Can you Morph Genres?
One writer recently told me her story is "more square peg, round hole in that it is more than a humorous cozy but not quite a heavy suspense mystery."
Creating a harder-edged story within the frame of a light-hearted cozy style mystery can be tricky. My biggest concern is where it would fit in the marketplace.
For instance, just last week I was in a Barnes & Noble store looking for one of the books my client, Susan Furlong, wrote. I found her
Georgia Peach series under “mystery” but not her newest series,
Bone Gap Travellers. I asked for help, and a clerk took me to a second mystery section. He explained they’d found they had separated the cozies from the suspense stories. Both signs just read “mystery.” It seemed like bad planning on their part (who knew they
had two mystery sections?). But apparently these subgenres are so distinct to readers that the national chain found it better to separate them. So … would your book fit in one but
not the other? Or
both?
Straddling genres is both good and bad. Good because that means you can niche into a market that may be underserved and get a dedicated following that way.
However, a mix might be bad when it comes to approaching commercial publishers (who want tried-and-true genres they can market to specifically identifiable readerships). It also means self-publishers need to locate and capture the attention of that niche audience in the first place. But … hey, that is part of the fun of writing, eh? And, remember sub-sub-genres, like Nordic Noir and Mannerpunk, were unknown at some point. Maybe you are on the cutting edge of a new
sub-sub yourself.
