Just kind of realised that I’m getting nowhere with “Ghost in the Machine”. I like the idea, don’t get me wrong, it’s just how I’ve executed it.
It’s a 90k monster, and I’m not sure the story justifies such grandiosity. It’s a novella idea padded to a novel length.
The interesting realisation is that I’m writing for publishers or agents. I’m now writing for myself. “Devil in the Detail”, the novella sequel to “Ghost”, is much better – tighter, leaner and with a better story. It’s only 23k but it’s perfect.
So what I’m going to do is to junk “Ghost” for now, and concentrate on getting “Devil” on Kindle. It’s a much more mature work and it only requires some minor continuity tweaking to make it the first story. And I’ve got a great idea for another novella.
If I can keep this up – publishing 20k-50k novellas – then it’s both manageable and feasible. It’s also a market that doesn’t really exist.
Someone like Jim Thompson used to only publish short novels, 170pp or so. Nowadays there’s intimidating doorstops which are impossible to get into. There needs to be a market for accessible, immediate stories.
Hope to get it on Kindle in a couple of weeks.
— Ed
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