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!
.
