Pardon that title, please. I couldn't think of anything else

Well, I just discovered something about myself that surprised me. As I am focusing most of my energy on my--now--Traditional Fantasy Dark Destinies Trilogy, I decided to scribble down my ideas for future manuscripts, so I wouldn't forget them. I wrote the main premise for each future novel, along with the Genre and 'working title'. Nine stories in total came to me, which pleased me greatly--Nice to have a plan for more, right? Even if some of them might not come to fruition.

What surprised me, after the fact, was that almost every idea was for a Paranormal Romance novel. Here my first story is a Traditional Fantasy Trilogy, and all the rest are Paranormal. Huh.

I tried to strain my brain for more fantasy ideas, but only one coughed up: I have a character named Crimson, who I've written a short story about, which is up for feedback on Book Country. I plan to write a string of stories regarding her adventures as a Treasure Hunter for Hire, set in my fantasy world Drugara. So far only one idea for a novel featuring her has come to me, which I've titled 'Crimson Fire', but I'm certain more will pop up in time, because I really, really like my spunky heroine

So, as my curiosity has peaked, I thought I'd ask: Has anyone else ever had an idea for a novel that isn't in the Genre you regularly go for? Like say, you've written mostly in the Romance Genre, when suddenly you have a miraculous idea for a Science Fiction novel? Or maybe, like me, you're writing your first book in the Genre you thought you'd frequent most, when suddenly, as you're reviewing ideas for future manuscripts, you come to discover that most of the ideas are in a different Genre altogether?

Am I alone in this? Sate my curiosity by leaving a reply

Newbie Writer, Amber

I don't think it's unusual to conjure up other ideas for books. I've focused for years on crime with a paranormal twist involving a retired homicide detective now private investigator whose cases always seem to end up involving something supernatural or paranormal. Until lately. I recently finished the first novel (or novella) with a different character.

Now, I'm basically doing nothing while another book rattles around in my head. It will be historical fiction involving the Army of Northern Virginia's retreat from Gettysburg, seen through the eyes of a couple of soldiers in that army. It promises to be the most difficult book I've written.

I prefer paranormal/supernatural because I don't need to research, always a plus when a writer is inherently lazy. It seems the muse is taking me in other directions.

--edited by Charles J. Barone on 3/31/2015, 12:57 PM--

(Late to the party, I know.)

If you ask an agent and/or a publisher, everyone wants you to stay in a single genre. Of course, they are thinking from a perspective based on the economics of ROI, return on investment. They will spend a ton of cash promoting you as a [fill in the blank] genre writer. If you suddenly publish something else, the original marketing is almost useless. Name recognition may have improved, but you risk alienating established fans who are expecting more of the same.

That said, I say pa-shaw!  If you have a good book, then you have a good book. Thankfully, no one told Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to stay in one genre. He dabbled in detective stories, science fiction, historicals, and even horror.

One thing to consider: perhaps slightly change your name for the different genre.

As for me, I started out writing paranormal mysteries, moved to hard-boiled/noir, and currently am in the middle of a three-book series of cozy mysteries. I am published now - but it was a dark vignette akin to something straight from The Twilight Zone.

 After my three-book series? I have an idea for a paranormal religious thriller. And I'm going for it.

You should follow your instinct and go for it, too!

Just my humble opinion.

Never too late to comment on my posts, D J

Good idea about 'slightly' altering my pseudonym to accommodate the different genre. I've heard many a successful author has two or more different pseudonyms for different genres they write in. Like Jessica Bird writing as J.R.Ward when she's writing Dark Paranormal Romance rather than simple Romance.

I'll have to keep this in mind. I'm thinking to write both Fantasy and Paranormal Romance. Having a pseudonym for each genre is a good idea. Maybe, Amber Wolfe writing as Amelia Wolfe. Or something. I'm going to have to sit on it.

Thanks for the brain food.

Amber

Hi Amber,

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What comes, comes. I don't worry about it. Everything else I've written has been verse. Well, not everything. Thirty years ago, I wrote a lengthy memoir of a silent movie star, Madeline LaMouse, drawing on silent-era fan mag interviews with Gloria Swanson.  Written pre-computer, it has been lost in my many moves. I had done a few illustrations, movie stills of her in her celebrated roles, paired with her favorite co-star, Rudolph Rodentino. 

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I go with whatever charms out of my brain. Have fun with your muse of the moment. 

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OK, I've found all I have left of that piece, the cover blurb/intro. The rest is gone with the wind. I see that at some point I changed her name. 

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Marcelline Mulot (rhymes with Monroe). Heard of the dame? Probably not, unless you're a hardcore film buff. Well, Mulot was a movie sensation, one of the first. Between 1922 and 1928 she starred in no fewer than 24 productions. She earned, and spent, a fortune. But her films disintegrated in industry vaults and today, who knows the name?

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She made the sort of mannered film that critics dismiss, but which fans savor, and cherish. Her pictures featured lavish sets and props and gorgeous clothes. Mulot wore stunning costumes, frequently more changes than the other cast members combined. Her on-screen persona was one that almost everyone could relate to. Men adored her come-hither sauciness. Women admired her pluck. She got away with bits that, delivered by a more intense actress, would have been immediately rejected by the Hayes Office, guardians of public morality. 

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She knew when to spoof herself. Semi-nude seduction scenes can hardly be taken seriously when the sizzling sexpot stumbles over her lover's tail during her frenzied Dance of the She-Dervish. She had footage of the notorious scene in her possession, and she ran it for me, on an ancient Powers Cameragraph projector, which was a thrill in itself. "Here it be!" she squealed, in high spirits as the infamous gyration appeared on the screen. I knew what was coming, but had only seen stills. I was on the edge of my seat.

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"We assured the Hayes creeps I'd be good, a jeweled strap affair criss-crossing my six titties, which up until then I'd been very casual about cloaking. I'm a mouse, after all. 

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Cover up, I was told. The code read, female bosoms to be draped at all times. Nothing about an exception for mice. Well, that really got my goat. On a whim I flashed Rudy a rouged tug. There!" She jumped from her chair in excitement. "Did you catch it? One of my lollipops bare naked to the world! It got past the fools, can you believe it? What a laugh we had about that!" 

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"Rudy was so startled he whipped his tail around, and I tripped over it. I fell into his arms, which wasn't in the script. He was supposed to spurn my ardent advances. I was to pick up a mango, munch on it calmly, and grind the remains into his gorgeous puss. I figured the director would insist on tossing the take, but when we saw the rushes, well, the scene was priceless. No way was I gonna let it be junked."

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"Back home we ran around in our birthday suits, no one thought nothin' of it," she confided. "Leave it to a bubble-brain blue-nose to demand that - Christ Almighty! - even a damn mouse cover her bubbies. Okay, the truth: It wasn't a whim, It was my way of saying, Fuck you, Mr. Hayes, you moron!" Her eyes twinkled. She shook her fist gleefully. "Maybelle Snodgrass didn't get from Devil's Asshole, Kansas to top-of-the-heap Hollywood without being an arrogant bitch. I called the shots on my sets, you bet I did. It was my career, a big career, at stake. I had approval of director, cameraman, make-up, the works. Then came the incident. Don't you ask about that, got it? That's off limits." 

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Fifty years gone and the scandal was still a raw wound. Despite her warning, she eventually opened up. Talk about your fall from grace: on top of the world, furs, yachts, a queen of the lot, on a par with Swanson and Normand, or almost, three years later behind the perfume counter in Macy's. The drinking, the drifting, read it here, folks, nowhere else. The lady will have no more to say on the matter. 

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Maybelline (she preferred Maisie, her childhood nickname) was never a great actress, but she had a joie d'vivre that made up for thespian deficiencies. She played the same adorable hussy over and over. She tried to broaden her repertoire several times, but the public would not have it. Her celebrated 'copulatory stare', (stolen from Theda Bara was the film colony consensus. Mulot denies it, claims it was the other way around), seems quaint today, the libidinous thrill of those charcoal-rimmed beady eyes is lost to us, desensitized as we are to lust-lite in these triple-X times. Her brazen vamp now seems roll-your-eyes loony, not the daring portrayal it most assuredly was. 

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I was able to obtain a letter of introduction to the lady, from one who had known her when. Like Garbo, but without Garbo's bucks to cushion the fall, she had chosen to drop out of sight. She could have gone into TV, exploiting the curiosity factor, but she preferred not to deteriorate in the public eye. You'd hear a report of a sighting every now and then, but no solid lead. It took a good bit of sleuthing to track her down. 

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After a period of probation, she granted an eager film student's request to conduct a series of in-depth interviews. The transcripts of those sessions plus the unexpected access to private photos and mementos form the basis of this piece on the work and life of a pioneer of the cinema, a sadly underrated, all but forgotten artist.

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By the way, though she paired with him only once (as both the straitlaced professor of Egyptology Francellia Fortesque and her ancient-era incarnation, the wanton Princess A'isha, in 'Spell of the Siren Sands'), her favorite co-star was the swoon-inducing Rudolph Rodentino. 

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Ha! I guess that name rings a bell, eh?

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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MM took her last breath on June 2, 1988. You might wonder about her unnatural longevity. I sure did. Her answer was, "Clean living, sugar," accompanied by a smirk. Maybe the preparation she did for the role as an Egyptologist (she was a maniac for research) furnished her with the secret of a Biblical, and then some, span of years. We'll never know, will we?

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She did not pass alone. I was at her side. I had moved her into my small Jane Street apartment. I had constructed, out of a shoebox, wire, gauze, and miniature silk roses, a replica of the luxurious canopied four poster from "Princess __TK__", the gift which she had received from the studio at the wrap-up of the production, her first smash hit. Luckily, I had stills to work from. It was a pathetic piece of craftsmanship, but it gave her great joy. She died in that bed, surrounded by her photographs, full of piss and vinegar to the end, her acerbic sense of humor diminished not one iota, bright as ever, a delight to be around. Did you happen to catch the obit in the New York Times? I reproduce it at the end of the book.

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It has taken me years to complete this labor of love, and then to find a publisher for it. Interest in the lady was not overwhelming thirty years ago, and her name is even less familiar today. Perhaps it's all for the best. I had originally dealt gingerly with the lesbian affair that ended her career. The world has changed radically since then. 

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Miss Mulot, knowing that I intended to fashion a book from her reminiscences, begged me to be circumspect. The foremost proponent of Anything Goes, circumspect! (Mae West had nothing on Maisie. By the way, they admired other. Are you surprised?) Maybe she'd mellowed. Maybe she was looking to fudge her history for the sake of her legacy, to let her all too brief film work hold the spotlight, rather than her decades-long turn as a flim-flam artist/crank/kook, although that was the role she'd relished above all others. 

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That was then; this is now. The time to tread lightly upon the sensitivities of jingoistic moralists is past; it's time to be brash. MM, the invincible, irrepressible, altogether admirable spirit that she was, would surely agree. If she were alive today, I don't doubt that she would be game to flash an ancient tit and scream, Fuck You, Mr. 'It's not right. It's just plain wrong' Romney! I'll tell you what's just plain wrong, buster. It's your smug certainty about the way others ought to live their lives. I've heard that crap all my life. I'm sick of it. Sure, wear your magic underwear and welcome to it. Let me do my thing without being condemned, or ridiculed, or lied about. I've had enough of that in my life, too.  

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She'd let loose with her raucous squeal: "Sweetie, fix me up with a drinkie, eh? (she loved a dry martini with a fistful of celery in it), throw Cole, that scoundrel, on the Victrola (Cole Porter, she knew him, well), a little boogie-woogie will perk us up, kiddo." 

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Some take a cocktail onion instead of an olive in the libation, in which case it's referred to as a Gibson. She started the fad for a celery stalk stir dunked in vermouth, which was the rage on the Great White Way in her hey-day. It was called a Mulot. I've yet to find this bit of cocktail trivia on Wikipedia. I guess I'll have to insert it myself.

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I will speak about her obsession with a certain cheese product, a fetish she picked up when she made her final, frankly, sordid stab at salvaging her career in Germany, in Der Glanz Des Heuhaufens, Splendors of the Haystack. Go to one of her wild parties, take her, not a bottle of wine, but a can or a tube of a cheese-goo, you were her best pal. That was mostly PR for the books she self-published, a sub-sub-genre, lesbian mouse smut. She staged signings at the few accommodating venues, leftist bookstores and disreputable coffee houses. Buy a copy, she'd scribble a wise-crack and autograph it. (Those items bring good money today. One went at Christie's last ephemera sale for eight-hundred bucks.) 

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You'd get your picture taken with her. You got fed. She'd serve Cheese Whiz on celery stalks, with a wink and a sales pitch: "read my book, eh, kiddo? Got some neat Cheese-Whiz recipes in it. Sorry, no Mulots today, not in the budget." Bring your own gin, she'd donate the celery, dipped in her favorite vermouth. That amusing offer got her press. She tried to extract a modest sum from the vermouth company for the plug. As might be imagined, they preferred to keep their distance. 

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That snub she fed to Winchell, along with a zinger: 'My vermouth is class but me, I'm trash'. He ran it. It was a tasty item, and the name Mulot still merited a mention. Needless to say, he roughed her up - that was his stock-in-trade. She didn't mind. Her crack went (as we would say today) viral. Her books sold like they never had. Maisie the Moocher (as Winchell gleefully christened her) didn't miss a trick.

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That's how she got along, on small cons and considerable charm. She used people, but gently. They, mostly, adored it. She said to me once, I'll never forget it, "the screwball swiped that bit from me, I swear to God. He changed a word, big deal. I have always depended on the kindness of suckers, that was my gag. Mine! People love when you call them a sucker, if you do it to their face. If you happen to be the former ball-of-fire Maybelline Mulot. 

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"Tenn, I called him Tenn, sometimes Tennie, he hated that, he and I ran with the same déclassé crowd. We bumped heads plenty. He'd latch on to me at a bar, a salon, an opening, and follow me around. I thought he was a weirdo. Then I caught on. I'd spit out some inventive vulgarity, you know me and my mouth. He'd whip out a notepad and take it down. It was annoying, sure, but I never made an issue of it. So he swiped material from me. Everyone knew it, everyone who mattered. Hey, I dined out on it for years. I'm what's called a character. I work it, sure I do. There ain't no one can't use some comic relief. Folks are generally glad to do for me in return, thank God. It ain't like I can march down to the market and buy my own damn gin." 

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Martini or two put away, she'd launch into her chicken dance, that's what she called it, (I think of it as her Big Bird dance) crack-you-up gyrations, dips, twirls and kicks from the 'Bird of Paradise' number she'd performed as a youngster on Broadway. I got so I could match her move for move, until we'd both collapse in a fit of giggles. 

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Good for what ails ya, peoples. The cure for those Up-to-Here/Enough-of-This-Crapola Blues. Get silly. I recommend it. Rest in peace, Mulot. The world is a better place for you having been in it.

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--edited by Mimi Speike on 6/28/2015, 11:41 AM--

Sometimes I think about trying to reconstruct that piece. Much of it was based on interviews in the early fan mags. In one article, Gloria Swanson went on and on about how it was said that you couldn't be glamorous when you were only five foot, as she was, and how she disproved that idea. I made her comments a rant by Mulot about how it was insisted a girl couldn't be glamorous if she were only five inches tall. 

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I so regret that I sold my collection of fan magazines to a jerk former roommate when I needed money. I google him from time to time, halfway thinking, maybe I could borrow those mags back for a re-do of Mulot. He's probably in Manhattan, that was his comfort zone, though I lived with him in Boston. Last time I saw him he was in a tiny apartment on Jane Street. I find stuff on him, but nothing recent. I find ancient history. He was briefly Andy Warhol's lover, and was named by Andy to a list of 'Ten Most Beautiful People'. Those Glory Days were long past by the time I met him. 

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Try to recreate Mulot? Who am I kidding? It'll take me to the end of my life to finish Sly's three books, all half written, and a fourth in the thinking-about stage. 

--edited by Mimi Speike on 6/29/2015, 4:51 AM--

Amber, you must have way more energy than I do. Frankly, I'm worn out from Sly. Maybe, if I ever decide I can afford to retire. Of course I can retire, and get by. I mean, retire and be secure. I have two retirement strategies. A. Sly takes off (yeah, right) and B. another stock crash like in 08. My husband, a former stock broker, has us short in financials. He says, another 08 and we're set in style forever. (sigh) Frankly, I think Sly is the better bet.

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Actually, it's only half Sly that has me exhausted. The other half is my out of control yard. Fifteen years ago I tore out all the grass and put in a horticultural wonderland, before my energy and my knees started to give out. Once I get the mess ship-shape for the summer, my gloom (I feel like that guy in Lil Abner, with the raincloud over his head all the time) may lift.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 6/30/2015, 1:47 PM--

I've been writing for over 30 years and I can assure you that I have not been writing in the same genre for that long. I think I'd find it boring if I did so I don't find it strange that you have ideas for other things. 

Ideas for me almost always come from what I've been reading at that time.  I'm pretty vast with my reads, so it isn't too far fetched for me to have an idea for a memoir while also writing a paranormal urban fantasy romance. I have also read a few authors that have crossed sub-genres quite well. One that comes to mind is a NY Times Best Selling romance novelist that has written military, paranormal, contemporary, and billionare romances. She's been indie until now. Her name is Jasinda Wilder.

Another author that crossed genres was the Twilight author Stephanie Meyer she did a Sci-fi novel for adults after the famous YA series. It wasn't as successful as the blockbuster series, but I enjoyed it!

And even J.K. Rowling wrote in other genres and pen names too.

Personally I think if you have an idea see where it takes you. The thing is, paranormal is not that far off from fantasy, especially if you incorporate urban fantasy into your story. Frankly every book I've read with paranormal had rich undertones of fantasy in it. The terms may be a little different like "child of the night" but the structure can be quite similar.