Two Genres At Once

Although Homecoming is currently my last planned publication unless I start being able to make money at this venture, that doesn’t mean I’m no longer writing.  Homecoming was written several years ago, so it’s not like it’s something new.  But as a writer, I want to write.  Therefore, I’ve finally started to write once again.

This new book is different than anything I’ve done before.  The biggest difference is that I’m trying to mash up two genres at once – science fiction and fantasy.  It starts out in sci-fi, with a group of starships departing Earth on humanity’s first real colonization effort outside of the solar system, so it goes into what a wormhole looks like, how an advanced society has used gravity tractors to move Earth beyond the reach of an expanding sun(as well as move several other planets into zones to make them habitable), and why the need for licenses to have babies has motivated people to go on this journey.  In other words, pretty standard sci-fi stuff.

However, the second chapter will start in the fantasy world where dragons, elves, and magic exist, so I have to switch gears, and it’s a challenging switch.  Do I change the writing style?  How do I separate the worlds at first, and at what point do I mix them?  More than that, once the characters and adventures from the different worlds start to mix, how do I handle that, and how will the audience react?

I’ve never written fantasy before, although I’ve enjoyed it immensely.  I played D&D as a child, and my love of magic and the worlds created by such giants as JRR Tolkien and George RR Martin is enormous.  Still, it’s a new style for me, although each writer has his or her own style and handles each story differently.  The question becomes how do I alter each entry, if at all.

And I’ll try not to go crazy in the process…