By Michele Karlsberg
Michele Karlsberg: Why did you choose to write in your particular field or genre? If you write more than one, how do you balance them?
Carsen Taite: When I sat down to write my first book, I purposefully shied away from the obvious pull to draw inspiration from my, at the time, day job as a criminal defense attorney. After all, I already put in plenty of overtime weeding through the alleged crimes of my clients and helping them navigate their way through the intricacies of litigation. The idea of doing the same for imaginary people seemed like piling on to an already stressful profession. Writing fiction was supposed to be a fresh venture.
And so I turned to romance. It was an easy choice really, since I’d always been a fan. What some deemed formulaic, I found comforting, especially since reality rarely gives us tidy packages. My first novel, truelesbianlove.com, was full of twists and turns as two friends searched for love online, but found their happily ever after where they least expected.
I’m proud of that book the way a parent is proud of a child who’s mastered her first step, but that first wobbly step inspired a desire for more. I’d always loved mysteries and suspense—it was that love that had drawn me to the law in the first place, and I finally realized I didn’t have to choose. The often messy and unresolved, loose ends of litigation could now make sense in the pages of my fiction. Mysteries could be solved, heroes could be vindicated, and lovers could find forever together. I found my passion in romantic suspense.
Carsen Taite’s goal as an author is to spin tales with plot lines as interesting as the cases she encountered in her career as a criminal defense lawyer. She is the award-winning author of over a dozen novels of romantic intrigue, including the Luca Bennett Bounty Hunter series and the Lone Star Law series. Learn more at www.carsentaite.com
Michael Thomas Ford: When I teach writing classes and we start talking about genre, I tell the participants that their story is the body of the book and the genre they chose to write it in is the clothes the body wears. You can take the same story and tell it as a romance, a horror tale, a sci-fi adventure, a western, or anything else you like.
When I first started publishing my novels for adult readers 15 years ago, because they were about the lives of gay men, mainstream bookstores labeled them “gay fiction,” a category that included every single book with a gay character regardless of genre. Gay bookstores, on the other hand, classified them more specifically as “romance” or “mystery” or “horror.” That’s helpful in that readers interested in those specific genres can easily identify books they might like, but it can also be confining to you as a writer, or alienate other types of readers.
I used to worry about it, but, at some point, I stopped. Now I write what I want to write, then let the publishers decide what they want to label the books as. I think there’s absolutely an advantage to always (or mostly) writing specifically in one genre, as it creates a recognizable brand, but I like writing different kinds of books, and I think readers, once they discover you, are usually willing to go along on the journey with you regardless of what costumes your characters are wearing.
Michael Thomas Ford is a 5-time Lambda Literary Award winner and the author of numerous books. Visit him at www.michaelthomasford.com
Michele Karlsberg Marketing and Management specializes in publicity for the LGBT community. This year, Karlsberg celebrates twenty-eight years of successful book campaigns.
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