Writing across genres
Back in my early twenties, I read a self help article that suggested a process for distilling ten life desires down to one ten word goal. I loved the idea. I decided that instead of writing New Year resolutions, I would create a one line life mission statement. The ten word life statement would be my over arching goal, the one thing I would never lose sight of, no matter how many other roads I followed.
So I sat on glorious Cable Beach under a magnificent moon with a few quality local beverages, and came up with the following list:
I could see the themes clearly enough. I knew I wanted to travel, and write – but I wanted to be more than a travel writer.
I followed the process of finding repeat words, and the ones that resonated the most, then got stuck at the end.
How did I distil all the things I wanted to write about into one word, or term? In the back of my mind was the advice given by industry experts to prospective writers: don’t write across genres.
I felt automatically stifled and annoyed by this. I’ve never been great at having my horizons limited. I loved all kinds of books. Historical fiction from Sharon Penman, Bernard Cornwell, Ken Follett and M.M Kaye. Fantasy writers like Marion Zimmer Bradley, or experimental history like Jean M. Auel. I also loved dark, gothic fantasy like Anne Rice – I’d fallen completely in love with her vampires long before Twilight ever sparkled in the sun. I adored Regency romance writers like Georgette Heyer, and comic contemporary bonkbusters by the likes of Jilly Cooper. I loved Wilbur Smith’s action packed adventures through Africa, and C.S Forrester’s naval battles during the Napoleonic wars.
In between all of those, of course, lay my favourite ever travel book, the story that inspired my own journey across the Sahara, by an author who was destined to forever be my soul’s inspiration and hero: Robyn Davidson’s iconic, beautiful story, Tracks.
The night had grown late, the tide gone out, and all my Matso’s beers were gone when I finally threw conventional advice to the winds and wrote my mission statement:
I write bestselling books I believe in, across different genres.
I folded it up, wrapped around a banknote as the article had recommended – in my case, a five dollar rather than a fifty dollar note, given that at the time I was cleaning toilets and pulling beers for a living.
Some twenty years after I wrote that statement, it is still folded up around that same five dollar bill, creased and dirty. It has crossed a desert with me and sat in as many airplanes as I have. I keep it not in my wallet but in my passport folder, since my track record suggests I’m less likely to lose my passport than my wallet.
I thought of it again recently as I began to lay out a marketing plan to launch my new pen name, Lucy Holden, and paranormal romance series, The Nightgarden Saga.
Arguably both of my previous genres tied into one another. Writing both the Saharan books and the Visigoths of Spain series involved travel, history, languages, nature and other cultures.
But vampire romance? Right out of left field. Not something my adventuring buddies, nor my historical fiction fans, were going to be anywhere near interested in.
But I am.
I LOVE romance. I love magic, and vampires, and the concept of immortality. I wanted to give readers a gorgeous big dollop of rich southern gothic: a decaying antebellum mansion, live oaks covered in Spanish moss, red magnolias and night blooming jasmine, sultry clouds over the Mississippi, and wolves in the bayou. I wanted to create a vampire lore that was my own, and a narrative that I could extend out to multiple series.
I’m choosing to write across genres not because I’m chasing the dollar, or selling out for mass appeal. I’m writing across genres because long ago I promised myself to do exactly that. To never narrow my horizons. And above all, to write quality books that I believe in.
So you won’t find Lucy Holden hidden away on a secret webpage, cast to the side like a guilty secret. I love Lucy Holden. She’s got her roots in my old Holden HR station wagon, the one I used to throw my swag in the back of and drive into the bush to dream about the adventures I’d one day have. And she’s also named after Lucy Pevensie, the girl who went through the wardrobe into Narnia, and found a world of wonder.
I’m a believer in magic. I love it in life, and in fiction. Every time I watch the moon shine down at midnight over Cable Beach, I feel it in my veins, and feel grateful for it in my life. And every time I look at that note wrapped around a five dollar bill, I feel truly grateful that for all the twists my road has taken me, ultimately, it has always brought me back here, doing what I love:
Writing bestselling books I believe in, across different genres.
Red Magnolia: Nightgarden Saga book one, is due for release in September 2021. If you’d like an advance copy to review, please go here and download the media pack.