Welcome to Help From My Friends Friday: I’ve known today’s guest for years but confess my move to New Mexico put us out of touch. Bowen Gillings is always up to something, generally time consuming and always innovative. If you’re a writer and have heard the term “voice” but need an example, I recommend Bowen’s books. He’s also started a new venture, and I couldn’t wait to share. Please welcome Author Bowen Gillings ~ Donnell Ann Bell
Too Many Hats: What’s a Writer to do?
By Bowen Gillings
Purveyor of Hats, Author & Literary Agent Bowen Gillings
At this year’s Pikes Peak Writers Conference, I served as staff, faculty, emcee, and acquiring agent. I led workshops, took a full day of pitches, led the get-to-know-the-keynotes game show that has become a staple of the PPWC experience, and served as auctioneer for the conference fundraiser. I did all this while tightening my latest manuscript (117k words) for submission to a publisher at the conference. I wore a lot of hats. Too, too many hats. It took me a week after the conference just to find my scalp, again.
All authors wear multiple hats. Each one is a writer, an editor, and a publicist at the very least. Most are also educators, marketing agents, entrepreneurs, and logisticians. It’s a lot to handle. Knowing this, why in the heck did I add to my burden by becoming a multi-genre writer? On top of that, why double my trouble and become a literary agent?
I love me some hats, I guess.
Multi-genre writing was not a professional success strategy. Nor was it an act of defiance in an industry that really loves round pegs in round holes. Multi-genre simply came as the natural result of my writing process, which usually starts by me getting an idea while doing something unrelated to writing, like picking up my dog’s backyard lawn bombs.
When Donnell first knew me, I was writing an epic historical fantasy. Loving fantasy as a reader I convinced myself that is what I was meant to write. My story was grand and sweeping and—when I read it—no different from any other epic fantasy. I didn’t like it.
Then I attended an improvisational writing event, and a tale and voice came out that was not fantasy at all. It was snarky, tight, fast paced, and set in a basement bar in the 1980s. That story got published on its initial submission.
Next, I wrote A Night to Remember, which one reader called, “your classic fish out of water murder mystery comedy romance thriller.” Not fantasy either. Whole lot of fun, just not fantasy.
Writing those fast-paced thrillers gave me my voice and gave me the freedom to write The Chronicles of Rom & Drood, a series of fantasy tales about a pair of warrior buddies with a troublesome reputation for great deeds that always arrives about a week before they do. Three R&D stories are in the world and the latest, Death & Deception, is a fantasy mystery. There I go, throwing on that multi-genre hat, yet again.
Genre blends and writing in multiple genres are nothing new. Star Wars is sci-fantasy. Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose is a historical fiction murder mystery. David R. Slayton’s White Trash Warlock blends urban fantasy with mystery and a bit of police procedural to make a great book. NYT Bestseller Jonathan Maberry started out writing non-fiction books on martial arts and can now list horror, scientific thrillers, dystopian, and dark fantasy in his retinue. His fellow bestseller Rachel Howzell Hall started out writing crime thrillers and now has a highly successful romantasy series. Heck, today we have horromance (which I don’t get), cozy fantasy, and even the video-game-in-a-book that is Dungeon Crawler Carl. So, the multi-genre hat is no rare thing. It’s just that I’ve always done it because apparently straighter paths to success scare me.
A couple years ago, I met founder of Savvy Literary Services, Leticia Gomez at a writing conference. She and I struck up a conversation at BarCon (everything happens at BarCon!). She asked me to send her not my manuscript, but my writers resumé. I had not written a resumé of any kind since 2008. I made one, sent it to her, and over the next year we kept up the conversation. We reconnected at another conference, and she asked me if I had ever considered becoming an agent. Then (again at BarCon) she asked if I would consider becoming one of her agents. In August 2025, I accepted the mantle and haven’t looked back. I haven’t signed any authors yet, but I haven’t looked back.
As a literary agent, I not only have different hats to wear, I pull them from a different set of closets in a different house. My primary drive in making this move is to advocate for authors. It’s that simple. However, like writing, the stack of hats is deep, and some are not pretty to wear. The job requires taking a long, hard, and (sorry, but it’s true) judgmental look at writers and their work.
Can I partner with this writer? How to they handle criticism, feedback, and the requirements up to and following publication? Is their writing solid? Is their work marketable? To which audience? Lots of questions. Lots of hats. And those don’t include the other side of the job: connecting with editors and publishers, pitching to them, contract negotiation, and all that fun stuff.
To make room for the hats of writer, agent, husband, father, friend, and the others I hold dear, I had to shed a few, lest my brain boil from the heat. My chronic volunteerism got pruned. So, too did my day job requirements. I took a hard look at myself in the mirror, set a limit, and decided which hats were the priority. I kept only those. The others are not in the trash. They’re in storage. Just in case I need to brush them off once again and try them on for size.
About the Author: Bowen Gillings embodies both author and literary agent. Known for tales laced with snark, wit, and characters you could share a beer with, he writes to keep fiction fun. He joined Savvy Literary Services in 2025 and is an active member of the American Association of Literary Agents. He loves giving back to the writing community through workshops, media, and conversations over choice beverages. His latest book Overstuffed Lunchbox: A Bunch of Bite-Sized Bits, is a collection of short stories released to last year. On June 16th, his Kickstarter campaign goes live to back his first audiobook. The 3-hour production of A Night to Remember is read by Audie Award-winner Chris Ciulla.
Books by Bowen Gillings:
Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bowengillingsauthor/a-night-to-remember-the-audiobook-production
Website: https://storiesbybowen.com
Novel Ideas for Novels | Author Donnell Ann Bell (Previous blog written by Bowen Gillings on HFMFF) Very funny)
Facebook: @BowenGillingsAuthor
Bowen, I do remember when you were writing that epic fantasy. So filled with serious, war-themed action adventure. Which was why I was so shocked when I read A Night to Remember. I not only couldn’t stop laughing, I couldn’t stop flipping pages. A Humorous Sunset Cruise Suspense Thriller is far different from your epic fantasy 🙂 The rest as they say is history.
Thank you, Donnell. Your belief in me in those early days really helped push me forward. That epic trilogy is still in me. It’s just not ripe yet.
Hi Bowen and Donnell. Thanks for sharing this interesting post. I guess we writers seem to find ways to wear too many hats while trying to decide which hat fits best. Best of luck in your latest adventure.
My issue (or not) is that I like all the hats. I love trying new things. Part of me never wants to get too comfortable in any one fashion.
My problem is I love too many hats. I always love trying something new and have an issue with maintaining what works just because it worked before.
Bowen proves the adage that if you want something done, ask a busy person. I’m glad you’re stepping back and setting boundaries. There are only so many hours in a day…
Great post, Bowen and Donnell! Here’s wishing you all the best as you take on your new agenting hat, Bowen. My friend Paula Munier does both the author and agent gigs. You might have met her before. If not, she would be fun to look up at an event and have a drink with someday. Cheers!