How do you make sure you write what your audience wants to read?

Oh. Oh my word. If I write something an audience wants to read, coincidence has entered the picture.

I don’t tailor my fiction to what I think someone else wants it to be. If I tried to do that I’d go quite mad. I write because I have to write—because there are stories inside my head clawing to get out, that won’t let me sleep unless I bring them into the real world.

I write loopy comedies set in an alternate 19th century steampunk London without Queen Victoria, that are actually social satire. I write pornography set in a far-futurre post-scarcity society ruled by hyperintelligent AIs that is actually philosophy. I write Harry Potter-esque stories about a young woman drawn into a school of magic and sorcery, only the school is a brothel and the story is actually a political thriller but with lots of sex. I write near-future, hard SF that’s actually political commentary.

The things I write are so far outside mainstream fiction that I’m always a little flabbergasted when someone comes up to me and says “hey, I love that book you wrote.” I cannot even fathom trying to write a novel pitched to the entertainment needs of some imagined audience.