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

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 number of tales of estate planning gone wrong. The number 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 U.S. 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

About the Author:

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 be 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

Has the Pandemic Changed Your Reading Habits?

By Shari Randall

Like many in the Writers Who Kill circle, mystery is my genre of choice, but lately I’ve noticed a change in my reading habits. Maybe it’s the pandemic, politics, or the general ragged state of the world, but I’ve found solace in another genre: Horror. Yep, horror.

It says a lot about the state of the world that I’ve found escape in a vampire saga and a ghost story/serial killer novel: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and The Sun Down Motel. Why is this? Maybe it’s the satisfaction of closing the book, trapping the frights within the covers? There’s no such thing as vampires, right? Though to be honest, the dread and suspense created by The Sun Down Motel did cost me more than a few hours’ sleep.

Both books are bestsellers but The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires included violence toward children, which is a nonstarter for me, and I wish the book had struck more of the sprightly tone of its title. The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James, on the other hand, delivered more than promised by its prosaic title.

Twenty-year-old Carly Kirk’s beautiful Aunt Viv went missing in 1982, and Carly retraces Viv’s steps thirty years later to appropriately named Fell, New York to discover what happened to her. Carly believes that by following in her aunt’s footsteps, working the night shift at the seedy Sun Down Motel, she’ll find the answer. She finds the answer and much more.

We follow each young woman in dual timelines, and since we already know that Viv goes missing, there’s an almost unbearable suspense to reading her chapters. St. James juggles these dual timelines with enviable ease. Carly’s and Viv’s actions mirror each other in a way that underscores the theme of history repeating itself in a world where women, especially young women, are vulnerable. St. James weaves such an atmosphere of dread I found myself holding my breath as each young woman encounters dangers both flesh and blood, and supernatural.

There are so many facets to this book, but one that struck me was the rage that simmered in both Viv and Carly, rage at a world where women are disposable, where a woman can go missing or be murdered and no one is ever held to account. This reality of the lives of young women is one of the most frightening aspects of a book loaded with them. St. James has crafted a thriller that lives up to the name.

Has the pandemic changed your reading habits?

Shari Randall is the Agatha award winning author of the Lobster Shack Mystery series.