Why do you write Crime?

My wife asked me this the other day, “why do you write crime?”
“Because I love crime” I answered, obviously.
“But you read a lot more fantasy than crime?” she asked.
I thought about it, and she’s right (about everything I mean, not just this), I do read more fantasy, though I love crime thrillers as well.

So why did I end up writing a crime thriller first? Well let’s get a thing clear, the first story I ever wrote was fantasy. It was never finished. And I’m currently working on a fantasy project, parallel to my crime thrillers, and various other stuff.

So maybe it’s strange that I started out with a crime thriller. Frankly, I just thought it was a good idea I had, for the plot I mean. I remember it coming to me a day I was bored at work, and I was just making stories up in my head. It became more and more interesting to me, so I decided I need to put it down in words.

Frankly, I find genres to be… restrictive, both as a reader and an author. It’s not like I decided that I had to write a crime thriller, when I started writing. It was all about the story. It’s the same when I read, I tend to focus on the plot to see whether or not I’d like to read it. The only times “fiction” and “crime” are useful to me, is when I’m choosing where to browse in a bookshop. I’ll read anything as long as I find the plot interesting. When I was younger, I read lots of books in a series called the Black Dagger Brotherhood. I found them amazing. Turns out, they’re paranormal romance books. Not a genre I particularly ‘identify’ with. But the books were great.

So why do I write crime, a genre that I read much less of than for example fantasy? Because it’s about the story, not about what box you put it in.

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