Lines Are For the Restroom

I’ve always preferred to color outside the lines. No matter how awesome the box, I’m not good at staying inside it. I can’t march to anyone else’s drum. (Can’t really march at all, but anyway.) Perhaps it’s no surprise I’m awful at cramming my writing into a genre. As a reader, I find genre highly useful. I know what I’m getting when I grab a space opera, a military SF, a cozy mystery, a Big Fat Fantasy. I want some surprises, of course, but I also want to know what I’m getting into. That what I’m picking up is the sort of book I’m going to enjoy. That’s as a reader. As a writer…I have a serious genre-problem. I can’t help it—I like to cross lines. At the Alamo, I’d have been doomed for certain.

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