Some folks might like whatever genre they read or write unsullied by the intrusion of any other genre, but I like the variety and nuances of blending genres. When I consider the current television shows I like best, I find I like blended stories there as well. Having banished the hundreds of channels offered up by most satellite or cable companies to get my monthly bill to fit my budget, I’ve been watching a lot of really REALLY old re-runs and I’ve been struck by the difference between 20 years ago and now.

     Perry Mason had a regular cast, but what went on in Mason’s personal life, his secretary Della Street, or his PI Paul Drake’s lives when they weren’t busy getting someone off the hook for murder is never seen. The same was true for Lt Columbo as he went about tagging the murderer in that series. We sometimes saw his basset hound in the car, and he frequently mentioned his wife, but other than that, we knew nothing of his personal life.

     But consider Blue Bloods, for instance. An Irish family heavily involved in law enforcement in  New York City: one daughter an assistant DA, the patriarch a past commissioner and Frank Reagan the current one with two sons and now a grandson, police officers. The show is very much a blend of police work, lawyers, trials, but we see the family gathered around the dining table every week. We get a peek into their personal lives and meet their kids. We see their interaction as a family.

     Similarly, in the current FBI series, each of the main cast of characters has a personal life and we get to see parts of those lives and how they impact the job they do as well as how the job impacts their life off the job. We see Omar struggling with being Muslim in a world that often sees Muslims as the enemy, but we also see him struggle with what he is expected to do on the job as an FBI agent verses what his religion teaches him.

     Blended genre fiction can offer up this same diverse and inclusive look at the lives of our characters. Instead of just being a lawyer or a police officer, or a staff member in a hospital, we get to see the whole character wearing all their caps from time to time. I think it adds to the richness of the story and the characters themselves to blend genres. Clearly there are genres you would not care to blend, like racy sex novels and teen coming of age, but all our characters have a life. They aren’t just soldiers. Or doctors, or lawyers. They have families. Maybe a love interest. Kids? Aging parents. Arguments with the local “Karen” in their HOA etc.

     In my police procedural mysteries, Bullseye and Crossfire, set here in my hometown of St Augustine, FL, my main character. Jesse Quinn is the only woman on the major crimes squad so her life at work involves both police work and stereotyping in her profession. But she’s also a divorced mom of two teenagers with all that brings to the table. She has a new love interest as well, just to complicate her life. I think adding a bit of romance and family life makes her more endearing to my readers. Someone they can care about and cheer for. So that series is a blending of women’s fiction, romance and police procedural.

     My newest series is a different sort of blend. In Unspoken Promises, my main character, Kenzie Ross has just had her entire life upended and she travels to a different state to check out the “cottage” she inherited from her old college mentor and friend, only to find a wedding dress in the attic that was never worn. In this series there are two stories to each book: one told in the present day and one in the past, tied to each other by an echoing theme: In the first book it is one of rebuilding your life when everything you planned on falls apart. Unexpected Promises follows that pattern with a bit of history and the fall out that challenges a woman when she becomes pregnant and is abandoned by the guy who got her in that situation, but then a very different man steps up with an unexpected promise. 

     Maybe it’s because I’m the sort of person who’s always danced to a different piper, but all my books have pushed the boundaries. My Tide’s Way series is contemporary romance, but I have to admit that the first editor I pitched the first book (Falling for Zoe) to wanted me to jettison some of what she considered too many side issues. My hero in that book was slogging through life as a single dad, dealing with a teenage daughter and troubled 5-year-old twins as well as his mother-in-law with dementia who had also been abandoned by her daughter along with Jake and the kids. That first editor saw this as too much distraction from the narrow confines of contemporary romance. Fortunately, I later met a different acquiring editor who thought the way I did, and she not only contracted that book, but wanted a whole series.

     Bottom line – I’m all about blending genres in both the books I write and those I read. I think it makes for more interesting reading if the soldier I’m being asked to care about has a family, perhaps a wife and small kids back home, praying they come home, and we see that connection. I like watching reruns of the second iteration of Magnum PI and enjoy the whole dynamic of characters from Kumu, a native Hawaiian, who shows us the Hawaiian culture, to the gang of men who were once soldiers and had each other’s backs then and still do now. They are all different: a helicopter pilot who runs tourist flights, and pulls Magnum out of trouble now and then, his buddy who owns a bar, and another is in a wheelchair. And each of them has “family” that enrich who they are as characters and we get to see those relationships. Juliet Higgins is a Britisher, once with MI6 who went rogue after her partner was killed. Now she’s in Hawaii with a very sketchy past and provides a romantic interest for Magnum. Detective Gordon Katsumoto the with the Honolulu Police had a sister who died of a drug overdose, has a college age son and an ex-wife. His relationship with Magnum is an interesting one that tries his patience at times and makes him a character you really can care about.

     So, now it's time to see what some of my fellow Round Robin BLog Hoppers have to say about blending genres. 

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Sally Odgers 

Bob Rich

Helena Fairfax 

Anne Stenhouse 

Connie Vines