Do you stick to writing in one genre, or do you mix it up?

Welcome back to another blog hop, with #OpenBook. Here’s this week’s prompt.

Is there a genre you would never try to write? Why?

Considering that up to about eight years ago, I never thought I would write anything, it’s all fair game.

Let’s be quite clear, I don’t make any of this stuff up. I just write what I’m told. I see a film in my head and describe the action via my keyboard. I can slow the film down and pause it,  but I can NEVER fast-forward.  I have no idea what will occur, I get to each part of the story and find out what happens at the same time as a reader will.

I started by writing Sci-fi, copying down the dreams that wouldn’t go away. They turned into the adventures of Dave Travise, a space trader. He had a complicated past, had loved and lost and I learned all about it.

I was then shown the discredited journalist Miles Goram, and his adventures on Reevis. They became Ribbonworld, the first of the Balcom series.

After a dream about a steam-powered typewriter, I was introduced to Horis Strongman and moved into the sub-genre of Steampunk, where I found mighty machines, powered by steam and clockwork. And dragons!

These were followed by a series of space-based crime novels featuring my amateur detective Andorra Pett.

And so it went on, every new idea slightly different from the others.

Survive is a spin-off from the Dave Travise timeline, The Sensaurum and the Lexis is set in my steampunk world at a different time to the Horis Strongman novels. Life and Other Dreams is a dual-time thriller while The Hitman and the Thief is a tale of gang rivalry, in one possible future.

If I had thought (right back at the beginning) that writing about a trader in space was unlikely, moving on to a modern version of a Victorian world and an impossible crime that needed solving was no real surprise. In between, I also found time to write a textbook and a re-imagining of the events of the Battle of Hastings (for a short story collection).

Which is quite a variety.

In the last eight years, as well as the above, I have written about time travel, dual-lives, corporate misdeeds, ghosts, paranoia, conspiracy and corruption. And a bit of romance as well.

Last year I was given the idea for a fantasy quest, with winged aliens who might just live among people like us. I watched the film in my head last November, when I wrote just over 52,000 words. I’ll shortly be revisiting it, to see if I can add to it before it heads off to my editor.

Who knows what I’ll see next. One thing is for sure, if it’s shown to me it, I’ll write it down.

The voices in my head seem to have no limits on what they send my way.

Let me know what you think about this week’s subject.

I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.

Now see what the other blogs in this hop have to say by clicking below.

Check out the other great blogs here.

I’d love to get your comments, please leave them below. While you’re here, why not take a look around? There are some freebies and lots more content, about me, my writing and everything else that I do. You can join my newsletter for a free novella and more news by clicking this link.