The Dark Side
It’s been a while since my last blog post, I know. I’ve been busy with such non-fiction things (to quote my partner Jae) as real life. There’s been a lot happening, but I did find myself starting a new novel a couple of months ago – called Irrevocable, and although I’ve only worked intermittently on it, it’s coming along well.
I had hoped to have it finished by now, and indeed last week, I thought I was only a few chapters away from the end. Then over the morning coffee, I had an IDEA. A sort of what if this happened in the book, instead of that? flash of inspiration. Inconvenient, but fun. The idea struck me as pretty damned awesome, so I spent that day looking the 80k word manuscript over to see if it would work. It would and it will, so the end is again not in sight. Apparently I can’t write a short book anymore. I’d thought this one would come in somewhere at the 65k word length, but it passed that long ago. I guess I was having too much fun. Anyway, I’m still hoping to have this one and the half-finished next book in the Michaela and Trisha series out by Christmas, but I might be hoping for too much, once the whole editing and proofing and formatting thing is taken into account. And the fact that we’re moving house next week.
Which is a shame, because I have a whole lot of things planned for next year, and I’d really like to start fresh.
Which brings me to another reason why you haven’t heard much from me just lately. I’ve been doing an awful lot of thinking about the direction I want my writing career to go in. I’ve enjoyed writing every single book I’ve put out in the last two years, there’s no question about that, or that I’m going to continue writing the same sort of stories, but I’ve decided to branch out into the mainstream as well.
You see, I love horror fiction. Always have, always will. It’s what I prefer to read and it’s what I prefer to write, but it’s sure not a way to make a living writing horror stories for lesbians. The market’s just too small. Not that I’ve been doing too badly at all, or that I expect to find great gobs of success in the mainstream market, but I do want to broaden my writing horizons.
A lot of the stories I want to write don’t have any big focus on relationships, and it’s the relationships you kinda need to include if you want to write lesbian fiction. Otherwise, well, it’s just fiction, isn’t it? So, I’ve decided that the stories I want to tell that are plain and simple horror stories, I’ll write under another name (Kate Hansen) and those in which relationships play a significant part, I’ll continue to write featuring lesbians, and as Kate Genet. I’m hoping there are people who will read from both lists.
It’s an exciting idea for me, because it frees me to really let my imagination go wild when it comes to storylines. Of course, it’s going to mean a lot more work, but when your job is as fun as a day at the circus, what’s a little hard work?
I’ll be keeping this blog going, though perhaps not posting so often, and I know there are still going to be plenty of stories I want to write with a lesbian focus, so all you faithful readers of mine will still be getting some satisfaction. And if, like me, you’re a horror fan, you can come check out what I’ll be writing over there on the dark side.
Wish me luck!
Filed under: Writing Journal
