Why I Write Across Genres

One of the questions I’m asked most often is why I write in different genres. It’s a fair question. Most writers tend to settle into one lane... crime, romance, historical fiction, fantasy. Readers come to know what to expect, and there’s certainly something to be said for that. But I’ve never really worked that way. For me, the idea always comes first. It always has.

I don’t sit down and decide to write a psychological suspense novel, a historical drama, or a dystopian thriller. I begin with an idea, a feeling, sometimes just a question, and from there the book usually reveals what it needs to be. Sometimes that becomes something dark and intimate, like Low Reach, where tension grows out of family, secrets, and the things people are willing to bury.

Sometimes it becomes something rooted in history, like The Silence of Rose Carter, where personal struggle is shaped by a world very different from our own, but driven by emotions that still feel familiar.

And sometimes it becomes something imagined, like The Harmony Directive, where dystopian fiction allows us to explore power, control, and identity from another angle.

On the surface, those books might seem very different. But to me, they are all exploring the same essential things: truth, fear, power, love, survival, identity. Those themes do not belong to any one genre. They belong to people. And people are what interest me most.

Genre, for me, is simply the lens through which those ideas are explored. The emotional core is often the same. Writing across genres also keeps me honest. It stops me repeating myself. Each new book asks something different. Historical fiction demands research and discipline. You cannot fake the world. Suspense demands control of tension and timing. Dystopian fiction demands imagination, but also structure. If you are building a world, the reader has to believe in its rules.

Each genre sharpens a different skill. And that keeps the work exciting.

Of course, there is always a risk in writing this way. Readers may discover you through one kind of book and be surprised by the next. But I’ve made peace with that. Because I would rather follow the strongest idea than force myself to stay in one category simply because it is easier. I think readers recognise honesty. They know when a book has been written because the writer had to write it. That is always the aim. To follow the book where it wants to go, not where it is expected to go.

And perhaps that is why I write across genres.

Because stories, like people, rarely fit neatly into one box.

Thanks for reading, Neil.