And now for something completely different...

I have commitment issues.  Jobs, cities, relationships, genres...  My mother calls it "thriving on variety" which is a nice way of saying I can't stick with a damned thing.  I'm a lifelong temp.  Temp employee, temp resident, temp girlfriend. 

The only constant in my life, year in and year out, is writing.  My one long-term relationship is an ongoing love affair with the written word.  But even in my writing, I can't seem to stick to just one thing.

I'm a genre-jumper. 

I started out as a fledgling writer (lo, these many years ago) dabbling in fantasy.  I wended my way through intrigue into romance, trying out sassy contemporaries and writing a few gawd-awful historicals before my first novella was published by Samhain.  The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant. A funny paranormal romance.  Yet another genre. 

I thought, at the time, "I've found my niche!"  I started introducing myself as an author of paranormal comedy.  I wrote another book o' ghostly lovin' and sent it off to my editor, but while I was waiting to hear back (there's a lot of waiting in the publishing biz...) an idea crept into my head and began clamoring to be written.  Another paranormal idea, yes, but light on the funny, heavy on the bow-chika-bow-wow.  Sexy serious shape-shifters.  (Say that five times fast.)  I wrote sexy-serious and sent it off to an anthology call.  And then?  You guessed it.  Release number two = sexy-serious Serengeti Heat.  (Coming June 2009 from Samhain - woohoo!) 

So I started calling myself just an author of paranormal romance, sexy shifters on one side and dippy ghosts on the other. 

Then a funny thing happened.  One of my sassy contemporaries from way back, a rollicking romantic who-done-it at sea, finaled in the Golden Heart (the contest for unpublished romance manuscripts).  There's nothing paranormal about Easy Money (unless the preternaturally hot hero qualifies *g*), so I'm being forced to broaden my niche yet again. 

I'm just gonna start introducing myself like this:  "Hi, my name is Vivi Andrews.  I write fiction."  That way, whichever direction my incurable wanderlust takes me - whether it's to Australia or urban fantasy - I'm covered. 

The moral of the story?  Life doesn't always fit into neat little boxes.  At least, my life certainly doesn't.  No city, no day-job, no genre can contain me.  Sometimes dreams are just too big for boundaries.  And those are the dreams worth chasing.

~Vivi Andrews

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