Lori wrote: Maybe a new mix--Space bound Cowboys (along the lines of the Firefly series). Or Gothic Chick Lit. (someone please write one of those--I've got to read it.) Or maybe Kick Ass Heroine Regencies. (Serve your own d@mn tea.)Whatcha think? You can tell me...
Lori, I love these ideas. While I read and write the subgenre you don't enjoy, romantic suspense, your ideas for the next big thing grab me. I'd love to read a Gothic chick Lit. I can picture the heroine now, in Elvira garb and living in the hero's dark mansion. And KickAss Heroine Regencies? Those would be a hoot. They'd have to be tongue in cheek.
Not something I want to tackle on my computer, but if they're published, I want to read them!
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I've been around long enough to see the "new best thing" come and go. And come around again. Then go again. Which is why I think it's a mistake for any author to target a trend. I also think that most publishers would rather jump on a band wagon than go to the trouble of building one, which is why they'll inevitably kill all the "hot" subgenres by flooding the market with books. Which inevitably means -- let's face it -- that some not absolutely wonderful books get out there. And even if they're all wonderful, readers will get tired of them. I mean, even chocolate truffles would get old if you ate them for every meal all day long. (Actually, I'm not sure of that one, but I've heard it said that's the case. )
I remember, at my very first conference as a newly contracted author in San Diego in 1982, the brilliantly talented Tom Curtis explaining the (then) death of Regency. (Confession time, here. I'd never heard of Regencies and had no idea why most of the room was in mourning. And panic mode as they struggled to find a new genre to write.)
But I digress. . . anyway, he said that Regencies had always been the fluffy toy poodle of publishing, yet houses had expected that poodle to act as a locomotive and pull the entire publishing business. Which so couldn't happen. So they essentially killed it as the poor thing died trying. (I was paraphrasing that last part, but that was the gist of his workshop.)
I couldn't count the number of times I've thought of Tom and that comment as it's proven true for so many other genres over the years.
Having said that, the one thing I do think we're going to see more and more of is genre blending. I can easily predict this because I know what a lot of us are working on. ;)
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