What would you do if you had a story idea you loved but was outside your genre? (With Paul Regnier!)

We have Paul Regnier with us again (hooray!) and today, I get to show you all his books.

Currently, Paul has a series out with Enclave Publishing. It's called the Space Drifters series and you'll have to pop over to his website for summaries and details of the second two because I don't want to spoil things, but here's the summary for book one and I have to show you his covers. They're spectacular.

Space Drifters: The Iron Gauntlet

Captain Glint Starcrost is not having the carefree, adventurous life the space academy brochures promised star pilots.

Broke, with an unreliable star freighter and a bounty on his head, Glint is desperate enough to try anything. Even set out on a quest to find a fabled good luck charm, the Emerald Enigma.

Now for a crew. A passive aggressive ship computer, a peaceable alien warrior, and time-traveling teen from the past aren’t what he had in mind. But they’ll have to do.

The Emerald Enigma won’t wait forever and neither will the bounty hunter tracking him. 

If you're a fan of Guardians of the Galaxy, these books are right up your alley. Definitely give them a look.

And now! For today's panel question:

Paul: I'd write it. This question is timely since that's exactly what I'm doing right now. I recently released the last book in my sci-fi trilogy, Space Drifters, and now I'm working on a two book series that would be classified as supernatural/paranormal comedy.

The "smart/safe" thing for an aspiring writer to do is to write for a specific genre, build a group of readers that love that genre, and stick with it, slowly building your readership over time. But then, who embarks on a writing career looking for the "smart/safe" thing? Writing isn't exactly a recipe for financial success. But when inspiration strikes outside of your genre, what can you do? Ignoring inspiration and taking the "smart path" is death to the true creative tale bubbling inside of you.

My advice is to write what inspires you and pursue the story you feel passionate about and let the chips fall where they may.

Jill: I’d write it. Or I’d at least write down the idea and give it a folder in my file cabinet. There have been times where I’ve taken and idea and switched its genre. This happened to me with The Safe Lands. I’d originally wanted that to be a medieval fantasy series, but my publisher at the time was only interested in dystopian, so I took some time to brainstorm whether or not the idea would work in another setting and found that it did. 

Steph: This has only happened to me once, with The Lost Girl of Astor Street. It worked out that my contemporary YA titles had never really taken off, so finding a new genre to write it was a smart career move. If it happened to me again, I suppose I would publish under a pen name. 

Shan: I love each of these answers because it's a true glimpse into different facets of the industry. Paul's right. It's safest to do one thing and do it until you excel at it and have an audience built. But even the safe thing doesn't always pan out. My advice is always to consider what kind of author you want to be and aim for that. I want to be an author who has the freedom to move around a bit and write what I'm passionate about. How that unravels in each career may look different, but I don't know how you can stifle an idea that must be written now. I suppose if you can stifle it, it wasn't meant to be just then. Perhaps the passion wasn't hot enough. But if you're burning with the need to write an idea, my guess is you'll do it. There won't be an excuse big enough to keep you from it.

And you? What would you do if you had a story idea you loved but it was outside your usual genre?