I wanna be a genre writer
But I keep meeting soul-crushing monsters in human form
I wanna be a genre writer; whines the award wining author of 3 novels, 2 novella, 30 short stories. Genre fiction sells. My brilliantly written crap remains quietly brilliant on dusty shelves and unpacked boxes.
As much as I want to write genre fiction, I keep failing because my own life gets in the way. Last night proved it yet again. One of the youngster we helped raise sat on the sofa last night. We experienced familiar ease discussing recent writing, the planned publication of a shared project, and a recent ambulance run. See, ambulances have been a part of my life for over forty years. I mentioned a local issue with escaped cattle which should have been a funny and routine rural story. Oh, look the locals tuck in quietly to herd the cattle miles back to their own pasture. Local drivers seeing us, turn around finding other routes. The new “locals” yell because “I have to get to work and this is the only road.” Well, it isn’t the only road. You can’t call yourself local if you don’t know the rural wiggle. Blah, blah. Instead of laughing, we instead focus on the cause: domestic violence, a drunken guy, the complete lack of cops and law enforcement and the everlasting question as to why certain really bad people are allowed to just keep wrecking the lives of others. I mention a familiar family name, two actually: both involved. Victim and bad-guy. Can’t we learn? How can we make this better? F’n reality stomps in. Squishing thoughts of something delightfully “genre-y.” Instead of writing something people watch Tuesday night television, I’m in my own version of Long Days Journey into Night or Hamlet. Honest, ugly, difficult human drama.
“Well, I got called to do a transfer the other day,” says the medic on the sofa (the “youngster” who now travels with flecks of grey at her temples). “I was returning a [very sick kid] from the hospital back to his nursing home and the care of the Department of Children and Families.” While we two discussed the medical distinctions of this sick-kid’s1 condition from birth, I’ll save you from that because the story only gets worse. Plot necessary facts are: (1) He can’t move. (2) He’s on a ventilator because he only breathes a few times per minute. (3) He’s never uttered a word or moved himself. The young-one on the sofa says: “The five year old landed in DCF custody because someone in the house repeatedly burned him.”
I don’t need fictional monsters. I met a few forty years ago then keep encountering them, often within miles of my own home. I don’t need bumps-in-the-night. And I don’t need to put people behind wolf-hair, or adorn them with claws, for me to know the evil in us. Even if locked up, these monsters return to our towns to live til they die.
Want a puzzle no one could solve? Some old duffer, likely randy and rapey-as-shit when he was a young rooster, got demented and old. Can’t barely remember his own name or sustain a conversation, but also rapes 90-year-old residence in each of the nursing homes they put him in. Legally, not guilty of rape because of dementia. Can’t be locked in facility with women and there are few enough skilled nursing facilities. We can’t sex-segregate facilities. So every few months an ambulance moved this guy to another, and even worse nursing facility. Like that sketch of a young woman/old woman. Each time you look at the problem, the image shifts and the solution remains unknown.
I don’t need to solve clever murders either. I learned that early. 200? 300 times in my life I have had to stand before someone to say: I am sorry but Fred is dead. I got training on that line. Murder takes one life, destroys others. To riddle the question as to who killed Fred, the answer is often trivial, heartbreakingly sad, stupid, or some other unbearable emotion. I have failed over and over when I strive to game-ify murder into plot beats.
I put dead people in my stories because I have spent a lot of my life walking towards violence, disease, and natural disasters. Each death means something to everyone on scene including the medics, cops, and firefighters. Some of this shit doesn’t stuff away into neat little boxes well.
As writer, when I go to make a tiny withdrawal from the memory bank, those stories have compounded. I can’t picture that one 600 pound guy covered in [anyway, I am not going to do that]. I then remember this then remember that. While searching for the thread of an interesting procedural story, I slid sideways into human horror, then bounce into anger about community neglect and the cavernous holes in our social support systems.
What starts as a horror image resolves into a social, financial, and political struggle.
What starts as a murder, devolves into fights over power, money, inheritance, property, and the belief that love is a limited resource.
Life ruined a lot of genres for me. Que lastima (that may be Spanish for WTF).
That said, I enjoyed The Bride because if you have monsters why not let love and 1940s-style dance routines bust in for no reason. The authors gave me dead people who can walk and talk. When going from absurd to absurdier, I smile. If I offered pitchforks and torches to every monster I’ve met, I’d be the one locked up.
Monsters exist. The slightly better ones want to dance well.
Can someone train the monsters in my head to dance and sing and love and hold hands then exit stage left?
"Sick-Kid” is a singular noun
I.M. Aiken author & narrator
“Captain Henry: 2 ½ Insurrections, 2 Wars, 1 ¼ Centuries, and a story of Love” (2026)
“Stolen Mountain” (2025)
“The Little Ambulance War of Winchester County” (2024)
“Trowbridge Dispatch” - fictional short stories/podcast
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