Tag: Fantasy

Hi Everyone. It’s a pleasure to welcome fellow author and Story Empire contributor C. S. Boyack to my blog today. Craig has a new novella he recently released, and he’s here to tell you about  the book and why he chose to write a novella rather than a longer novel.

Thanks for inviting me over today, Joan. I’m here to talk about my new book, The Hat. I’m known for trying all the tools in the toolbox, and every book has a behind-the-scenes goal. I believe this helps me grow as an author.

I’ve used different points of view, tenses, story structure, and more to write my stories. The personal goal this time was to bring out a novella length work. That may not seem like much of a goal, so let me explain why.

A few years ago I realized that modern life doesn’t allow for much time. We’re on-call even on our days off. People are in contact with their offices even when they’re on vacation. We’ve trained ourselves to get information in smaller and smaller increments. I don’t know about you, but reading a novel takes me some serious quality time. This time is at a premium for me.

I noticed a renewed interest in short stories, and decided the timing was right to try some of those myself. This led to my Experimental Notebook. Readers could enjoy a story during a coffee break. It was a story book, so they could feasibly get a new story every day until they finished it.

This one sold really well for me, so I followed it up with a second Notebook which sold even better. Maybe I was on to something here. My experimenting with styles and such was rampant in these books, thus the experimental part of the titles, but readers seemed to like it. However, a few reviewers indicated they would have liked a little more time with one story or another. (I take that as a sign that I created some fairly rich worlds within the parameters of a short story.)

What to do? What to do? I have novel length works available. I’ve served the crowd that is pressed for time. Hmm, maybe the novella is due to break out once more?

There was a time when short stories ruled. Then novels took the spotlight. Novella’s we’re always like the stepchild. They hung around, but didn’t fit into magazine parameters. New York publishing didn’t want them either. With the appearance of the e-book, neither of those excuses makes much sense. We’re not trying to fit it between advertisements for Turtle Wax, or tying up the printing presses and trucking to deliver a smaller work.

I found it to be an interesting length. It doesn’t need to be trimmed to the bone like a short story, or even tighter like a micro-fiction. It also doesn’t have that slog through the middle that novels have.

Pricing it was a nightmare, because to me it’s more like a novel. I really enjoyed the story, but now it’s my stepchild. At the end of the day, I decided to publish it at 99¢. This means I get almost nothing out of it, but perhaps some decent reviews and an interest in one of my longer works will happen. I saw this happen with both Experimental Notebooks.

Oh, as a secondary experiment, I included a few small graphics in the book. They are tiny bits intended to enhance the story.

Take a chance on The Hat. I really enjoyed writing it, and maybe you can use it to spend your lunch breaks on this week. I’ll let the cover and blurb tell you all about it.

Blurb:

Lizzie St. Laurent is dealing with many of the struggles of young life. She lost her grandmother, and her living arrangements. Her new roommate abandoned her, and she’s working multiple jobs just to keep her head above water.

She inherits an old hat from her grandmother’s estate, but it belonged to her grandfather. This is no ordinary hat, but a being from an alternate dimension. One with special powers.

Lizzie and the hat don’t exactly hit it off right away, but when her best friend’s newborn is kidnapped by a ring of baby traffickers, Lizzie turns to the hat for help. This leads her deep into her family history and a world she’s never known.

Lizzie gives up everything to rescue the babies. She loses her jobs, and may wind up in jail before it’s over. Along the way, she and the hat may have a new way of making ends meet.

Humorous and fun, The Hat is novella length. Wonderful escapism for an afternoon.

Purchase Link

C. S. Boyack was born in a town called Elko, Nevada. He likes to tell everyone he was born in a small town in the 1940s. I’m not quite that old, but Elko has always been a little behind the times. This gives me a unique perspective of earlier times, and other ways of getting by. Some of this bleeds through into my fiction.

Craig moved to Idaho right after the turn of the century, and never looked back. His writing career was born there, with access to other writers and critique groups he jumped in with both feet.

He likes to write about things that have something unusual. His works are in the realm of science fiction, paranormal, and fantasy. The goal is to entertain you for a few hours and he hopes you enjoy the ride.

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