Cross-genre books are great fun to read, and challenging to write!

Novels fall into broad categories, or genres: romance, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, literary, etc. Then within those genres there are varyingly popular and established subgenres. For example, mystery has hard-boiled, cozy, police, thriller, supernatural, etc.

Genres are more than a means of categorising books. They capture a sense of people’s expectations. So, a romance has to have a happy ever after (or happy for now) ending.

Consciously or unconsciously, authors write to those expectations – even when we’re subverting them.

The challenge with cross-genre novels is to meet the expectations of two different genres.

For example, science fiction romance has to blend the sci-fi expectation of ideas springboarding off current science with a romantic plot that includes a happy ending. In the wide range of sci-fi romance available you’ll see the challenge of cross-genre novels: some of the sci-fi romances have almost no science (I’d describe a significant proportion of the alien romances that way. They’re more fantasy monster heroes than science-based concepts), but have lots of romance. Whereas other sci-fi romances are strong on the science-based world building but struggle with relationship development.

The decision as to how much to pull from each contributing genre is an issue of where the author aims to take the book. There is no right or wrong answer, only the challenge of clearly presenting the book (via title, cover and blurb) so that readers pick it up with a fair idea of what expectations of genre it will meet.

I’ve been particularly focused on the challenges of cross-genre novel writing as I work on the fourth book in my Faerene Apocalypse series. Blending a post-apocalyptic survival tale with a fantasy quest is gorgeous fun. In my mind, they balance each other: grim realities and wondrous magical creatures; the collapse of modern society and the emergence of a Renaissance world; human ingenuity and supernatural incomprehension. In the conflict and tension between two genres a lot of very cool ideas are born. If you set the world of the novel on strong foundations, then it eagerly carries the weight of two genres.

The benefit of combining two genres is that they can be used to reinforce elements of each other. Paranormal romance makes this particularly clear. The paranormal element (magic, shapeshifters, demons, etc) provides a means of emphasising the emotional issues of the romance. For example, the fated mates trope (the paranormal romance expression of the soul mates trope) can go as far as to include telepathy or lives linked so that if one dies, so does the other. In short, the paranormal element raises the stakes in the emotional conflict of the romantic element.

Cross-genre novels are among my favourites. Drawing from two sets of expectations broadens and deepens the story.

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My new release, Space Rodeo, is available in Kindle Unlimited: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VYG46DQ/