Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Three different shades of crime fiction
In a relatively short time period I've got three completely different types of crime fiction being released. Pariah, which is one month away (Oct. 1) goes several steps (miles??) further than Small Crimes, and is by far the most explosive and subversive crime fiction I've written. On the other extreme is my novella, Julius Katz, which appeared in the Sept./Oct. issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and while not exactly a cozy is on the opposite end of the hardboiled spectrum. Light, breezy, and some might (and have) even say charming. Then there's Bad Karma out Oct. 16th, which as a hardboiled PI, albeit with a new age twist, and can be thought of as solidly in the middle. This raises the question as to readers expectations. As readers do you expect the same level of crime fiction from your writers, or are you willing to accept books that range the crime fiction spectrum?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Good question, Dave. As a writer, I've penned short stories from cozy to noir and everything in-between. The book MS series I'm working on is a "PI procedural." But I have a suspicion that when it comes to novels in general, readers expect the same type of writing from an author. Using my mother as an example, she's definitely of the "traditional" mystery vein; if an author switched from that style to hard-boiled in their next novel, I doubt she'd stick with it.
BV, I guess this is what pseudonyms are for. What I'm doing is publishing all my dark crime fiction with Serpent's Tail, my supernatural tinged books with Overlook Press, and a hardboiled PI series with Five Star, and I guess if I publish anything else it will have to with a pseudonym.
Post a Comment