having two books that are different to start out

Many agents rep multiple genres, but they usually want several books in one vein to begin with, to build up your career. Because the middle-graders aren't going to be buying your contemporary fantasy, and vice versa! You need a steady flow of books to build a readership (about one a year), so if you can't write one in each genre a year, you're going to struggle to establish yourself.

Decide which of the two to commit to in the short term, follow through on that, then bring up the other genre if/when you get a chance.

Think also of the difficulty if you were fortunate enough to get deals for both books. You then have two publishers to deal with, two sets of deadlines, two sets of proofs to correct.
I think you need to choose which kind of writer you wish to be.

It's no problem at all, as long as you can write fast enough to keep your name out there in each genre. If you can write two books per year, which isn't really very fats, you can write well in two genres. If you can write three books per year, you can write in three genres.

The problem is only one of quality. First you have to sell some novel, in some genre. Until you prove you can write a publishable book in one genre, trying to write in multiple genres just takes effort away from mastering the first.

I really wouldn't worry about this. I know a very good author who writes in multiple genres and has adopted pseudonyms for any unrelated to the novels she's best known for. There's no reason for it to be a problem.

Yeah, it'll take a while. I would focus on the MG series, if that's what you have the ideas for, and maybe use your contemp as a creative break/second string. You never know, it might ultimately be the contemp that sells...

Write the best books you can. Jane Yolen has poetry, picture books, etc. Lots of authors do more than one thing. First, you have to have good stuff, great stuff. The rest is marketing.

What they say. And I've seen it done many times. Just remember not to query with all the books to a same agent all at once

bkwriter said:

mmmmm. Ok thanks. So it can be done. It just will be really slow? I have some ideas for middle grade series but not many for contemps. I've only have the one contemp I'm working on.

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It will be as fast as you are.