Monthly Archives: April 2012

Short or long, stories pack powerful punches

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Today, I’m blogging over at the Whine Sisters, and I posted a link to Porcelain Unicorn, a truly lovely short film. And I mean short. Just three minutes. Pop on over and check it out if you want to see a truly powerful punch packed into just three short minutes.

Compare that to something like Game of Thrones, which I’m currently reading. Or Schindler’s List if we want to stay both on theme and with film. Also gut-wrenching, with deep emotion and strong themes.

There’s a lesson there, you know, and it’s not just that creative folks can make movies to fit the parameters of contests. No, it’s that sometimes the story dictates the length. And if you let the story do that, you’re going to get more bang for your buck because the emotion can either be drawn and milked and developed, as in a longer story, or laid out with heart-wrenching power (or humor or pathos or horror) as in a shorter work.

I haven’t always been a fan of shorter stories–I preferred to meet characters and then stay with them. It’s one of the reasons I love books that are part of series. But I’ve done several shorts now, and I love them. From short short stories to novellas.

Right now, I have three shorter works available, and each of them are exactly the length that they should be (which, frankly, is an advantage of epublishing). The first is a novella, SHADOW KEEPERS: MIDNIGHT, which is the prequel to my upcoming release WHEN PASSION LIES (which got a great review in Publisher’s Weekly and was named Amazon’s best romance for May! Yay!).

When Passion Lies

Shadow Keepers, Book 4

I’ve also got a fun, edgy short story in Love Is Murder…very noir and very short. And, again, just the right length for the story.Love is Murder (ITW anthology) cover

The Demon You Know cover art

Just released in e-format!

And, of course I’ve already chattered on about The Demon You Know, my first foray into indie e-pubbing. (subliminal message…only 99 cents … buy, buy…it’s cheaper than a cuppa coffee….ahem…sorry. Back on track…)

All of which brings me to my ePub Tip of the Day: The cool thing about publishing ebooks is that you truly don’t have to worry about word count. Write the story as the story needs to be written. And doesn’t that just feel great?

I’m a publisher! THE DEMON YOU KNOW is up at Amazon!

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Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than electrons on speed…it’s digital publishing!The Demon You Know cover art

All kidding aside, I had no idea that the short story I posted yesterday would go up so quickly! But I’m so very glad it did.

So here’s what I learned since my last post:

1) Amazon processes its content fast. Best to have a blog post and any web updates ready to go (ahem) before you hit the publish button. The site for publishing isn’t blatantly labeled on the Amazon site. The url is https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin

You, yes you, can own your very own copy of The Demon You Know. Just click here!

2) The process is super-easy. Just follow the steps. I was pleasantly surprised.

3) The only potential problem I saw was that I included a cover in the .mobi file I created using Scrivener. I was afraid that since Amazon wanted me to upload a cover that I’d end up with two (not a huge crisis; I like my cover!). But apparently the software is smart; I only ended up with one cover. And Amazon took a higher pixel level than the Scrivener software, which is a plus.

In the future, I could leave the cover off the .mobi file I create, but I like having it for gifting and for sending Advance Copies; so I’ll keep it. Look for my E-publishing With Scrivener post coming soon!

4) I can’t speak to the ease of publishing a file other than .mobi. Amazon uses .mobi (or some version thereof) as its format. Whether the story would look clean had I formatted in Word, I couldn’t say. I like Scrivener, and I’ll be sticking with it.

5) I’m still pondering the question of pricing. I think 99 cents is about the perfect price point for a short story (hey, it’s cheaper than a cuppa coffee!) but I’m on the fence about pricing original material and backlist books. Will ponder more here later, but if anyone has thoughts, please drop a comment below.

I’ve also decided to add tips and tidbits and whatnots to the end of my various posts. Today’s is an ePub tip!

ePub tip of the day: Include hyperlinks in the foreword and afterward. As an author, I think this is an awesome way to give readers easy access to related material. As a reader, I love the convenience. (I recently bought the first three Inspector Pitt books by Anne Perry in Kindle and read them back to back by following the Kindle links). Sooooo handy!

I’ve also included a link to a dedicated webpage for the Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom Series (the page, albeit, needs to be updated, but it’s live and it’ll be prettied up soon, hopefully today; in the mean time, it gets readers to my webpage so folks know where to come to learn about what’s happening with Kate and the gang!)

So there you go! If you visit the Kindle page for The Demon You Know (and I hope you do!) please click on the “like” button if you like me or the title or the series or if you’re just feeling charitable to the world at large. And if you’ve read the story, I’d appreciate a review.

Got anything else to add or ask? Drop me a comment!

Short Stories … Gotta love ‘em!

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I confess that I wasn’t always a fan of the short story; once I got to know characters I wanted to spend TIME with them. But with age brings wisdom (not that I’m old enough to be that wise) and I’ve developed a love for the shorter format. And I’m so psyched to be part of the Love Is Murder anthology edited by the awesome Sandra Brown and being published (soon!) by Mira.

To whet your appetite, here’s the book trailer, just recently released:

HARLEQUIN & The International Thriller Writers, Inc are proud to present the EXCLUSIVE REVEAL of The Thriller 3: Love is Murder Official Book Trailer! Prepare for heart-racing suspense in this original collection by thirty of the hottest bestselling authors and new voices writing romance suspense today.

The truth is, that although I’ve always considered myself a novelist, I’ve had a great time writing the few shorts that I’ve done, including The Honeymoon in Love is Murder and The Demon You Know, which I blogged about yesterday. I also wrote Dead Friends and Other Dating Dilemmas, which is included in the This is Chick-Lit anthology.

I hope you check out Love is Murder — be sure to let me know what you think. And if you like short stories too, I’m working on a whole buncha ‘em for my The Trouble With Demons anthology…coming soon!