The Adventure of Blending Genres by Joe Hart

To me writing has always been an adventure.

Before I learned various rules and boundaries it was purely imagination and creativity fueling the story. Now that isn’t to say my first works were cohesive in a traditional sense, plus I was very young (nine or ten when I wrote my first stories). That feeling of freedom and excitement have never left me when looking at a blank page and that’s probably the reason I’m writing full time today, but learning the basic dos and don’ts helped shape my writing and gave it direction that it didn’t have before. As the old saying goes- you need to learn the rules before you can break them.

As I got older and my writing developed I noticed not only my craft changing but also the elements that made up my plots. Cross genre or crossover books are the terms that have become well known in recent years due to readership devouring stories that didn’t necessarily adhere to one specific category. To me this made perfect sense. Thrillers, horror, mystery, romance, political intrigue, and literary fiction had always been very definable, but these new works bent and broke the boundaries, they re-wrote the rules of what an author could or couldn’t have happen within the pages. I think several elements added to the rise of this amalgam of literature, one being the creativity factor that many authors were able to utilize without being bound to one specific genre. By being able to combine two or more genres the possibilities are endless. Imagine a homicide detective who is an angel cast out of heaven who doesn’t remember her past and possesses power she doesn’t understand. How about a murder mystery set on Mars during a crisis that threatens the entire established colony? Or maybe a literary novel involving the very last zombie on Earth who is desperately trying to survive and evade his human pursuers while trying to understand what makes us human in the first place?

Some wonderful examples of cross genre fiction are Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines trilogy and his upcoming novel Dark Matter, Marcus Sakey’s Brilliance Saga, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Chuck Wendig’s Miriam Black series.

In my newest novel, The Last Girl, I imagined a world in which women were no longer born and the fallout 25 years after the phenomenon began. The heart of the book is a thriller, there’s no denying that, but there’s also dystopian elements, action/adventure, suspense, mystery, romance, and a touch of literary philosophy. It was a blast to write and that sense of adventure was there, strong as ever, which is crucial for me when creating living, breathing characters and a plot that draws the reader into another world.

I think readers have been hungering for crossover tales for some time since few people enjoy only one category of fiction, and from my own experience writing across many genres has kept the fire of creation burning that drew me to the craft in the first place.

About The Last Girl

A mysterious worldwide epidemic reduces the birthrate of female infants from 50 percent to less than 1 percent. Medical science and governments around the world scramble in an effort to solve the problem, but twenty-five years later there is no cure, and an entire generation grows up with a population of fewer than a thousand women.

Zoey and some of the surviving young women are housed in a scientific research compound dedicated to determining the cause. For two decades, she’s been isolated from her family, treated as a test subject, and locked away—told only that the virus has wiped out the rest of the world’s population.

Captivity is the only life Zoey has ever known, and escaping her heavily armed captors is no easy task, but she’s determined to leave before she is subjected to the next round of tests…a program that no other woman has ever returned from. Even if she’s successful, Zoey has no idea what she’ll encounter in the strange new world beyond the facility’s walls. Winning her freedom will take brutality she never imagined she possessed, as well as all her strength and cunning—but Zoey is ready for war.

About the Author

Joe Hart was born and raised in northern Minnesota. Having dedicated himself to writing horror and thriller fiction since the tender age of nine, he is now the author of eight novels that include The River Is Dark,  Lineage, and .The Last Girl is the first installment in the highly anticipated Dominion Trilogy and once again showcases Hart’s knack for creating breathtaking futuristic thrillers.

When not writing, he enjoys reading, exercising, exploring the great outdoors, and watching movies with his family. For more information on his upcoming novels and access to his blog, visit  www.joehartbooks.com.

04/16 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

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I am delighted to welcome author Lisa Black! Check out her latest Gardiner and Renner book, That Darkness.

I despise controversy. Hate it. If two people are about to get in a fight I don’t whip out my cell phone camera, I leave the room. I grew up with a short-fused older sister while caught in between two perpetually squabbling besties—all of whom I secretly blame for my decision to marry a man with a fuse so short he made those girls look like Strawberry Shortcake. So suffice to say the last thing I ever try to do in my novels is court controversy. I ignore ‘hot-button’ issues, politics, religion, child-rearing techniques, food preferences and whether or not Picasso is overrated. But I’m afraid I may have edged too close to that cliff with this one.

In That Darkness, it seems like a typical week for crime scene specialist Maggie Gardiner–a gang boss shot in an alley, a lost girl draped over an ancient grave, a human trafficker dumped in the river–nothing all that out of the ordinary for the Cleveland police department as spring turns toward summer along the Erie banks. The methods are usual, the victims unsurprising–but when she notices a pattern, a tenuous similarity among the cases, she begins to realize that her days will never be typical again. How much of her life, her career, her friends, will she be willing to risk to do what’s right?

Jack Renner is a killer who does not kill for any of the conventional reasons…no mania, no personal demons. He simply wants to make the world a safer place. He doesn’t think of himself as a dangerous person–but he can’t let anyone stop him. Not even someone as well-meaning as Maggie Gardiner.

Maggie has the self-sufficiency of a born bit-of-a-loner. She works with a bevy of clever experts surrounded by armed police officers. She is both street smart and book smart, having seen the worst the city has to offer.

But Maggie Gardiner is not safe. And, until she can draw Jack Renner into the light, neither is anyone else.

I love the book. But as the release date loomed I began to have nightmares of getting irate emails from fans saying things such as I can’t believe you ended the book like that and I’ll never read one of yours again. Not to mention one-star reviews on Amazon with titles like Tremendously Disappointing. I shudder at the thought. Then I shudder again. Then I break out the vodka.

Unfortunately—or fortunately—I still wouldn’t change a word. I wrote it the way I did because I had to write it the way I did. That’s the only reason I can give. But to a writer, that’s the best reason of all.

About the book:

In this tour de force of psychological suspense, bestselling author Lisa Black draws from her experience as a forensic investigator to create two of the most fascinating characters in crime fiction: a killer with a unique sense of justice and a woman in a lifelong relationship with death…

That Darkness

As a forensic investigator for the Cleveland Police Department, Maggie Gardiner has seen her share of Jane Does. The latest is an unidentified female in her early teens, discovered in a local cemetery. More shocking than the girl’s injuries–for Maggie at least–is the fact that no one has reported her missing. She and the detectives assigned to the case (including her cop ex-husband) are determined to follow every lead, run down every scrap of evidence. But the monster they seek is watching every move, closer to them than they could possibly imagine.

Jack Renner is a killer. He doesn’t murder because he enjoys it, or because he believes himself omnipotent, or for any reason other than to make the world a safer place. When he follows the trail of this Jane Doe to a locked room in a small apartment where eighteen teenaged girls are anything but safe, he knows something must be done. But his pursuit of their captor takes an unexpected turn.

Maggie Gardiner finds another body waiting for her in the autopsy room–and a host of questions that will challenge everything she believes about justice, morality, and the true nature of evil …

Praise For Lisa Black and her bestselling novels

“Lisa Black writes with immediacy and unmatched authenticity.” –Jeff Lindsay, New York Timesbestselling author of the DEXTER series

“In Black’s skillful hands, you’re in for a surprise…a gifted storyteller.” –Ridley Pearson

“A must-read for fans of Cornwell and Grafton.” —Booklist

“Black, who is a forensic scientist, certainly knows her field.” —Publishers Weekly

“Quite simply, one of the best storytellers around.” –Tess Gerritsen

“Highly entertaining…Fans of forensic thrillers will look forward to seeing more.” —Library Journal

“Pulse-pounding adventure…devilishly clever.” —Mystery Scene

“Lisa Black heightens the suspense.” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

About the author:

Lisa Black has spent over 20 years in forensic science, first at the coroner’s office in Cleveland Ohio and now as a certified latent print examiner and CSI at a Florida police dept. Her books have been translated into 6 languages, one reached the NYT Bestseller’s List and one has been optioned for film and a possible TV series.

Website: http://www.lisa-black.com/

Twitter: @LisaBlackAuthor

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisa.black.3194

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/115085.Lisa_Black

4/16 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch™

THAT DARKNESS by Lisa Black. Kensington (April 26, 2016).  ISBN 978-1496701886.  336p.