I read my first short romance story today–one publisher calls them Quickies and another calls them Bites–and the one I read was around 40 pages or so. I’m not sure how I feel about it, TBH.
I liked the story and the hero and heroine, and the writing was good. And that’s where my problem came in–I wanted more. Forty pages just wasn’t enough. I wanted to see the story completely unfold between the hero and heroine. I wanted to know why they made the choices they made. I wanted to spend more time with them. It was so frustrating to be enjoying everything and have it come to an abrupt end.
On the other side of the coin, I don’t have much reading time so the length actually worked for me. I was able to read a romantic story with sex in less than half an hour. If it had been a full-length, single-title story, I wouldn’t have been able to take the time to read it. And if I could just figure out how to load PDFs on my iPod, the short length would be perfect to read on that rather than the computer.
And I wonder how the story premise would have held up over 100,000 words. It was a great premise, one that had me thinking cool, but could it be stretched to support a novel? I don’t know. For that reason, maybe the short length was a good thing.
It also intrigued me–I’m infamous for writing 115,000 word books. I laugh when I see the contract clause about writing at least 90,000 words because the only way that’s going to be a problem is if they won’t let me go over that number. But reading this story made me wonder if I could write something that short and have it be as satisfying a read as this one was? Because even though I wanted more, the story was a satisfying read. I don’t know. Short is not my natural length. 
I’m interested enough to want to try. I won’t, of course. I have another story I need to be working on that has a deadline and I don’t have any characters I want to use up on something short when I could get a full book about them. But. But what if I did like a series of little vignettes about the same characters? Kind of a serial-type thing?
Argh! Back to the WIP, the one that’s due March 1st.
I like a quickie (or bite). Sometimes they are too short but then sometimes they are like a great appetizer…and I rush out and buy other books by that author! It’s a great way to “try out” a new author…see if you like the author’s voice, etc.
I like to write shorts. Tryig to write 115k scares the cr*p out of me!
Cyndi,
115,000 scares the hell out of me, too. It helps me to think of it in smaller pieces, like 4 pages a day or a scene. And I always vow that the next book is coming in at 400 pages, not 460 and I never manage that.
Re: the quickie/bite, it was a nice intro to the author and I’d buy more from her in the future.
Patti
Liked the post. Thanks.
I found it an interesting concept that may be worth investigating. Where did you find the publisher, Patti? Do they have a presence on the Web?
Anthony,
There are a number of places to buy these shorts. eHarlequin does the Bites, Ellora’s Cave does the Quickies, and I found some free shorts at http://www.allromanceebooks.com
This is something I haven’t looked into very deeply because writing short would be a challenge for me, but I think those should give you a start.
Patti