Showing posts with label genre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genre. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

What do you read besides romance?

If you're reading "Montana Belle" or checking out my blog, I'm going to assume you read romance on a somewhat regular basis. But what else do you read, if anything?
I'm not a regular reader of the other genres. I read some mystery when I was younger, but I pretty much stick with romance when it comes to genre reading now. I don't care too much for contemporary literary fiction either. Samuel Goldwyn, who is sort of the Yogi Berra of old-time studio execs, once famously criticized a movie by saying, "This movie has too much plot and not enough story!" That sort of sums up my feelings about some contemporary literary fiction. Jane Austen is my favorite writer, but she ain't writing any more books these days, so I console myself by reading Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope instead. They've written enough books between the two of them to keep me busy for years to come!
Mostly, though, I concentrate on non-fiction. Some of it is research material for whatever I'm working on, or thinking about working on. I'm reading a book on the middle ages right now to see if I can some up with something good for a medieval romance. (I haven't quite decided whether I have guts enough to tackle such a setting or not!) And then there are my guilty pleasures: I'm reading Deborah Cadbury's "The Chocolate Wars" because reading about chocolate is healthier than eating a bunch of it. (Although I still manage to put away a respectable amount.)
What about you? What do you read when you're not reading romance?

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Genre jumping

I have to admit, I haven't quite yet figured out what kind of writer I am, genre-wise. My forthcoming first novel, which is currently in the editing stage, is Forget-Me-Not, a romantic suspense novel. It's kind of funny that my first sale should come in this subgenre, because I haven't read a ton of books like it. Maybe that's why it was easier for me to write--I wasn't constantly fretting whether this had "been done" before. It probably has, but I don't know about it. Like the saying goes, "What you don't know, you can't be neurotic about." I've got a western romantic novella I'll be starting revisions on in a month or so, and I'm hoping to sell it shortly. (I have some editor interest on it, but who knows?) And last but not least, one of these days, I'll return to working on my current project, which is sort of a funny/sexy crime caper thing in a contemporary setting. I'm not sure that this is smart, marketing wise, to jump around from genre to genre, but I can't figure out how else to proceed. I seem to be destined to have to try everything and fail at most of it before I figure out what I'm good at. I can think of only one writer I like who really jumps from genre to genre, and that's Lisa Cach. She's done everything from mainstream to historical romance to paranormal, all with her own flair. Are there any other well-known genre jumpers I'm forgetting?

 
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