At the end of November, I’ll have stories published in two different anthologies and those two stories are about as different as they could possibly be.

One is very short (42 words) and is included in the “Mystery” section of the 42 Squared anthology, though I’d call it more of a crime story, and a pretty cynical one at that.

The other is a Christmas story featuring several child-age ghosts and a suburban couple who lost a child of their own. I would call it a feel-good sort of story, the kind people love during the holiday season.

I’ve never been good at sticking to a particular genre or type of story. I’ve written romance, mystery, fantasy, paranormal, and romantic suspense stories over the course of my 20+ years of writing, and those range in tone from sweet and laid-back to taut and tense.

In these days, it’s not a good career move to write whatever your muse suggests (unless it keeps suggesting the same thing over and over). Consistency is the key to building readership, experts in publishing tell us. Give readers what they expect from you, based on stories they’ve read before. Not the same exact thing, but stories in the same genre, with similar themes and characters.

Readers do seem to love series, watching a few favorite characters grow and develop while meeting new challenges and reaching new goals. I understand because I like them, too. And I’ve written one series with the same central group of characters, The Market Center Mysteries. But I can’t do it all the time. My brain rebels and goes on strike because it wants to do new and different things.

To keep the words flowing, I try to vary my writing, doing a paranormal short story here, a fantasy novella there, and a different genre of novel between the ones in my mystery series. I’m slow to get series books out and my readers never know what to expect next, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to maintain my writing for as long as I have if I didn’t.