My novella In Your Favor poured out over the course of 8 days in April earlier this year. Editing grew it from 23,000 words to 27,000 words.
A veritable no-man’s land of word count.
Nobody really wants novellas. They’re too long for most short fiction markets, of course. And most small publishers don’t really do them. I recently had some trouble with another long story–“Karma Is Dead”–which recently got accepted to the Longer Worlds anthology. It also had interest from another publisher that basically asked to hold it until they figured out what they could do with something of such a weird length. They ended up shrugging their shoulders and giving up when I got the other offer. It’s tough writing very long stories that still aren’t novels.
But anyway. Back to In Your Favor.
At 27,000 words, the opportunities were limited. Agents don’t rep standalone novellas. Most publishers aren’t interested in them. I was left with very few options for trying to get this thing out there, but fortunately, there are some smaller publishers that are open-minded enough to take stories starting at about 15K. I approached a few of those and was encouraged by the interest I got from one small publisher: The Wild Rose Press.
Acceptance into their consideration happened in August 2026. Assigned an editor in September. They cooked on it until October, and on October 19, I got word that they had decided they wanted to publish it. After some contract negotiations, I returned a publishing contract to them on November 10. I don’t yet know when it will be published, but it’s really exciting! (And intimidating, because I’ve never directly dealt with book publishers before. My previous interactions were through an agent, but like I said, agents don’t take novella projects generally.)
To say I’m ecstatic to share my adventurers with everyone is an understatement!
The story in one sentence: Six adventurers are ready to receive their magic powers, but only five will get a gift–who will be left out?
Six aspiring adventurers—Bauer, Ari, Rocky, Minnie, Rochelle, and Amber—only need one thing before they can start quests together. It’s time to acquire their magic powers. They’re very ready to start their career after four years of training, but there’s a catch: the magic-bestowing crystal only blesses five of each group, while the sixth receives no powers, left to manage quests for the team from afar. No one has control over who’s left out. Like most, this group does not want to be split up, but the crystal has not blessed all six questers in over 400 years.
Amber, used to being ordinary, has made peace with the likelihood of coming up blank, and would have accepted her fate gracefully if she wasn’t in love with her teammate Rochelle–an all-around superstar who somehow likes her back. Rochelle and her brother Rocky are a power duo virtually guaranteed magic since twins traditionally manifest related gifts, so if Amber doesn’t receive a talent, she’ll not only lose her adventuring dream, but her dream girl. She may need more than luck to turn the tables in her favor.
Amber is such a fun character and I’ve done a couple related stories so far (including “Getting Lucky” and “To Greater Heights”). I would love to write more about these characters and follow them around for a whole series, but we’ll see what happens!