Do you find yourself apologizing?

Lyrical Press has published three of my books. The first, A Bitch Named Karma is a full-length romantic fiction story that was so well-received! I am so so excited for it's success!!! But my next two were what Lyrical calls "shorts". Paradise Cove released in April and Soap Dreams released just a few weeks ago.

Lyrical Press defines "shorts" as a story between 15,000 and 20,000 words. I think mine are around 50-55 pages long. It's a great length to read in an hour or so while on a flight, commuting, waiting at the doctor's office. It's a quick read that a reader can finish relatively fast. I wrote them with the intention of submitting to a romance magazine who's max was 10,000 words. When that didn't pan out, I bumped up the word count and submitted to my editor at Lyrical. She loved them. I loved them. I couldn't wait to share these little shorties with the world.

This is one thing about digital publishing that I adore...there is a place for novellas!

But they came out and I found myself apologizing. Many people asked if they could get them in paperback. To begin with, Lyrical is very selective on which titles go to print....I was lucky with A Bitch Named Karma. But regardless, the length of the shorts is just too....short. Lyrical will not consider a book for print unless it is a full-length novel with a minimum of 60,000 words. Both of my shorts fall real short.

So I end up apologizing to readers that they will not be able to get them in print. I don't know what else to say. They don't own eReaders and won't read on the computer (I don't blame them...it's not easy or fun.)

One positive thing ....

That comes from resting an out of whack back...tons of writing gets done!!!

After sitting on my couch for seriously 6 hours..with one or two bathroom breaks and a lunch break, I added 2300 words to my novelette!! I am stoked about this!!!

Now comes the hard part. I am almost to 9000 words. It needs to be under 10,000 to submit to the magazine I am writing it for. So, I now need to finish this story in 1000 words. I think I can do it....but I am afraid the story will end too abruptly and problems will be solved too easily. I hate the thought of writing it out without thinking of the word count...and then having to cut out a ton. The story is so short and to the point that I'm not sure there is much that can be cut out. With writing something so short, I have no choice but to stick to the main story (which I think I'm really liking by the way!!), so there really isn't much there that's useless information. I can think of one scene that may be cutable....but we're only talking 500-750 words.