"Highly Variable"

 
I think that about describes my literary tendencies. Which is to say, my lack of a clearly defined genre as a writer.
 
Will this change? And if it does change, will it change again?
 
I blame my "A Short Story a Day" project for this aspect of my writing life. During ASSAD, I wandered as far afield in fictive styles as I could. That's where I wrote my first horror stories. And my first stories of modern life. Even my first (and only) western-zombie-apocalypse. It was a wonderful learning experience. I highly recommend it.
 
Though maybe not so much if you want to write within a single genre.
 
I've found genre jumping and genre crossing and just plain genre ignoring a lot of fun. Addictive, even.
 
But it has made my writing style and writing topics and writing everything (though hopefully not my writing quality) "highly variable".
 
I have no doubt this high variability has made my initial marketing efforts as an indie author/publisher more difficult. Look at The Door to the Sky, for example. I called it "Spec Fic" because I couldn't come up with a better genre fit. The novel has fantasy (modern & less modern), sci-fi (ish), steampunk (ish), cyberpunk (ish), and just about anything else that it occurred to me to toss in (no zombies, though). I had a lot of fun writing that novel, and I had a lot of fun reading it again while getting it ready for publication. But writing the blurb for it was a pain. How do I put all that in a coherent paragraph that doesn't sound too schizophrenic? I gave it my best shot, and maybe it works.
 
But why look at just one book? Look at all of them. I'm all over the map: horror, dark urban fantasy, modern fantasy, young adult, slipstream, science fiction. And, yes, western-zombie-apocalypse. And that's just the visible stuff. The next novel I expect to release is, of all things, an alternate history fantasy (guns & magic, baby). And then there is the tween novel (modern fantasy) due out after that. And the dark urban fantasy/horror novel I'm working on now.
 
See? Highly variable.
 
I'd like to think it's a good thing. Since I don't expect it to change.
 
-David
 
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Oh. So That's What It's Called."Indie" is not a GenreWhy I Don't Worry About Confusing The Market