Back Again

Yes, Thriller Guy has returned. And where has TG been? Earning a living, if you can call it a living. In the last month or so, TG has helped judge a couple of national novel writing contests, written a ton of reviews and done some work on his own stuff. He's got three new stories in the can, two of them novelettes. Right now you are probably asking, what's a novelette? Here's the scoop on nomenclature, Little Ones.

First there's the short story. Poe said the length of a short story should be how long it takes to read the story in one sitting. Thriller Guy says a short story should be from one to nine thousand words, maybe more. Less than a thousand words gets you into Flash Fiction territory.

A novelette, is around 7500 to 17,000 words. You don't hear the word novelette much these days, maybe it sounds too wimpy or French or something, but TG kind of likes it.

A novella is 17,000 to 40,000 words. Anything longer is a novel. A short novel would be from 40,000 to 75,000 words and a “regular” novel, according to all the publishing contracts TG has signed, and that's a bunch of them, is around 100,000 words.

So in the last months, TG has written two novelettes to go with a novella, all of which are new and unpublished. All three pieces of fiction are about chickens. That's right, chickens. And right now, TG is not even going to explain why this is so. Maybe later. Maybe never.

One of the novel contests TG judged was interesting, in that TG had to read 10 books in ten days, and review each of them. This reading overload was no one's fault but his own, letting the deadline creep up on him the way deadlines tend to do. By the end of the ten days, TG's eyes were weeping blood and he was forced to remain in a dark room with cooling washcloths over his eyes and fevered brow for several days. The problem was, each of the ten books was interesting in its own right, so TG couldn't just toss any of them aside and say they were crappy and never going to win anyway. Plus, TG has a ridiculous sense of honor when it comes to reading and reviewing, which keeps him from ever shortchanging any author, at least as far as putting in the necessary reading as required.

At any rate, TG is back in harness, and he thanks all of you who wrote to ask what had happened to the blog. Was TG all right? When could they see a new entry? Actually, there were damn few of you who wrote asking these questions, but that's OK, TG is sure you all have very busy lives.

So what's coming up? TG will be writing about Robert Massello's The Medusa Amulet, which he thinks is a damn near perfect example of the Da Vinci Code type thriller; he'll turn the blog over to his alter ego, Allen Appel, who will continue the riveting account of his experiences after publishing his first book, and he will put out more fabulous writing tips for those who want to write and publish novels while at the same time trying to disabuse as many of you as possible who still think that writing is actually a career and a worthwhile endeavor.

So stay tuned, Little Ones, TG is back in harness.