The heist.
Whodunnit.
Time Travel.
Court / political intrigue.
Heart of Darkness-esque.
I did a heist thing once, originally a 5K short story, later expanded to about three times that length to form the opening sequence of a novel series. The genre is a blend of whimsical fantasy comedy, sci-fi, and a goodly dose of cosmic horror, so not purely a heist thing by any means but that is the shelf on which everything else rests. I'm not
super familiar with the heist category and its associated tropes, but I think I pulled off some fun spins on it using magic and whatnot. The crews were already gotten together before the start of the story, so I skipped that whole bit. That's crews in the plural, yes, this being a three-way heist where several interested parties are after the same prize. It was an absolute joy to write, so much so that I just had to spin it out into several novels. There's a bit of heisting or heist-adjacent activity in the rest of the story, but for the most part it's just the beginning. It's something I might revisit again, as long as I can think of ways to make it fun and fresh.
And time travel is just something I cannot seem to stay away from, it's my personal siren song. The story mentioned above, in the heist segment, is also thick with time travel and a slew of other chrono-shenanigans. It's a bit less prevalent in my other novel series, but that really isn't saying much. So yeah, love that stuff. Time as a concept is something I just find incredibly fascinating.
I'm the kind of writer who likes to try out a lot of different kinds of story, but there are some things I haven't done to the extent or level of quality I'd like. I've dipped my proboscis in military fiction a whole bunch, but I'd like to write a novel based solely around that at some point; likely not anything actually historical, more probably a sci-fi or steampunk type deal, if not straight fantasy. I also wanna try out more horror, I use a lot of horror elements but seldom if ever have it as the core genre. To me it seems like a bit of a toughie to pull off well. Also the court/political intrigue thing, I do lightweight or humorous or outright farcical versions of that often enough, but I'd like to dig deeper sometime, likely in conjunction with military fiction. Some of my favorite stories pair those two to great effect.
Don't see myself writing a pure whodunnit or similar, that's just not me. I like historical fiction, but I'd obsess too much over the accuracy and drown in the research pit, so I probably wouldn't enjoy the process all that much. Probably won't ever write a pure romance story either, though I like injecting a hearty (yes pun intended lay off me) dose of it into most long-form stuff I write.
All that being said, my philosophy is that genre blending is a jolly good time and a fantastic idea, so most likely I'll just keep trying to create ever stranger strains of hybrid fiction rather than doing any of the above. But one can dream.
As for types of story, a bit away from genre trappings (and speaking of dreams) I have a fondness/weakness for dream sequences, love anything to do with other worlds and dimensions, metaphysical horseshit, weird wonky alien stuff and what have you. My very favorite stories across all media are those where you just don't know where it's going to take you next (sometimes genre blending is a bit part of that) and the sense of reality itself is a bit shaky at the best of times. I like unpredictability and novelty and whimsy, I guess you could say. So I try to offer that through the stories I tell, and I try to do it with humor and a bit of a glint in the eye. The tricky part is marrying all the weirdness to a core of cohesion and consistency, that's always a fun and sometimes completely bloody infuriating challenge. I still do some more grounded and serious stuff, mostly in short story form nowadays.
I feel like that says something about me. Probably that I should not try writing typical romance anytime soon.
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