Eden Sharp's Blog - Posts Tagged "genre"
Genre Fluid
Genres, a form of categorisation, have always really been for the benefit of audiences, institutions and critics above authors. As storytellers, we might ask are genres really ‘out there� at all? Before the advent of digital publishing and the ereader, publishers largely expected their authors to stick to one genre of writing so that readers could associate them with this, making the work easier to market. A lot of things have changed.
Paperbacks came to be produced in industry-standard sizes largely based on book store shelving requirements. As a result, word count became a thing. This also had an effect on form. Shorts didn’t sell. Freed up from all of this authors are now free to write whatever they want. We consume stories differently now and so shorts are back. As writers, we are free to play around with form, to innovate, and to mix and match genres blurring the lines like never before.
I have two series in production at the moment. The first, Vigilante Investigator Justice, is a hardboiled crime series. Book #1 TheBreaks was published in 2015 and #2 GET9 will be out towards the end of this year. I’m excited to be having a new series of covers designed which will tie the look of the titles to follow and the series as a whole together. More on the new covers as I get them.
The second, Numinous, is a series that I’m not sure how to describe. I quite like 'speculative crime' � I may have just created a new genre � but some might classify it as paranormal crime. It’s crime anyway. I’m still a crime writer. Originally devised as a television series, I’m going to be experimenting with releasing these stories episodically. The covers will work slightly differently to suit the form. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes and I'll be documenting it here.
Paperbacks came to be produced in industry-standard sizes largely based on book store shelving requirements. As a result, word count became a thing. This also had an effect on form. Shorts didn’t sell. Freed up from all of this authors are now free to write whatever they want. We consume stories differently now and so shorts are back. As writers, we are free to play around with form, to innovate, and to mix and match genres blurring the lines like never before.
I have two series in production at the moment. The first, Vigilante Investigator Justice, is a hardboiled crime series. Book #1 TheBreaks was published in 2015 and #2 GET9 will be out towards the end of this year. I’m excited to be having a new series of covers designed which will tie the look of the titles to follow and the series as a whole together. More on the new covers as I get them.
The second, Numinous, is a series that I’m not sure how to describe. I quite like 'speculative crime' � I may have just created a new genre � but some might classify it as paranormal crime. It’s crime anyway. I’m still a crime writer. Originally devised as a television series, I’m going to be experimenting with releasing these stories episodically. The covers will work slightly differently to suit the form. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes and I'll be documenting it here.
