Stacked Deck: A Short Story Collection

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Topic for debate: Should a fiction writer specialize in one type of story, or should he diversify as much as possible?

In today’s limited marketplace, many writers feel specialization is the way to go. Concentrate on one particular category, such as crime fiction; perhaps go a step further and concentrate on a particular sub-genre, such as the series detective story. By doing this, proponents claim, the writer avoids the pitfail of spreading himself too thin; and hones his craft in effect by repetition — writing the same sort of thing over and over until he perfects it.

I don’t happen to agree with this literary philosophy. There is too much danger, it seems to me, of stagnation; of familiarity breeding burnout or complacency; of the fine edge of one’s abilities being unconsciously dulled rather than sharpened. The challenge of writing — and, one hopes, writing well — something new and different on a regular basis is what helps keep my interest keen and what allows me to stretch and grow. Over the past quarter-century I’ve written mainstream, detective, suspense, adventure, horror, fantasy, Western, men’s magazine, erotic, and science fiction stories — most types of each, from the satirical to the deadly serious. Not always successfully, God knows, but always with enthusiasm and without failing to learn something about my craft. Even in my series fiction — the “Nameless Detective” has now appeared in nearly twenty novels and more than thirty short stories — I try to make each book and each story in some way distinct from the others, to the point of taking a major departural risk now and then (vide: Shackles).

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