January was quite a successful writing month I’m happy to report! After barely writing for an embarrassing year and a half I managed to surpass my humble goal of 20k and wrote 72k! What a way to get back into writing!

I’ve been working on three novels, which is now four as I’m doing the Keeping Warm In February Challenge which turned into a novel a couple years ago. The end of that novel is in sight which will make it my first finished novel of the year! I’m already set up to destroy my February’s goal as I’ve already surpassed that same humble goal of 20k!

So without going into to too much detail, let’s dive into the Wriye Blogging Circle question of the month!

“What does genre mean to you? Do you have a “home” genre? Or are you a genre hopper and are comfortable in just about any one?“

Genre to me is the smallest summary you can give about your novel. Its giving a general rule that your novel followed to give your reader a generalized sense about what you’ve written. If I say I wrote Sci fi the reader is pretty sure that space and technology will likely be used at some point. These days there is a lot of cross between Genres so its likely giving  you the most prevalent aspect of the novel.

I don’t really have a home genre, as I usually say I write in the “All the cool stuff genre”, which to me encompasses Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and basically anything with a supernatural or magical twist. To me this also includes Distopia, which I’ve yet to write myself but really want to. I find it hard to write much in the way of ‘real world’ fiction as we already live in the real world, I want to see the fantastic!

I can move around the genres within my collection of ‘cool stuff’ fairly easily but I’ve recently been challenged to write outside this collection. I’ve managed to write in a few different genres but I’m not sure if I’d actually use the word comfortable about the experience. I mean, I’m working on a Romance (which I will deem a Supernatural Romance because its got a LOT of supernatural aspects to it, almost to the point of clouding out the Romance), but I definitely wouldn’t say that I’m comfortable in that Genre. I would probably say that I’m enjoying the visit, but I’m looking forward to returning home.

These tests of genre have been very interesting to me, I’ve got to say, as its a real test of my skills. I like to go through the exercise of pushing myself to see if I can do something that I’d never have tried had it not been for the challenge. I’d definitely recommend it to others, its a great creativity exercise!

Do you read the same genre you write? Yes or no? If yes, why? And if no, why not?

Yes, definitely! I write about the fantastic because that’s what I’m most interested in, and I read about it for the same reason! There is just so much creativity in “all the cool stuff” and its amazing to see what other writers come up with, and believe me, I’ve met a LOT of very talented writers lately! Besides, all that drama that ‘real world’ novels are about are in the genres I read, its just surrounded by so much more!