I received a contributor’s copy of Talebones #38 yesterday. My expected copies had already shipped via a slower rate of postage and will be forthcoming , but editor/publisher Patrick Swenson was kind enough to mail me one first class when I told him that I wanted to wave it about at Readercon next week. I figured that since the story “The Only Wish Ever to Come True” made its first public appearance at a Readercon when I chose it for my reading a couple of years ago, some of the people who come to this year’s reading might be interested in knowing that it’s finally out.

This marks my third story to see print this year, and it suddenly occurs to me that it’s in my third genre.

My first short story out this year, “Glitch,” appeared in February in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three. It’s pure science fiction, with robots both earthly and alien, an invasion of Earth, and ruminations on whether it’s possible for an artificial intelligence to understand art.

Then came The Hunger of Empty Vessels, a novella which was published in April as a chapbook by Bad Moon Books. It’s a dark story containing an unusual haunting and emotional vampires. There’s no mistaking it for anything but horror.

Now, in July, comes the Summer issue of Talebones, in which I share the Table of Contents with Mary Robinette Kowal. “The Only Wish Ever to Come True” is pure fantasy, with wishes coming true over thousands of years, and even an explanation as to why we tend to get three of them.

And as I look ahead to the other stories coming out this year, I see a zombie tale titled “The Human Race” out shortly in Space & Time, the metafictional post-apocalyptic meditation on war “The World Breaks” in Postscripts, a ghost story titled “Here Choose I” in the lettered limited edition (and only in the lettered limited edition) of The Hunger of Empty Vessels, and then perhaps one more zombie story, the title and anthology to be named later.

As you can see, my output is all over the map. Perhaps not the wisest thing to do in a day when novelists are being urged to pick a niche, or else use a different pen name for each genre so as not to confuse readers.

I don’t buy it. I remember the days when Fredric Brown could write science fiction and mysteries and not have to hide it.

Or maybe it’s that I just don’t care. What matters to me is writing the stories that demand to be written, in the order they demand it, even if that doesn’t make the best marketing sense. (Hey, there are those who would say that writing short stories instead of novels in the first place doesn’t make much sense!) If I don’t do that, then it’s just a job.

And I hope I never come to think it as only that.