Sorry I wasn’t around last week. I was busy working on the edits for Dead Calm (coming to a device near you in June). I’ve struggled with this story for some reason and I can only imagine that the length is causing me problems. I’ve had hundreds of short stories published and a fair few full-length novels but this is my first novella. A short story is a comfortable, succinct 2,500 to 5,000 words long. A novel is a lovely 80,000 to 90,000 words long which gives plenty of scope for a good involved story with lots of characters. This novella, however, will be around 35,000 words long and I've been stuttering.
However, I do feel that, thanks to my clever editor who manages to take one look at my work and spot exactly what's wrong, I'm finally on the right track.
If I’m not too confident writing a novella, I do enjoy reading them. I’ve read several lately, in various genres, and thoroughly enjoyed them. If I’m busy and can’t fit in much reading time, I enjoy something shorter and less taxing. Also, of course, a novella is much easier on the pocket so I’ve found it a good way to sample new-to-me authors.
While I haven’t seen many novellas in print, there are a good number available as ebooks.
How do you feel about novellas? Have you read any? Do you read them often? Do you enjoy them? Do you, like me, use them to sample a new author’s writing? I’m curious.