question I asked, the inspiration for this whole exercise, was: what are these authors doing to bring their existing audience with them?
Thornley focused on qualifying and segmenting her email list: are you interested in one genre, the other, or both? Hiatt has taken a similar approach, but once a month highlights a book by the “other author” in her newsletters.
Rice also segments her email list and promos between romance and mystery. She tells authors: “Build loyal readers with really great books so they want to follow you.”
Plakcy did the research that implied his way-off-to-the-side nonfiction would fill a hole in a, grantedly niche, market. Once ready, he leapt in on Kickstarter, earning a null response from his usual fans. He wishes he’d thought to bring them along, pre-educating them on why this was an interesting project in order to garner support when it came time to jump to that particular genre.
Cutter and Ward make a point to “brand it so clearly that if they won’t like it, they won’t buy it in the first place.”
Ashley took Plakcy’s advice without knowing it. She’s very open with her audience about what’s coming next and why they should be excited. “I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years now, and I’ve thrived jumping back and forth between genres. I was strongly cautioned about genre jumping when I first started, and I’m glad I let myself go with my instincts.” She also uses a segmented email list.
Bennett’s solution is to expand. She strives to find a new audience that will fall in love with her new genre—and perhaps become a super loyal fan (the kind we all want) who will cross into the old genre as well.
London has pulled back her marketing efforts and is even now studying what she should and is willing to do.
Blair runs her two personas separately except for a bit of cross-posting. She’s finding generally strong crossover and is pleased with it, but she keeps the marketing divided.
Keiler hired someone to market her romance so that she doesn’t have to think about it and can focus wholly on her current interests.
Back in my March 2022 Nink article, “The Quest for Author Voice,” I discussed how I analyzed thousands of reviews and concluded that my mil-rom-sus writing voice landed nicely for thrillers. On that premise, I jumped in with both hands on the keyboard. The first book punched up to No. 1 on Amazon/Thrillers, and the series has supported me for the last five years. Even though I also didn’t take Plakcy’s advice of warning my fans, I estimate I had an 80–85% crossover from romance to thriller.
This time, from thriller to near-future SF? Starting more than six months ahead, I have been slowly preparing and teasing them. “Help fund research for a new series.” “I’ve been studying….” Shortly I’ll start including quick reviews of the books/films that I’ve been using for research. Yes, it will continue to be under my familiar pen name because I don’t want merely readers. I want superfans who will buy everything I’ve written. If I can hook them on me, my voice, my personal brand of storytelling, then—not only will I make more as they explore my deep backlist—I just might carry them forward into whatever my wild, entropy-driven vortex of a writer brain thinks up next.
________________________
USA Today and Amazon No. 1 bestseller M. L. “Matt” Buchman is the author of 80-plus novels, 200 short stories, and lots of audiobooks. PW says of his action-adventure thrillers: “Tom Clancy fans open to a strong female lead will clamor for more.” Booklist rated his military romance novels: “3X Top 10 Romance of the Year.” A project manager with a geophysics degree, he’s designed and built houses, flown and jumped out of planes, solo-sailed a 50-foot sailboat, bicycled solo around the world, and sailed to Antarctica as paying crew on a 185-foot, three-masted, square-rigged bark.