The Old Genre Switcheroo

One of the main topics of interest lately, at least for short-story writers, has been the sad decrease in the number of markets for short mystery fiction. To put it more simply, we no longer have as many places to sell our stories.

I'm still writing those mystery stories--I probably couldn't stop if I wanted to--and I'm still submitting them pretty regularly to those half-dozen good publications still available. But I also have, for the first time in a long time, a pile of completed mystery-story manuscripts sitting around waiting to be submitted. (The only other choice is to overload the submission queues of the few remaining markets, and I try not to do that.) Back in the old days, I never had to do that kind of stockpiling. I always sent those kids out into the world as soon as they graduated, to try to make something of themselves. Now my sad little story pages are hanging around home, aging like tobacco leaves.

So I'm making a few changes. One is, I'm writing some of my stories in other genres.

That kind of writing, especially SF/fantasy and Western, isn't new to me--I've always come up with those stories now and then, and so far I've managed to sell them all to places I like and respect. But I never took them very seriously. After each of those little joyrides, I've always found myself coming back to my greatest love, which will always be mystery/suspense. It's what I read most so it's what I write most.

Even so, I am now writing more SF/fantasy stories than ever before. I recently wrote and sold one within a few days, and I just finished another, a 12,000-word fantasy/horror story that was great fun to plot and put together. I also wrote two more Westerns last month, one shorter and one longer, and thanks to recent streaming series like The English, Godless, American Primeval, 1883, Bass Reeves, and The Abandons (I watched 'em all), I think there might now be more Western fans out there than was the case several years ago. A bonus, there, is that my Western short stories always include crimes, so they can rightly be considered cross-genre, and thus appeal to wider range of publications. More on cross-genre in a minute.

My point is, fiction is fiction, and all of us know there are a ton of science fiction fans out there in the world--far more of them than mystery fans. I'm one of them. As for fans of SF shorts--yes, I realize those fans are fewer in number, but there are still plenty of them as well. I think it's safe to say that anyone who likes those old episodes of Twilight Zone and One Step Beyond and Outer Limits will also like short stories in that genre. And who doesn't like Twilight Zone?

Think about it: While we mystery writers love to talk about the legacies of Ed Hoch, Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Agatha Christie, etc. (as we should), there were also some great SF-fantasy writers who write short: Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, Isaac Asimov, Fredric Brown, and so on. My bookshelves are full of them.

On the subject of mixed- or cross-genre writers, I'll refer again (as I did two weeks ago, here) to Joe R. Lansdale. He writes wonderful mystery.fantasy novels and short stories, and I can think of a few of his that could be called mystery/fantasy/Western/horror. As for mystery/Western, just look at the recent success of the series Dark Winds.

Sometimes changing things up a bit can't hurt.

What about you? How do you feel about all this? If you're a writer, how often do you write in genres other than mystery/crime/suspense? Have you even tried writing SF, or fantasy, or Western, or romance, or horror? How about mixing them up?--cross-genre stories can be great fun to write. And even though I've probably mentioned this before, some mystery markets, few though they are, will surprise you: I've occasionally sold Westerns and SF stories to AHMM and to so-called crime anthologies as well. Just stick a crime in there and you're on solid ground.

More questions: What's your strategy/solution, on weathering this current downturn in the number of short mystery markets? Take a rest and wait for more anthology calls for crime stories? Write and stockpile your mystery stories as I mentioned earlier, so that when/if more markets emerge, you'll be ready? Self-publish your stories? Find publishers for story collections? Switch completely to other genres? Write cross-genre stories as a way to ease into that? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Meanwhile, whatever it is that you write, whatever your approach is, keep at it. And good luck!