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Showing posts from September, 2014

Tortured by Novels

I am a short story writer.  The thing is that if you are not  a short story writer this is a difficult concept to understand.  The only thing I can equate it to is music.  You find the instrument that you consider to be your voice.  I can play both the violin and viola very well but I consider myself to be a violist.  It's my instrument.  It's me. The same goes for short stories.  The precise, compact writing style is my voice.  It's me.  Even before I started writing my brain would constantly think of new ways to streamline the story I was reading.  And now that I've been writing for a few years the problem is even more pronounced.  It's aggravating for me to read long, drawn out sections in a novel that serve no purpose whatsoever. Is it really necessary for the heroine to be looping around in her head why she can't be with the hero a FOURTH time?  We know their issues.  Address the issues.  Maybe readdress the issues to remind the reader.  And then move o

A soapbox rant on KU royalties and short stories

Ok I've seen some discussion lately about the issue of short stories and KU. Lots of talk on whether or not the 10% marker is fair because it takes way less effort for the reader hit the 10% mark in a short story than it does in a novel. Now I'm not trying to bash anyone. And I'm not trying to point fingers or accuse people of being right or wrong. Because you know what? It'snot fair that someone can just go through the title page and be 10% into a short story. But you know what's also not fair? I have to pay the same amount for cover art no matter how long or short my novelette is. You know what's also not fair? I get one-star reviews solely because a story did not exceed X number of words (not even a mention about the actual content). You know what's even less unfair? Short stories are really hard to sell. For every 100 people that read novels maybe one likes the occasional short story. And an even smaller percentage of that one actually goes out