It's no secret: I don't "do" YA. Hell, I rarely do anything considered NA. I don't think that any of my works actually fall into either of those categories. (Well, Patient Zero might, but it has less to do with becoming an adult and facing life challenges as it does with dying horribly and becoming a zombie. Not really YA.)
And I'm perfectly okay with this.
Most of my friends write strictly YA and NA.
And I'm also more than comfortable with that as well.
Why? Because you shouldn't view other authors as competition. You should look at them as friends, companions and resources.
Besides, I don't write YA, so that's one less person that my friends have to "compete" with when submitting/querying and that's like 5 less people I have to compete with when I submit and query.
On the flip side of that coin, though, I have less insights to offer to my friends as a beta reader/CP and vice versa because we run and read in different circles.
I'm a little off topic here.
What I was originally wanting to talk about was the fact that yes, you can build a successful brand for yourself writing in a specific genre.
If you wanna write vampire romance or 50 shades of bad smut, GO FOR IT. Who am I to stop you?
The problem that you're gonna run into is pigeonholing yourself. If you write strictly about YA vampires, what happens when vampires aren't "in" anymore? Then you're gonna struggle to turn your YA vampire brand into something new and exciting. It's kind of a shame that it's something that you need to think about when embarking on your quest for publication.
Personally, I write a little bit of everything.
I write about zombies, cowboys and elves, dragons, magic, gods, mortals, vampires, Noir Detectives and robots, time-travel...
And yet, I don't write YA.
Maybe that pigeonholes me in a way, but this is my poison. I'll drink from the cup that I've chosen and hopefully I'll have spent enough time building up an immunity that I won't keel over and die.
