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But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.

I have some other novels I want to write. I have a lot of short stories - I love the short story.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn't intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

I wasted a lot of years working on my writing and very grandly saying, 'And now... My Novel!,' which would soon be reduced to a short story, then to a paragraph.

It got to the point where most of my time went toward writing novels. I would still occasionally write short stories, but only when I was commissioned by an editor to write for a themed anthology or special issue.

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

For years, I felt I was a novelist, but now I know I can write short fiction.

Short stories are wonderful and extremely challenging, and the joy of them, because it only takes me three or four months to write, I can take more risks with them. It's just less of your life invested.

Basically, I just write whatever story grabs me rather than considering the genre.

For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.