Elzbieta Tibai asked Josh Lanyon:

Since you write primarily of the murder/mystery genre, do you find it difficult or challenging to write in a different genre?

Josh Lanyon Interesting question. My short stories are almost always just straight romance, and I love writing those brief but highly emotional pieces. But with that exception, all my longer work usually contains at least some mystery or crime elements--and the character dynamics that interest me remain pretty consistent.

If you're a competent writer, you can write anything. But you will not *please* everyone by doing so. ;-)

By that I mean that a lot of *readers* have trouble with the jump from genre to genre. I think that's inevitable. Readers who know and love my thrillers are usually not huge fans of historical or spec fiction, and they usually complain when they stumble across those other titles. And same with readers who love the historicals or spec fiction but find thrillers and mysteries too "commercial" or too whatever.

And in fairness, I'm the same way. I might like someone's historicals and be completely uninterested in their contemporary work.

It's a fact that it's impossible to please everyone, and no matter what I'm working on, there is ALWAYS someone unhappy that it's not something else. And usually not too polite to express that displeasure. :-D

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