I grew up in the space age, which drew me to reading science fiction.

In elementary school, I started with Jules Verne novels before finding Ray Bradbury and many more authors over the years. I wanted to write science fiction stories as I got older. Decades later, after dozens of magazines published my contemporary and literary short stories, none were science fiction.

When I decided to publish novels, of course my first was science fiction. But I didn’t continue with that genre. I had all these published short stories asking me to put them in a book. I used them for my next three novels.

I finally listened to myself and last fall my fifth book was science fiction. This August I published my sixth novel, which is my third science fiction, and I have more coming.

I have fun writing science fiction. I’m not limited to Earth and humans. I have the universe to work with and any type of life and culture I can imagine. I think writers should enjoy what they write like I do.

I recently read The Happy Writer by Marissa Meyer. She wrote that writers should do what they need to do and write “with as much joy and as little stress as possible.” Writing science fiction is like that to me.

I’m glad I wrote contemporary and literary fiction. Those stories helped me get better with my science fiction, which I’ll stick to for now.