WIP Wednesday: Playing with Genre

I'm thankful to be home today and squeeze in a little writing time.  Of course extra time means extra thinking...

How do horror books sell?  Depends on how many zombies a book has...  Kidding, but seriously, I'm playing with genre on my WIP. Or I should say, playing in another genre. We'll see how it pans out.  I've put Reunion on hold for a book which had to be written, a thriller (what?!?) called Badlands. The first line:

Ryan enjoyed a breakfast of yogurt, granola, and fresh fruit before he returned to his room and found his son missing. 

Yeah, one of those kidnapping stories. There's going to be copious sex and violence, too. Maybe even an explosion. That is, if Ryan can't stop the explosion from happening. Hmmmm...

Hey... It works for Hollywood, right? 

Hope everyone is having a fantastic week.

WIP Wednesday: Stranger in a Strange Land

And no, I'm not referring to Robert Heinlein's 1961 science fiction novel.

Not NaNo-ing always makes me feel a bit "out of the loop". Many bloggers are deep in the NaNo muck, and I'm here, piddling away at a pace of 500-800 words a day on my new book.  Not a NaNo pace at all. Not at all.

Slow and steady wins the race? All right... but I didn't know I was in a race.

Speaking of strangers, here's a snippet of strangeness from what I'm tentatively calling Reunion:

“Hold on,” James said. “Where the hell did Carl go?” 

The three men faced each other and turned slowly, eyes scanning the rows of stone and dark fences of trees. James let his gaze drift past the grey ribbon of highway, K-15, which ran along the western edge of Greenwillow. No Carl. Plenty of darkness. A gust of hot summer breeze meandered through the cemetery. Late July brought temperatures near the century mark earlier that day, but James shivered.

Don't worry. Carl's fine.

For now.