Novellas and the Romance Genre

I had the pleasure of getting to know romance author Ginny Frost at a writers retreat a couple of years ago. Since a lot of her work is novella length, I invited her to be a guest here and talk about her relationship with novellas and how they fit in the romance genre.

I’m Ginny Frost, and I write sexy books. Romance is my genre of choice because I love a love story. You know, the part where they fall in love? Whether it’s Elizabeth and Darcy or Han and Leia, the genre calls to me. The novella works wonderfully for love stories.

For me, the shorter format allows me to get to the point of the tale fast. And the point is falling in love. Novellas allow me as an author to focus on the romance (sexy stuff or not). I can write the details about their fears, wants, and needs without having to establish a lengthy backstory. My characters fall into bed quickly and then sort everything else out afterward. Keeping the story concise forces me to push the characters to deal with their issues. They can’t languish in ennui. They must move the plot forward!

Being able to write a short, fulfilling tale is an art form. As a writer, we need to convey everything to our readers in under 40,000 words. Novellas challenge us to tighten our writing and find new ways to express complex ideas. Not to mention, they are much easier to edit than a 100,000-word monster. But I digress…

Recently, there’s been a trend in romance to do MAPs—multi-author projects. Several writers will publish a series of novellas using the same setting, prop, or theme. I’ve taken part in two MAPs and love having my short pieces exposed to other readers. (Wow, that sounded dirty. Good thing I write spicy!) My most recent novella is part of a magical series with seven books. With the shorter format, all seven of us were able to produce and self-pub the novellas within a year. We had time to work on other projects because the stories were under 40,000 words.

Let’s talk about pricing. Unfortunately, the trend is for authors to sell books at a minimum profit. Readers want free or $0.99 titles. It’s hard to mark your work for only a dollar when it takes years to write it. Novellas are a terrific way to lure readers with a book in a low price range. Readers are willing to try out a new author for a dollar. Short works under $2 can entice readers to check you out and then grab that $20 “book of your heart” later.

As a reader, I love the novella. It’s short and sweet. It gives you a taste of the author’s work. With many book titles available, novellas help me weed through the masses to find hidden gems. Romance is not the only genre using this format. I’ve read sci-fi and cozy mystery novellas. These authors show off their skills by creating a satisfying story in such few words. (I’m looking at you, Martha Wells.)

My conclusion? In a world with millions of authors to choose from, mastering the novella format will get eyes on your books. Read widely to see how other authors squeeze a full story into 40k. Then go do it. You won’t regret a thing.

Thanks for letting me visit today. Check out my books here, including my $0.99 newest novella, Artist. I’m all over social media—Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I’ve got a fantastic blog for authors called Apps for Writers. And if you like a free book, check out my newsletter for a free prequel to Stonewater Stories.

Ginny Frost is a hybrid author with two traditionally published novels and seven indie titles. She writes contemporary romance with a sexy, funny kick. In her downtime, she plays clerk at the local library—the perfect job to feed her reading addiction. She lives in upstate NY with her very own kindhearted ogre, their two smart and sassy daughters, and an evil cat named Flash.

Book Review: FEED THEM SILENCE

TITLE: Feed Them Silence

AUTHOR: Lee Mandelo

112 pages, Tordotcom Publishing, ISBN 9781250824509 (hardcover; also, e-book and audio)

MY RATING:  4 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: In Feed Them Silence, Lee Mandelo’s penchant for characters searching for answers to questions that get to the heart of who they are combines with their felicity with sensory details that immerse the reader in the character’s head and world to create a work of lush, sometimes gut-punching, beauty that questions where the line is between ethical and abusive research practices involving animals who can’t give consent and ruminates on human and animals’ shared need to belong. Feed Them Silence is a moving and effective look at the ways in which we seek connection and how our obsessions lead as much to heartbreak as to breakthroughs. At 112 pages, it’s a fast read but not a forgettable one.

LONGER REVIEW: Lee Mandelo’s new release, Feed Them Silence, is in concept and execution about as far as one can get from their previous book Summer Sons: novella vs. novel, science fiction rather than supernatural horror, cold labs and winter forests in place of hot Southern gothic buildings and summer cemeteries. What the works share is lead characters determined to find answers to questions that get to the heart of who they are, and Mandelo’s felicity with sensory details that immerse the reader in the character’s head and world.

Doctor Sean Kell-Luddon’s lifelong love of wolves has led to her current research project: using a surgically inserted neurological interface to transmit the thoughts and emotions of one of the world’s last free-roaming wild wolves to Sean’s own brain. (At the same time, her research team collects the raw data of the transmission for possible future use by the folks funding the research project.) Mandelo does a wonderful job contrasting Sean’s inner life when connected to her wolf Kate, especially the sense of belonging and emotional connection, with her outer life, which is clearly fraying even before the novella begins (especially her marriage, but her relationship to her team as well). Sean is searching not only for an understanding of, and a way to help, her nearly-extinct favorite species but also for a deeper connection psychologically to replace the one she’s losing in the physical world.

Scientists often speak of the dangers of anthropomorphizing – assigning human thoughts and characteristics to – animals (wild or domesticated) whose brains do not function the way ours do. Sean’s rational intention to avoid it falters the longer and more often she is directly connected to Kate via the interface. Transcribing what she gleans into human terms and being unable to separate her personal life from her project sets up the final conflict of the book beautifully.

If I have one complaint about the book, it’s that the narrow Sean-centric POV, which gives us such amazing insight into Sean’s intentions, history, and altering mental state, does not allow us to get to know some of the other characters as well as I would have liked, in particular Sean’s wife, Riya. Riya does play an important role in the story, she’s not just a prop to hang Sean’s faults on, so I would like to have seen some of the events of the book from her perspective. That’s the joy and the sting of novellas, though. I an avowed fan of the format, but the tight focus that makes novellas so enjoyable sometimes leaves us wanting the deeper insight a longer work might provide. That being said, the supporting cast of Feed Them Silence is all well-drawn and distinct. The world-building surrounding Sean, Riya, the team, and Kate is perfectly evoked: with just a few sentences, we know we are in a near-future where climate change has wreaked havoc on wild animal populations as resources dwindle. Also, a world where corporate interests are willing to fund cutting-edge research projects that academia is hesitant to touch – drawing attention to how hard it is to delineate that line where ethical research turns abusive and teasing questions of intent versus execution when it comes to the uses to which the research results are put.

Through it all, Mandelo fills the book with lush, sometimes gut-punching, sensory details, especially but not only when Sean is connected to Kate. I became completely immersed in descriptions of the cold winter forest, the aches and pains of being undernourished, the smells of fellow pack members, the taste of blood and raw meat as the pack takes down a rare bit of prey. I felt like I was truly there. There’s also a very affecting scene between Sean and her Riya that trades on the same level of sensory detail.

Feed Them Silence is a moving and effective look at the ways in which we seek connection and how our obsessions lead as much to heartbreak as to breakthroughs. At 112 pages, it’s a fast read but not a forgettable one.

I received an advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Feed Them Silence released on March 14, 2023.

So Who Publishes Novellas These Days?

When genre readers think of novellas, they tend to think of either TorDotCom, who release a steady stream of awards-nominated novellas every year (including this week’s release Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo, which I’ll be reviewing later today, and next week’s The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi), or of magazines like Asimov’s, AnalogSF, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction which have regularly featured novelettes and novellas in their monthly content over their decades of publication.

But there are plenty of other magazines and small press publishers bringing out novellas every year in a variety of genres, and I’d like to mention some of them. This is far from a complete list, and I encourage readers to mention any I don’t in the comments!

Neon Hemlock Press puts out novellas in the horror/SF/fantasy genres, with a focus on LGBTQIA+ creators and stories. They are currently in the last days of their annual novella crowdfunding event, where you can back (a.k.a. preorder) their 2023 slate in print and/or e-book formats. Go check them out before the crowdfunding effort ends on Thursday, March 16th at 4pm.

Speaking of queer-focused publishers: several items in the catalogs of both Lethe Press (including Octavia Cade’s The Stone Weta) and Rebel Satori Press are novella-length, spanning all the genres of speculative fiction and moving into historical, romance and mimetic fiction as well.

Looking novel-length queer romance? Check out Bold Stroke Books. I’m a particular fan of ‘Nathan Burgoine’s “Little Village” novella series, and I’ve been meaning to check out some of their lesbian romance novella collections.

Stelliform Press’s novellas focus on the on-going climate emergency and intersectional views of environmental justice, and range in genre from horror (The House of Drought by Dennis Mombauer) to fantastic science fiction (Weird Fishes by Rae Mariz), and every point in between. Their latest, Another Life by Sarena Ulibarri, comes out May 25th.

If the classics and mimetic fiction are more your thing, look no further than Melville House Publishing. Their “Art of the Novella” collection reissues classic novellas, some in solo book form for the first time ever. They also have a “Contemporary Art of the Novella” series if you’re looking for modern mimetic works at novella length.

Aqueduct Press’ Conversation Pieces series brings feminist science fiction to the demanding reader. While not every volume in this long-running series is a novella (some are poetry or short story collections, others works of non-fiction), quite a few are. Recent releases include To The Woman in the Pink Hat by LaToya Jordan and Apollo Weeps by Xian Mao.

On the mystery side of things, The Mysterious Bookshop’s Bibliomysteries series are usually novelette length excursions into everything from noir to cozy mysteries.

And in addition to the magazines listed at the start of this post, I would be remiss in not mentioning Clarkesworld, which also regularly includes novellas in their pages.

Book Review: BACKPACKING THROUGH BEDLAM

TITLE: Backpacking Through Bedlam (InCryptid #12)

AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire

340 pages, Daw Books, ISBN 9780756418571 (softcover, also available in e-book and audio)

MY RATING:  5 stars out of 5

SHORT REVIEW: Backpacking Through Bedlam, the 12th installment in Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series, wraps up one of the series’ long-running subplots: Grandma Alice’s decades-long interdimensional search for her missing husband Thomas. At the same time, the book begins in earnest the Price-Healy clan’s efforts to prevent the Covenant of St. George from invading North America and “cleansing it” of its Cryptid population. Throughout the book, McGuire has a lot to say about the lengths family (biological and found) will go to protect each other and how hard it is for family to forgive each other. There are raw and honest dissections of how the images we build of the people we love but haven’t seen in a while can be unrealistic and how hard it is to reconcile who someone has become with who we thought they were. Likewise, Alice’s years of absence, even with the quest successful, weigh heavily on every scene between Alice and Verity and Alice and Sarah. The pain, the mistrust, the slow lowering of guards, is palpable. But even with all the discomfort and pain, the book is a celebration of the family we build around ourselves from biology and adoption. As is the accompanying novella, “The Mysteries of the Stolen God and Where His Waffles Went!”

LONGER REVIEW: Backpacking Through Bedlam, the 12th installment in Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series, wraps up one of the series’ long-running subplots: Grandma Alice’s decades-long interdimensional search for her missing husband Thomas. At the same time, the book begins in earnest the Price-Healy clan’s efforts to prevent the Covenant of St. George from invading North America and “cleansing it” of its Cryptid population. Throughout the book, McGuire has a lot to say about the lengths family (biological and found) will go to protect each other and how hard it is for family to forgive each other.

Alice was also the narrator of the previous volume, Spelunking Through Hell, in which (spoilers, sorry, but necessary here) she found Thomas trapped in a bottle dimension (the kind you can be thrown into by sketchy double-crossing cosmic entities, but from which escape is darn near impossible), alongside a whole passel of others in the same position. Backpacking picks up with Alice and Thomas’ efforts to find a safe new dimension for these cosmically-displaced refugees before they (and Thomas’ adopted daughter Sally) can return home. I honestly expected this part of the story to take up more of the book and was surprised it wrapped up so quickly. Not without some life-threatening action one expects from the early pages of an InCryptid book, and still totally satisfactorily in a way that ties back to previous books in the series. It’s a solid start, re-establishing the Alice/Thomas/Sally dynamic, which is not the smoothest. Some of their interactions are hard to read, but they’re also raw and honest dissections of how the images we build of the people we love but haven’t seen in a while can be unrealistic and how hard it is to reconcile who someone has become with who we thought they were. Alice and Thomas have a lot of lost years to navigate through, and I have faith they’ll get there, but it’s not going to be an easy road. Likewise, Sally and Alice’s road to understanding each other and their roles in Thomas’ life is fraught with defensiveness and, dare I say, possessiveness that these women will have to find common ground on.

And all of this is before the three return to Earth and get shuffled off to New York City to help granddaughters Verity and Sarah and their friends fight off the latest incursion by the Covenant of St. George, the evil, self-righteous Cryptid-killing organization that Alice’s grandparents and Thomas himself defected from. Thanks to Verity’s actions in a previous book, the Covenant has decided to take the long-thought-dead Price-Healy family “off the map” for good. (Which is going to be much harder than the Covenant thinks, because, well, Price-Healys, man.) In between several fantastic fight scenes, we get to watch Alice introduce Thomas to some of the grandkids (and great-grandkids) he only just found out exist. And that does not go well at first. Verity and her siblings and cousins have always known about Grandma Alice’s quest, but none of them really thought she’d succeed. And that quest came at the price of strained relationships even with the grandkid who most understands her. The years of absence, even with the quest successful, weigh on every scene between Alice and Verity and Alice and Sarah. The pain, the mistrust, the slow lowering of guards, is palpable. Moreso because there is no sudden “oh, okay, we forgive you and we accept this stranger you say is our grandfather and this girl who is now our adopted aunt even though she’s younger than us” moment. But even with all the discomfort and pain, the book is a celebration of the family we build around ourselves from biology and adoption. Alice has a lot of rebuilding to do, and Thomas and Sally have a lot of learning-how-they-fit-in to do. But the door, at least, is open. I for one am looking forward to learning where that door leads, as well as what the Covenant’s next move is going to be. I’m also looking forward to learning, eventually, who will be narrating the next installment since McGuire changes narrators frequently in this series.

The book also contains a novella, “The Mysteries of the Stolen God and Where His Waffles Went!” which focuses on the Price family compound in the immediate aftermath of Alice, Thomas, and Sally’s brief visit at the end of Spelunking Through Hell. Some family members are happy Alice has found Thomas and will be returning to the fold. Some are still very angry at Alice. But the focus is on the newest adopted Price sibling, James, and his reaction to learning that his childhood friend Sally, thought lost to the Crossroads, is alive and coming home. I loved this close look at how James has been adapting to being a member of the family and being worshipped by the family’s colony of Aeslin mice, at how it has not necessarily been an easy road for James to follow (but still much better than the horrible life he left behind). The Aeslin mice are fan favorites, and we get a really solid look at how new clergy and new rituals develop in their belief system (where every male in the Price-Healy family is a God and every female a Priestess) through the eyes of James’ first Aeslin priest. Both James and the two mice featured are unsure of their footing, of their place, of what their futures will hold. I look forward to seeing where their paths take them as the InCryptid series progresses. I’m also not ashamed to say that James has become my favorite character in the series.

I received an electronic advance reading copy of this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

It's NOVELLA MONTH!

For no other reason than “I feel like it,” I’m declaring March “Novella Month” here on the blog. As far as I can tell, there is no month-long celebration of what has become for me, and many of the readers I know, my favorite length for fiction. Among the writers I know and whose work I love, a good many excel and revel in the novella realm. My goal for the month is to simply celebrate the form with book reviews, quotes from other readers, and hopefully some guest-posts by or interviews with novella writers, editors, or publishers, regardless of genre. I’ll use the hashtag #NovellaMonth when I post on social media.

So What Is a Novella?

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) define novellas as ranging from 17,500 to 40,000 words, and most other genre fiction awards/organizations appear to agree: the Hugo Awards, the Romance Writers of America RITA Awards, British Fantasy Awards, Paris Literary Prize, the Nero Wolfe Society’s Black Orchid Award, and the Shirley Jackson Awards to name a few alongside SFWA’s Nebula Awards. (The Horror Writers Association’s Stoker Awards lump novellas and novelettes into a “Best Long Fiction” category.)   Even sites that simply discuss the definition of novella quote or refer to the SFWA definition. Some blogs stretch the upper limit to 50,000 words, but none of the major recognized awards seem to. In terms of page length, if the average single-spaced page has approximately 500 words, novellas would range from 35 to 80 or 100 pages.

Per a few conversations with fellow writers, stories in the 150-200 page range tend to be described as “short novels” (for instance, C.S.E. Cooney’s wonderful The Twice-Drowned Saint, recently re-released by Mythic Delirium Books). In my mind even 150-180 page length work fits under the novella umbrella – but I’m not the one creating literature awards season criteria, so take that for what it’s worth. (Also, please don’t come at me with “that’s not a novella!” if I review or talk about books that are less than 50 pages or more than 100 under the #NovellaMonth tag. It’s not a hill worth fighting over, I promise.)

What Is It About Novellas, anyway?

For me, the joy of novellas is that they can be the same type of quick reads as short stories (depending on my mood, other distractions/chores, etc.) but with the world-building and characterizational depth of novels. Robert Silverberg, whose long out-or-print collection To Open The Sky is one of my most-often re-read books, composed of 5 linked novellas originally published in Galaxy magazine, said it more eloquently, in the introduction to his collection Sailing to Byzantium: “[The novella] is one of the richest and most rewarding of literary forms...it allows for more extended development of theme and character than does the short story, without making the elaborate structural demands of the full-length book. Thus it provides an intense, detailed exploration of its subject, providing to some degree both the concentrated focus of the short story and the broad scope of the novel.”

I’m pretty sure I loved the form before I consciously knew what it was, even having read To Open the Sky for the first time sometime in 5th or 6th grade, although I readily admit that the novellas we were assigned to read in high school didn’t work for me – another quick internet search shows that English Class favorites like The Old Man and The Sea (26,601 words), Of Mice and Men (29,160) and Ethan Frome (34,500) all fall into that definition of novella up above. I struggled with all of them in high school (with apologies to Eugenia DelCampo and the other wonderful English teachers I had), probably due less to quality than to the fact that I have never liked being told what I had to read. I’ve never attempted to read those books again. Perhaps I should give them a second chance. On the other hand, one of my most-reread classics is A Christmas Carol, which clocks in at 28,500, and I also loved The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (25,500), both of which were assigned/recommended by my high school English teachers.

I had no idea that these books were anything other than really short novels – until I read Stephen King’s collection Different Seasons, sometime in 1982 or ’83, in which’s Afterword he discussed how hard it was to get stories of this length published, being too long for the short story magazines and too short for book publishers. That has shifted a lot in the last ten years as many small press publishers, and even some of the bigger houses, are more than happy to publish novellas as stand-alone books rather than in collections. (I’m planning to run a list of such publishers, with a focus on the small presses, sometime this month.)

To Novella or Not Novella?

As a writer, all my published work has been in the short story realm, perhaps bordering into novelette. I’ve started two different novellas over the years, but they’re both incomplete. I haven’t been writing much fiction at all since at least 2018, but I’m thinking I might motivate myself to revisit one of those projects this month.

A small selection of the novellas I’ll be reading or reviewing this month (the bottom half of the pile have already been read)

So, reader friends – what do you love about the novella form? What are your favorite novellas? Please weigh in in the comments. Maybe you’ll introduce me to something new – or maybe you’ll convince me to re-read one of those classics I struggled with in high school!