First – the introductions! Hi Manor Lakes. Maybe you’ve seen some of my books on your library shelves. I haven’t been an author for long. In fact I only started writing a few years ago when I was working on a joint writing project with my son and he told me to “Go write your own book.” In other words, butt out and leave my story alone! I thought that was a fair enough comment and good advice. So I started writing.

But I have always been a reader. And that’s a writing tip right there – every writer I know is an avid reader. My favourite genre to read is fantasy and when I first started writing, I thought I would write a fantasy book. I did but it was terrible. So authors don’t always end up writing the kind of stories they read.

What is your favourite genre and why? Do you have a favourite book in that genre? Some of my favourite fantasy books are Lord of the Rings, The Old Kingdom Chronicles trilogy by Garth Nix, The Tales of the Otori series by Lian Hearn, The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series by Michelle Paver and The Rangers Apprentice series. Are they on anyone else’s favourites list?

Sometimes I wonder how many genres, or kinds, of books there are. So I decided now was good time to do some Internet research and I found 59!!!! Something for everyone.

Let’s see if we can manage to find a book for every one of these genres and subgenres – I should warn you some of them are pretty tricky. Leave a comment suggesting a title and the genre/subgenre. Some books might belong to more than one genre. I wonder how many genres a single book could belong to? I’ll be very impressed and happy to add more genres to the list if anyone can find some. If you are unsure about any genre and can’t find a description on the internet – just ask me. Maybe we’ll agree to cross it off the list!
Adventure/Action, Comic/Graphic, Fantasy (alternate world, animal, Celtic, comic, contemporary, dark, folktale, heroic, high, historical, medieval, myth, prehistoric, romantic, steampunk, superhero, sword and sorcery and urban), Gothic (a story of romance and horror ), Historical Fiction, Horror (body-related (disease, mutation etc), ghost stories, natural disaster, psychological thriller, and supernatural) Humour /Comedy, Crime/Mystery (detective, medical, police procedural, spy, supernatural, and whodunit) , Poetry/verse novel, Political, Romance (contemporary, historical, paranormal, fantasy, and time travel ), Science-Fiction - 'what if' stories that are based on science (alternate history, apocalyptic, biopunk, cyberpunk, gothic, steampunk, time travel, space colonization and urban), Suspense/Thriller (crime, medical, disaster, spy, conspiracy, supernatural, psychological), War, Western.

You can print out the list here. Go for it!

PS If you want to ask a totally unrelated – question – feel free. You can even post a book review. If it is a few sentences put it in a comment and if its longer email it to me and I’ll post it to the blog. I’m always looking for suggestions as to what I should read next. Don’t forget to say what genre it is.

And while we are thinking about books in general, ask Tye to put this one up on the screen for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev4HeHUMluQ Not only is it a great book trailer but in Australia the book is published by the same people who publish me!