Do you prefer to read books that cross genres? I wrote a novel that mixed psychological fiction with science fiction and found it a hard sell. Despite that, I still feel strongly that it is a good book.

The problem today is that novels are placed into hard-and-fast categories. This is done for increased sales, of course. Money drives the publishing market more than ever, and when a book crosses genres it makes it harder to market the book. This detective novels stay in their lane, as do psychological thrillers stay in their own lane. Only if you are a big name author can you mix and match, and get away with it. Take Stephen King. He frequently combines horror with other genres, including crime.

It only happens when some publisher goes out in a limb and actually publishes a novel that mixes two different genres. And then when it sells, every publisher will go looking for the next werewolf love story. Or science fiction detective tale. It reminds me of back in the 90s when the Seattle grunge sound came out. Every record producer in the country flocked to the Northwest to find the next Nirvana.

So for now, I’m going to take this manuscript featuring an AI humanoid in a domestic situation, and put it the drawer. It’s made me rethink whether I should be mixing genres. For now I’ll stick to the tried and true. Stick to crime.

The good news is that my new novel will be coming out in November. It’s called Cruel & Bitter Things and is the first book in the series. It features Gwynn Denning, a mother, wife and director of a group home for troubled children. On the surface, it appears that she’s living the perfect life. But what no one knows is that Gwynn is a serial killer who dispatches bad people (and sometimes not so bad people if they threaten to reveal her secret). I’ll keep you updated.

So have a great fall. Until next time . . .