Coyote Con

You know, I’m one of those weirdos who reads authors’ notes. Before the book, after the book, I don’t care. Most are self-congratulatory, but some are fascinating.

I count Stephen King’s notorious letters to his Constant Readers among the latter.

So I remember reading the foreward to one of his books (can’t remember which at the moment, for which I apologize) and I came across an anecdote that gave me pause, even then. I might have still been in high school at the time, already trying to convince myself that there was no future in writing, that I’d probably never get published even if I did write because wedging your foot into that particular door is harder than felling a sequoia with a butterknife, and yet…still fascinated by the craft…I read, and I considered.

Mr. King said that, after Carrie and ‘Salem’s Lot, his agent was talking to him about his next book. He said he was thinking about a haunted hotel — The Shining, of course; all work and no play make Jack a dull boy — and his agent hesitated.

“Do you want to be pigeonholed as a horror writer?”

That’s not, of course, a direct quote, but it’s close, and the feeling behind it struck me even then. This was the ’70s, and apparently, it wasn’t a good idea to be pigeonholed into one genre back then.

Okay, maybe the agent meant that it wasn’t a good idea to be pigeonholed in such a thankless, nonliterary genre as horror, but either way….

I took it to heart. Even when I didn’t want to write, I had to, and those stories were a wide variety of genres. I wanted to be a Renaissance writer — jack of all genres, master of none.

Unfortunately, when I actually became more than clinically interested in publication, I found out that I’d trained my mind in the wrong direction. Times had changed, and no one in the publishing world wants a jack of all genres any more.

You see, nowadays, it’s all about branding. Agents and editors want you to write more of the same. If you start out in contemporary romance, for example, your best bet for selling your next novel is to make it a contemporary romance. Your readers might forgive you if you temporarily traipse into fantasy romance or even science fiction romance, but you really ought to stay where your audience is.

They wouldn’t be pleased if they rushed out and bought the latest Jane Doe opus, only to find out it’s…I dunno…a thriller where the “hero” gets killed at the end and there’s no happily ever after other than that the bad guy is eventually caught.

See? It’s all about branding your name. Building recognition.

And that’s a good thing, really. If you have a following, your books will sell, and selling books you’ve written is really the best gig on the planet, once you get that recognition. There’s no feeling more amazing than knowing that thousands — hundreds of thousands? dare we dream of millions? — of total strangers are reading the words that came out of your head and begging for more. Waiting in line for them. Talking about them over coffee at Starbucks.

What a rush.

But…what if contemporary romance isn’t the only thing you want to write?

Of course, you can always venture into other genres. There’s no law that says “Thou shalt not write cozy mysteries when thou hast first written Regency romances”. You’re the author. You can write what you want.

However, you’d best come up with a pseudonym. Or two. Or ten.

And that route has its own pitfalls. Sure, Jane Doe might be a best-selling romance writer with hundreds of thousands of faithful readers breathlessly awaiting her newest novel, but Janette Dougherty ain’t nobody. And Jean Dow only has that one hard sci fi. And who the heck does Jayne Doe think she is, trying to trade off Jane Doe’s popularity by trying to publish steampunk under such a similar name?

So what’s a Renaissance author to do? Write with his or her heart and probably never get enough name recognition to keep sales up? Or cave in to public pressure and write in one genre only, possibly burning out with frustration and crushed creativity?

Honestly, I don’t know. I only have the one book out right now, and I’m lucky enough that my editor is very interested in the next one I’m finishing. They’re sort of the same genre in that they’re both romance, though one is contemporary and the other is steampunk. Apparently, that’s close enough, and that’s good.

But what will I do with the sci fi I have planned? The haunted house story in which a widow moves into a house where strange things happen and there’s nary a hero in sight? The horror novella where the “love interest” gets killed by the wicked nasties right before the heroine’s eyes, and she doesn’t actually end up with the samurai-type office guy that saves her life because he travels around, stalking the creatures stalking them?

What will I do with these decidedly non-romance stories? Write them under a nom de plume?

I don’t want to be pigeonholed a romance writer. I have nothing against the romance genre. I just can’t only write that. I have too many other stories to tell.

I guess we’ll just have to see if I get to tell them, eh?

On the positive side, all seems to have worked out for Mr. King. He ended up with the best of both worlds, didn’t he? Yes, people primarily know him for being a horror writer, but he has been able to branch out into other genres and has done incredibly well in them.

Shawshank Redemption, anyone?

So, maybe the best route for an aspiring Renaissance writer is to build so much name recognition in that first genre that your adoring masses will buy anything with your name on it. Wouldn’t that be a trip? Then you can take out all those “other” stories you’ve squirreled away over the years and publish them under your own name, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Hey, we can dream, right?