Today I welcome back the prolific, talented, and all-around awesome Seanan McGuire to the blog. It’s been a while since we’ve done an interview, and I’m grateful she was willing to carve a few minutes out of her incredible writing schedule to answer a few questions about that storytelling format we both love: novellas.
Just based on how many you’ve written, I suspect you love novellas as much as I do. Do you remember when you first became aware of novellas as a distinct storytelling form, or what the first novella was that you remember reading?
The first novella I really remember as a novella—being aware that it was something special, something that was neither short story nor novel—was “The Mist,” by Stephen King. I was in love at once.
What is it that draws you to the novella format, both as a reader and a writer?
All the brevity of the short story, all the meat of a novel. You have time to explore different aspects of the story, but you don’t have to flesh out every little thing, and you don’t need to have a dozen rules in place before you get started.
I think I’ve asked you this before, but how do you decide when “novella” is the right length for a particular new piece versus “novel” or “novelette” or “short story”? Or maybe it’s more appropriate to ask “when in the creative process do you realize something is a novella versus a novel?”
As a general rule, at this point, I know how much text a concept can sustain. Is this going to fit in 8,000 words, or will I use up 7,000 just explaining the core ideas? Will I be able to wrap this up in 20,000 words or do I need 200,000? I generally know when I sit down to write what length I’m striving for.
Was there ever a point where the Wayward Children series might have been novel-length as opposed to novellas?
The Wayward Children books were commissioned as novellas, and so novellas they were always destined to be.
Speaking of portal fantasies, the Up-and-Under books are also novella length. I’ve heard some argument that middle grade books, including classics like the Narnia and Oz books (or my childhood favorites, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators) don’t rightly fit under the “novella” umbrella because they’re “kid’s books, so of course they’re short.” What do you think of that argument?
The Up-and-Under books are short novels, written to a different set of standards of form. They’re not novellas. They’re short novels.
I do tend to conflate the two. I love the extra novellas that now appear at the end of every October Daye and InCryptid novel – how did the decision to do that come about?
The first book which included a bonus novella was originally meant to be the first hardcover, and somehow that didn’t happen, but the novella had already been written and included in the page proofs. Well, your first hardcover can’t have less material than the last paperback, and so it continued. At this point, even though they’re bonus material, people would be mad if we stopped doing them.
You’ve released quite a few Mira Grant novellas through Subterranean Press (who I somehow neglected to list in my “Here’s Whose Publishing Novellas” post earlier in the month). They’re all very clearly “Mira” stories (as opposed to “Seanan” stories) and they’re all so different from each other at the same time. I’m wondering if Mira will ever go back to writing full-length novels?
Mira would love to be writing novels. Mira has not been given the opportunity.
Lastly, as a reader, what are some of your favorite recent and/or classic novellas?
“The Mist,” Stephen King.
“Comfort Me with Apples,” Catherynne Valente.
“Nothing But Blackened Teeth,” Cassandra Khaw.
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Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus Award winning author Seanan McGuire is the author of the long-running October Daye and InCryptid urban fantasy series, along with a small army of stand-alone fantasy novels and shorter series. She writes various flavors of horror as Mira Grant, and the Up-and-Under portal fantasy series as A. Deborah Baker. Her short stories number in the hundreds, and her published novellas are probably getting close. Her latest novellas are “The Mysteries of the Stolen God And Where His Waffles Went,” an InCryptid novella included with the novel Backpacking Through Bedlam from DAW Books; Lost in the Moment and Found, the eighth Wayward Children novella from TorDotCom Publishing; and Mira Grant’s Unbreakable, from Subterranean Press. Her next, and final, short novel in the Up-and-Under series by A. Deborah Baker is Under The Smokestrewn Sky, forthcoming from TorDotCom in October, 2023.