That’s the short of it…

I started out as a short story writer. Not a novelist. I think I was seven or eight when I penned my first short story. I was around ten or eleven when I began writing my first novel.  Later, when I started working toward a professional career and began penning that first magnum opus that eventually turned into the Sorcerers’ Twilight series, I wrote a ton of short fiction that I submitted mercilessly to the short fiction markets. Some of it was rather awful, but some of it wasn’t too bad.

I’m pretty sure at one point I was known to most editors. I often made it past the slush piles to the editors themselves, and almost always found myself the proud owner of a handwritten rejection notice signed in real editorial ink. Had I kept going the way of short fiction I have no doubt I would have eventually made it into the likes of The Black Gate, MZB’s Fantasy Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, and The Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy.  That was so many years ago.

Nowadays I write novellas and novels, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have a passion for short fiction. I still enjoy writing shorter stories. The difference is that now you’ll likely find me publishing my shorts in eBook at .99 cents each. Once I gather enough of them, I’ll pull them together into collections.  I have a lot  of short fiction in the works as I write this.

From Anne O’Connell there’s The Rite, Wolf, and Vampires Aren’t Sparkly. From Audrey Brice there’s a little story I’m working on currently titled Witch Blood.

I love short fiction. It’s a little break into another world and can give a reader a half hour to an hour’s worth of enjoyment. It’s like the sitcom of the written word.  What do you prefer? Short stories? Novellas? Or Novels?  Why?