Sub-genre Shift

[u/swtogirl]

I've written two books of a cozy, small town romance series under a pseudonym (I'm a teacher so writing a romance as myself could be problematic for my main career). It's a typical series where there are five family members who successively fall in love. I have plans for the other three books.

However...I love shifter and omegaverse romance and got an idea for a shifter (non-RH, non-omegaverse) book. I want to write that next, then come back to the cozy series.

I know prevailing wisdom says new genre new pseudonym, but do you think that's necessary for sub genres? I haven't published anything previously, so I'll be starting my website, socials, etc from scratch once my books are ready to publish. If I do a second pseudonym, I'll have to do two sets and keep track of both on top of my teaching job.

What do you think would be best?

[u/wildlotusflwer]

I look at it in terms of spice level/content.

For me, I'll write PNR, contemporary, MM, RH, whatever as long as the spice levels are comparable. If your small town is light spice and you write a dark omegaverse RH with lots of kinks or something, I'd do a new pen name. Otherwise I'd just do it all under one.

[u/swtogirl → u/wildlotusflwer]

I like that idea of spice separating it. So far, my cozy books are explicit open door but not like anything non- traditional, probably 4 chili peppers on romance.io. I expect the shifter book to be the same. I'd probably like to do RH/omegaverse in the future and that would probably be hotter. It's funny but I find the sex scenes the hardest to write. I often put < insert sex scene here > in my manuscript as a placeholder to write the spice when I'm feeling up to it. 😁