As an extension of my rant last Thursday, I thought I would continue the short fiction theme by posting the announcement that June is Novella Month.Stop on over to The Emerging Writer's Network where they are profiling their favorite novellas this month. Even the LA times has picked up the story.
Don't know what a novella is or how to review them? Well you can read my rather lengthy post on the genre conventions and browse through the list of some of my favorites here.
If any of our followers and fellow authors have a novella to recommend -- even if it's your own -- let us know in the comments section. Of course Emily and I both write novellas, and you can find our work by linking out to our respective websites. I am currently offering my novella The Kissing Room as a free to read over on Smashwords in epub format and over on Scribd in PDF format. Amazon won't let me list anything for free, but if a reader wants a Kindle copy for review, just drop me an email and I will send you a digi-review copy in mobi format. Emily has her novella Journeys End up as a free read in PDF right now over on her website, so check that out too.
Happy Reading Everyone.
Cheryl Anne Gardner
9 comments:
Probably my favourite novella writer has to be Richard Brautigan. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not sure any of his books are long enough to be called novels.
If you are going strictly by word count -- god forbid -- the cut-off for a novella is 40k words, sometimes that can get pushed to 50but not beyond that. They average 150 pages or less usually. Of course that depends on interior layout and book size. A novella in a pocket size paperback is going to look thicker than the same novella in a 6x9. That's why I don't recommend the 6x9 size for novellas. They just look too damn flimsy.
That's part of the reason I left Lulu. Their utter lack of standard book sizes for distribution. Mine looked awful in the 6x9. Now they are a nice 8x5.25: an appropriate size for the word count.
I am going to have to look Brautigan up. Thanks for the tip.
My book, Broken Bulbs is a novella and it was well-reviewed by POD People.
http://podpeep.blogspot.com/2009/01/review-broken-bulbs.html
So, ya know...
@Eddie
I know and it was one of my all-time favorite review books. Saw your recent interview as well, nice job. Like the attitude. :)
I just finished the proofs for Journey's End's ebook version which will come out via Audiolark. I found it interesting that they didn;t hesitate to acquire a work that is available online for free (which of course I disclosed in the query).
Thanks very much, Cheryl! Appreciate it.
http://bonnieisgood.com
Extinction Journals by Jeremy Robert Johnson springs to mind. I don't know the word count but it's 76 pages. I think it helps to first read the short story that preceded it, "The Sharp Dressed Man at the End of the Line," but it isn't necessary. If you're unfamiliar with the author, he writes bizarro fiction.
I really dig novellas these days. I love a good short read that I can finish in a couple of hours between jobs. And a novella is what I chose as my debut. My paranormal romance Forsaken By Shadow is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Scribd, and the iBookstore. At the moment I'm giving away free review copies: http://kaitnolan.com/2010/05/18/sweetening-the-pot/
@emily: That's awesome. I love when publishers aren't worried about that sort of thing. It's a brave new world.
@DED: I am going to look that one up now. 76 pages, yup, that is novella length for sure.
@Kait: I'll cross post your link to my facebook page.
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