Author?

So...this is the new website. Created in anticipation of fantasy loads of publishers and agents beating down my door. It feels childlike and presumptuous to create something like this, far more uncomfortable to title oneself "author." That, dear reader, is a title with lots and lots of baggage. What ego! What chutzpah! I just couldn't do it. Couldn't get there from here. I'll stick with Hopeful Slinger of Letters. Maybe one day I'll feel confident enough to call myself an author. I doubt that will be anytime soon.

Still, I'm excited! Fairlight Books ( https://www.fairlightbooks.co.uk/ ) has accepted "Seven Days with the Comte de St. Germaine" for publication and that's a good thing. I actually submitted to these folks for some very good reasons. I like how they're publishing, they're open to the idea of novellas (most publishers are not) and, having read many of their previously published stories, I like their content. My hope is that they may be interested in a novella that I've written called "Husbands." We'll see.

Fairlight is an English publishing house and "Husbands" is all about Arkansas and the south in the 1980s. It stars three women, Rachel, Judith and Betty (all based off of women I know or have known.) Friends for years, all facing challenges in their lives and with their husbands. It is meant to be humorous and irreverent with a little bit of heart threaded through the middle of the story. Let's hope I achieved that. It is, unfortunately, a novella.

I say unfortunately because, as stated above, most publishing houses dismiss the novella as unpublishable. I'm not sure why. They may have sound financial reasons but, it seems to me, that in a day and time when reading feels like a luxury to many people, the idea of a shorter but still complete story would be more palatable and salable, not less. Who knows?

I have considered extending "Husbands" to novel length, God knows I love the story and I love the characters so I can always, always write more about them, but...it just doesn't feel like it wants to be a novel. To add to it would, I think, take away some of its charm. Having said that, what do I know? Maybe it's not charming? Maybe it needs another 100 pages. In the meantime, Fairlight seems to like the novella as a form so...we'll see what happens.

In the meantime, welcome all of you invisible masses who are not reading this. I'll just be here writing this blog for myself.

The picture, incidentally, is my granddaughter who is pretty much responsible for me doing all of this in the first place. She's pretty cool.

Chris