Writers and audiences: Who do you write for?

As a writer, I craft "stories" for all sorts of readers. Curling fans read my musings on my blogs for the Canadian Curling Association and in my features for The Curling News. Book lovers read my reviews in Quill & Quire. My words (and my name) turn up here, there and occasionally elsewhere as I ply my writing trade.

But today I'm reaching a whole new audience. A savvy (I hope) fiction-reading audience. No, it's not a novel, although I have a few of those floating around (there's The Toymaker's Son, left). It's a short story published in the online literary journal, Lies With Occasional Truth. (Is that the best name ever or what?)

My story, Lament, is about - well, it's about death. And bagpipes. And regrets. And love, sometimes fierce, sometimes random.

I am thrilled to see my name in print for the very first time attached to a publication with "literary fiction" in its title. And I'm inspired by today's success to explore this side of my writing more deeply.

Oh yes - and the audience I wrote this story for?

You. And perhaps, more than a little, myself.