Crossing the Genre Barrier by Bethany Maines

Crossing the Genre Barrier by Bethany Maines

Each of my books features key elements – tough heroines (sometimes tough is physical, sometimes it’s mental), romance, and adventure.  Sometimes I add in a little magic, sometimes it’s a more standard mystery. Being an author in more than one genre is like trying to juggle flaming torches and bowling pins—exciting but tricky! Each genre comes with its own rules, tropes, and audience expectations, so switching between them can feel like constantly learning a new language. The mental gymnastics are real!

Marketing adds to the challenge. Readers often want consistency, so convincing my paranormal romance fans to check out my mysteries (or vice versa) can be tough. In retrospect I probably should have used a pen name to keep the audiences separate, but I didn’t want to juggle multiple identities. 

But here’s the fun part: writing in different genres keeps my creativity fresh. It’s a chance to stretch my skills and explore new storytelling horizons. Sure, it’s tricky, but it’s also incredibly rewarding!  

Onto the Next Genre

For my upcoming release, Elevator Ride—Book 1 of the Valkyrie Brothers Trilogy—I’m sticking to

what I think of as my “bread and butter” – romance with some mystery and action riding shotgun. 

In Elevator Ride, Vivian Kaye has been tasked with serving a cease-and-desist letter to Rowan Valkyrie—the most hated tenant in Seattle’s Hoskins building—but when she ambushes the seasoned security professional in the elevator, she ignites a powder keg of tempers and attraction. But what might have been a light-hearted office affair turns deadly when a mysterious assailant attacks Vivian and her boss. Desperate to protect the independent Vivian, Rowan knows that unless he can push all the right buttons, this elevator ride will be going straight down.

Elevator Ride was inspired by my day job as a graphic designer. My firm worked with an estate planning seminar and as a result I listened to an amazing amount of tales of estate planning gone wrong. The amount of times that someone literally tried to kill a grandparent to get the farm was shocking.  (Yes, the farm! Apparently the majority of family owned farms in the US are held in trusts and that leads to litigation when things get complicated.) And while Elevator Ride doesn’t involve a farm, it does involve a missing will.  

Poly Genre

I love using these touch points from different worlds to make new ideas and while I can understand that it might be easier if I let myself be pigeonholed to one genre—I can’t help loving more than one genre.  (Does that make me a polygenreist? Am I the reverse harem of novelists?) And I hope that readers will also enjoy reading a laugh out loud romance where they solve the mystery and stop the bad guy.

Want more? 

RELEASE DATE: 3/24/25

PREORDER Elevator Ride: https://amzn.to/3AnaMLQ

Bethany Maines is the award-winning indie and traditionally published author of romantic action-adventure and fantasy novels that focus on women who know when to apply lipstick and when to apply a foot to someone’s hind-end. She can usually found chasing after her daughter or glued to the computer working on her next novel or screenplay. You can catch up with her on Facebook or on her website – www.bethanymaines.com