Switching Genres

Before I get into the meaty breakfast that is today's post, I want to give everyone a brief update on the wife. She is currently on the mend, still in a bit of pain (and managing it the best she can) and has her next follow up on the 23rd, which if things go well, she'll have her sutures removed.

In general, writers can be a fickle bunch.

One minute, they're cruising along with the ragtop down, wind blowing in their face, driving down any road that happens to strike their fancy. Next minute, they hit the previous fork in the road and screech to a halt as indecision grips their mind to make them foam at the mouth.

Such is the world of me.

The other day (waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay long time ago) while I was tap dancing around a particularly revolting scene in my crime novel (mainly because I didn't want to write a scene involving snuff), I got to thinking about what else I could work on.

So I went through my memory banks and came up with a slush novella that I had actually finished about a year ago. It wasn't originally meant to be a slush novella but simply something to keep myself busy with while i was waiting for my book to be published.

For those of you who remember this particular post about me not writing anything original in almost four years, I offer you my sincerest apologies. Because, as you can plainly see, I did write something original within the past four years and belatedly remembered that I did while writing this post (also wrote the novella "Shadow's Vengeance" which can be found under the tag ASWR).

So I quickly ditched the crime novella and took out my paranormal fantasy novella to work on. The good thing about this novella is that it's complete: eight chapters totaling seventy-seven pages. Another good thing about this novella is that there's a decent buildup to the plateau and great race to the finish. The one bad hing about the novella is the finish.

Because there was a sense of urgency on my part to get this novella completed (if memory serves, I had just gotten the first draft back from the editor of my novel), I came up with what I seriously deem to be a very weak ending, just so I could get this out of the way.

So I blew off the dust bunnies and proceeded to re-familiarize myself with it, and I must say that in spite of the weak ending, this novella is pretty solid. So I spent the next few weeks trying to expand the initial weak ending and eventually, I had a moment of clarity while taking a shower and came up with a proper ending that not only completely ties the entire novella together but makes the reader think about it after they're done reading.*

Just to refresh your memory about this novella, and "refresh" is the operative word as I've written about this before, the idea originally came from one of my many long walks through town. Originally it was about a man who had to make a delivery of a package. However, since I can't seem to do anything normal, I instantly tweaked the package to a head and I upped the violence to something that I could comfortably deal with. I also stuck it in the realm of paranormal because it seems to be the easiest thing for me to play with, having dabbled with it on numerous occasions with my flash fiction and my novel.

I also made a conscious effort to both turn up the heat and turn down the heat at the same time. In other words, make the female as sexual and sensual as possible without drifting over to the hardcore. And except for one scene that I had posted as an excerpt at my adult blog, I pretty much kept the heat at that level.

The violence in the novella is pretty much like my novella Shadow's Vengeance, in that it isn't over the top for the genre in question, and in fact I think that this one would make a great companion to the aforementioned novella.

I'm also think about a new title for it as what I got, "Blackness In The White Sand", doesn't really work.

So to sum it up, I think I've found a good genre to dabble in, simply because it allows me to be me in a manner that I'm growing accustomed to. Plus, I think I've finally found the niche that I've been searching for quite awhile.

*Update: I'd originally wrote this post back in late May/early June and since then, I had finished the novella and already performed the 2nd revision. I've also had a few people read and critique it as well, so I got something to use when the time comes to publish it. In the meantime, I've found a seriously old novella that I'm going to tweak and turn into a paranormal fantasy as well. Theme of that one is drugs, so I can have a lot of fun with that one as well.