When Lisa Kleypas announced that she was going to start writing contemporary Romance, I was skeptical. After reading however many of her historical Romances, would I be able to make the transition with her? Now, three contemporaries later (her newest is set to release next week), I think I actually enjoy her more in her contemporary voice, which is saying something, since I have greatly enjoyed her historicals.

But I can’t say the same thing about every author who changes subgenres; in fact, I find many of those transitions unsatisfying, the author’s voice in one or another genre not resonating with me as a reader.

I think I’m especially hard on authors who go from contemporary to historical Romance, in part because I see the history as so important that I wonder if the author is as committed to that kind of research as she is to whatever it takes to write a contemporary. That may not be a fair question, but I ask it mentally whenever I hear that an author is going to write a historical, especially after she’s been writing contemporary or romantic suspense. It’s a doubly unfair question because in my opinion a good straight contemporary is not so easy to come by these days, highlighting the peculiar challenges of writing in any subgenre.

So yes, I know I am being unfair when I greet the news that an author is changing subgenres with a squinty-eyed kick of resistance. It feels like more and more authors are moving across subgenre lines. And as my Kleypas example shows, sometimes the payoff for me, as a reader, is rich indeed. So why am I a little sour about this whole Romance Dosado?

Essentially, I think it’s related to my sense that the genre is being driven more and more by perceived market trends. Paranormals are selling solidly, and can that be an incentive for an author to shift subgenres? Historicals have consistently solid sales, so would a move in that direction stimulate sales and raise an author’s profile? Or perhaps a first book pushed the author into a niche and now she wants out, not being completely comfortable that niche to begin with? In other words, how much do market trends affect how an author chooses a subgenre? I remember Candice Proctor saying that one of the reasons she left Romance was that it was no longer fashionable to change historical period and place from book to book, and she didn’t want to be pigeonholed into one place and time. When Connie Brockway moved from historical Romance to contemporary (or was it really women’s fiction? I tend to get that all mixed up), she indicated that she was “tired of writing ‘sympathetic heroines’” and that she felt publishers were not allowing for as much “experimentation” in the genre. So how much of an author’s choice to change subgenres is connected to perceived limitations on the publishing/marketing end, and how much of it is an internal push to push one’s writing voice in a different direction?

I’d like to think that authors find a home in certain types of writing, that they find the perfect fit for their voice and the stories they want to tell, and that there’s a magical aligning of the plants and the stars and the judges on Top Chef (Hosea??? Really???) and the perfect book is born. Yeah, I know that’s probably naïve and contradictory to the way market forces interact with artistic ambitions. And it may seem like I think authors shouldn’t feel free to write whatever they want in whatever subgenre they want.

But it’s more like I’m starting to feel like the greater diversity we’re getting in subgenres is becoming eclipsed by a sense of sameness within those subgenres. And then I see longtime historical authors like Teresa Medeiros writing vampires Patricia Gaffney abandoning Romance altogether, and I wonder if authors are feeling more and more like they have to write certain things in order to sell, whether or not their voice is a natural fit and whether or not they take to the change easily. Is the subgenre slide a signal of narrowing boundaries in the genre and narrowing gaps between subgenres, or am I just being a cranky, finicky reader?

How do you feel about authors changing subgenres? Do you find most of them successful, and do you think Romance is Romance, no matter the subgenre?

This entry was posted by Robin on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 6:00 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.