It's rather apt that I write my inaugural blog post for this website on Halloween, since the great preponderance of the stories I have written and published in my career have been horror. One of my earliest, which I think I wrote when I was 14, was a horror story.
But as Stephen King once observed, while I usually write to type, horror certainly isn't the only genre where I've had creative output. The first novel I wrote (a 180,000 word doorstop that is sadly unpublishable) was fantasy. Now and again I come up with a story that is science fiction. My first published novel, Ghost Kiss, was intended as a horror novel... but when I read it over, I realised it was actually a paranormal romance. I've even published a mystery story ('The Best Laid Plans') and tried my hand at some mainstream stuff.
I tend to be slightly leery about authors who only write in one genre. As Stephen King's fans will attest, many of his best works emerged when he wasn't writing horror.
Like King, I write a lot of horror because that's the direction in which my creative mind tends. But a few years ago, when horror as a genre was in the doldrums (not much has changed, unfortunately), my mother-in-law suggested I write a romance novel. Initially I scoffed at the idea... but it was around the same time that I made the bizarre discovery about Ghost Kiss. I had, inadvertently, already written a romance novel.
Now, I wasn't well read in the romance novel department, but I had read everything by Jane Austen, had watched (under husbandly sufferance) rom-coms by the bucket load, and I had some writing chops. Maybe if I could come up with an idea, it would be worth trying. If nothing else, it would be a good exercise.
I began to chew it over and decided the old saw 'write what you know' should apply. I had been a movie critic and entertainment writer for about five years by that stage, so what I knew were movies and Hollywood. I had also spent two weeks in California for a family wedding, so I thought I could describe the geography well enough. From there, a story began to germinate...
The result was Hollywood Hearts Ablaze, which will be published next year through Steam eReads. Had I decided not to try and write outside my 'type', it would never have come to be, and I wouldn't be writing this blog post. So the salutary lesson is don't let anyone pigeonhole you - especially you.