The stories I write are getting longer and longer…

I don’t write short stories any more. I haven’t written one in at least two years now. I’ve cycled around the set of them that I’ve managed to cultivate to this point, had a few find publishing success, and the rest I’ve just allowed to sit there. I just don’t have time for shorts any more. Not when I’m writing longs, at least.

Novels kind of suck up a lot of time. Especially when you start thinking, “I bet I could make this a trilogy!” Which is what I’ve done. Before my first novel even gets published, I’m working on book two. Yes, I may be a little foolish. Thank God writing is my hobby and not my vocation, because I would have starved to death a long time ago.

It’s odd because my favorite format remains the mid-range novella length of around 25k to 50k words. Not that those sell. At all. It’s sad, too, because I really feel like there could be a market for novellas somewhere, but they wouldn’t be big money, so none of the established publishing houses are going to go that route. There was a time when publishers would print anything on any crappy paper they could find and sell it for a quarter, but those days are long gone.

Maybe the Kindle can change that? Who knows. There are a lot of self publishers who are finding an audience that route, and a 35k word novella might suit a digital reader to a T. I hope so, because I’m soon to be hopping onto that train and see where it takes me.