And some days I’m stumped. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!
I’m deep into a novella that is pure unadulterated joy to write. Pure joy. I know that pleasure is coming across in the story because the response from my cps and the excerpt I posted the other day has been great.
Thing is, it’s a futuristic. My favorite story and hero I’ve written (so far 
) is Sapphire’s Worth, also a futuristic. But I love my historicals too, they just take a bit more work. For some reason they’re much moodier, more intense, more angst ridden. My futuristics are lighter, a bit sexier, faster paced.
I don’t know that I could give up one sub-genre to focus on the other. I’ve always thought that the sexual heat of my stories would be the defining thread that would allow me to write whatever I wanted. Pick up a Sylvia Day book and get scorching sex. But is that enough? Will it be hard to relate to me, to categorize me, to find me, if you don’t know what I’m releasing next? Will a reader pick up Bad Boys Ahoy! and anxiously await my next historical only to find that my next release is a futuristic and they’ll have to wait a bit longer? Or will a futuristic reader check out my backlist and become frustrated when all they find is historicals?
I’ve been told by expert, multi-published sources that I would be doing my career a favor to emerge as a certain sub-genre writer and not leapfrog. Yet my agent and editors disagree. But is this because it’s a good idea? Or because historicals are still a hard sell and they want me to keep producing?
I’m not sure what route to take. Continue to write for myself? Or write for long-term success? And do they have to be mutually exclusive? Just some of the many questions a newly published author faces.
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My opinion? Write for yourself. Sounds overly simplistic, but honestly, if you’re not writing for yourself and making yourself happy, it’ll show.