Once upon a time, I wrote a 2000 word very clever short mystery story. So clever, in fact, that no one but me understood it.
It languished.
Then People's Friend wanted the occasional long mystery story. I resurrected Curtains (as it was titled then) and made it much longer. Too long, as it turned out, and still too complicated.
I rolled up my sleeves and got out the chain saw.
The 10K story was published in a People's Friend Fiction Special after MUCH sweating-of-blood on my part, now titled Behind Closed Doors.
Reader, I brooded.
The thing is - and I have this problem a lot - writers have a gut feeling for how long a story should be. If you try to stretch a story or squash it to fit someone else's column inches, it might still be a competent piece of work, but to my mind it suffers.
I brooded some more.
Then, along came Self-Publishing! And suddenly I could take my work and make everything the length it was always supposed to be all along!
So I went back to my several originals and reworked them and added a LOT more, and the result is What the Eye Doesn't See, a satisfying (to me, at any rate) 20K mystery featuring village shopkeeper Flora Swift.
Hope you like it!
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8 comments:
Excellent...will be adding it to the TBR pile...love your stories!!
lx
Thank you, Liz. Hope you enjoy it!
Excited! Will keep me going until the next Penny Plain :) Love your mystery stories :) Cxxx
Thanks, Chris!
*gets back up off laurels...*
On the Kindle to take away with me next week! Still waiting for the Ely one. x
It's on the list, Lesley. Hope you enjoy Flora-the-long!
This gives me hope for my Silk for Susannah story - now at 2K and waiting to be expanded to about 15K or more. I was thinking, can I really manage to do that? But clearly the answer is YES!! Looking forward to this. Jane x
Excellent title, Victoria! These things can be done :)
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