Pat, thank you once again for dragging me into the world of the Internet in order to guest on your brand new website/blog/auction site/car repair knowledgebase. The Global Gigantic Spider Web is something new to me. I didn’t realize there was so much free porn; hence, the reason for the lateness of this essay. I meant research, people! Boy!

Soon enough, the fine people reading this blog can pick up an online, episodic serial written by myself and A.A. Blakey titled Her Father’s Wooden Leg. It’s my first foray into a comedic action thriller that doesn’t take place in outer space. In November I’m going to release a murder mystery/conspiracy novel titled Black November which takes place in a world where retail has taken over … Okay, that’s probably a misnomer. I meant to say an alternate reality where this takes place.

These are new genre choices for me. I’ve toyed with them but never got past the stage of fiddling around with the arrangement of paragraphs. This time around I’m making it happen. One reason is to get more frequent guest spots on this blog without threats toward Pat’s garden gnomes. The other reason is to shuffle the deck a bit with my writing skills. Something I allude to in a recent A to Z Challenge blog.

Many authors pick a genre and stick with it in perpetuity, even if their later works start to lose luster with fans. Then you have authors who decide to stretch their literary brains and try something new after ginormous successes. I speak of people like J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, and the person who wrote the Penthouse Forum. Independent authors are known for performing the genre shuffle as they leap between literary and speculative fiction on a regular basis.

Before I decided to turn into a professional writer I thought science fiction was going to be the genre for all my novels. And while I still have the Saunders’ Savages novels and an online, scifi serial in the works, they aren’t going to be my bread and butter. I want to appeal to many audiences as the founder of Wooden Pants Publishing, and this means scifi, mystery, thrillers, and non-fiction – all with a healthy dollop of non-fact, low-cholesterol comedy. So, as long as it has a good beat and I can dance to it, I’ll be doing the genre shuffle. Give it a try yourself – I think you’ll enjoy it.

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Rich Keller is a man of many hats. He is a husband, father, author, comedian, founder of Wooden Pants Publishing, Assistant Director of Northern Colorado Writers, host of the popular NCW Podcast, and host and founder of the soon-to-be popular Between the Pages talk show on KRFC, 88.9 FM, in Fort Collins, CO. In his spare time, Rich tries to find out what all those ingredients are in American cheese, because they certainly ain’t cheese.