I know this blog’s called Murderous Musings and I’m also aware that sometimes my own musings
here aren’t very murderous. But that’s because (like many of my colleagues, I
suspect), the genre thing sometimes feels restrictive. At the same time, I know
full well that publishers (and probably readers) prefer us to stay within the
genre they associate with us.
When my historical novel, The Figurehead, was published, it was well received but, as well as
being crime-based, it flirted with the romance genre, and some readers and
reviewers commented on the fact. In a different way, The Sparrow Conundrum was also a departure, being a satirical novel
on the spy genre which was all black humour and near-farcical situations. It’s
crime-related but my main aim in writing it was to make readers laugh.
I’ve been told I should think of using a pseudonym but if
that’s the case there’d be three of me already – the police procedural guy, the
historical guy, and the funny man.
On the other hand, if a reader spends $X or £X on a book of
mine because he/she enjoyed a previous one, I’ll be disappointing them if it’s
totally different. But on the other other hand, should writers be condemned to
keep on producing the same book over and over?
My plan is to write just one more in my procedural series,
featuring Jack Carston. So far there are five books and he’s been changing
through them. I anticipate that the final one will actually end with him
leaving the police force. I had no overall plan when I wrote the first, but as
the books appeared, I began to sense the bleakness accumulating underneath the
killings and suspected that an empathetic person (such as Carston) might be
seriously affected by having to deal with constant examples of man’s inhumanity
to man (and especially woman). Carston’s at the stage where the satisfactions
of solving mysteries are being outweighed by the cruelties he’s witnessed.
I’m not suggesting that I’ll stop writing crime altogether.
The sequel to The Figurehead is well
advanced, and the romance element is even stronger, but it’s still about a
crime. And I’ve already sketched out some scenes for the sequel to The Sparrow Conundrum because that’ll be
great fun to write.
And this posting sums up two opposing functions of blogging.
Here, I’ve expressed my misgivings about being stuck in a genre but I’ve also warned
readers what to expect by spelling out what each new title will deliver. At the
same time I’ve, perhaps foolishly, articulated in public my plans for future
books. Whenever that happens, the written word becomes a fixed, irretrievable
truth. Which means I seem to have committed myself to writing the damn things.
On the other hand (again), I could have a Damascene moment
and leap to an entirely different genre – something like ‘The Wordless Novel’.
I could manage that.
2 comments:
I sympathize, Bill. I think you've successfully combined a number of genres, which I've enjoyed. I've written in four genres and would hate to be stuck in just one. The lines have blurred since I began writing and I've combined more than one in my own novels.
Yes Jean, you're a good example of a writer who moves easily (and naturally) into other areas of interest. Much as I love the crime genre, I think if that's all I wrote, it would quickly become stale and repetitive.
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