What’s that? Another twitterstorm of outrage and controversy. Well, it is *checks watch* a day of the week, after all. In this case, there’s been another big blow up about including content warnings (sometimes called trigger warnings, now simply CW hereafter) in horror books. There was a day when I was against the idea. Now I’m not. Horror, or any other fiction for that matter, has no rules. Story is how we mirror and interrogate our world. Write your soul, your pain, your truth. Anyone who tries to tell you what you can write can go suck it. Equally, if you write something deeply offensive or harmful to others, be ready for consequences. Don’t be a dick is always the benchmark, for fiction of any kind or life in general. But write what you want. You should always consider whether a story is yours to tell, but we want diversity in our fiction, we want to see our world reflected. Doing that without harm is the trick.

Horror, of course, is meant to be confronting. But that doesn’t mean it should be traumatic, or that people avoiding trauma are somehow wrong, weak, or censors. If a reader asks for CW, that’s okay. People carry all kinds of trauma they don’t want reinforced. CW are not censorship. You don’t have to include them, of course, but don’t deny others discussing them. That’s a dick move. A lot of people don’t want CW, they want no spoilers. Fair enough, I’m like that too. CW should definitely be somewhere out of sight. A good idea is the back of the book maybe, where people who want them can look. Another option is to have them available via the publisher or author website. That’s an inclusive move, not censorship. I’ve added a page to my site here that people can check or be directed to, then anyone who might need a warning about the content of any of my books can find what they need. It’s not exhaustive, but it’s something. I definitely deal with some seriously fucked up shit in my stories. Horror is the genre of honesty, after all, and honestly, the world can be pretty fucked up.

But the idea that people asking for CW are somehow “snowflakes” is bloody toxic. If I love cake but I’m allergic to peanuts, it’s not censorship of the cake’s integrity or commentary on the cake’s validity to include a list of ingredients. It’s not weak of someone with a peanut allergy to want to avoid a cake that can harm them. People without allergies can ignore the ingredient list. People with peanut allergies can stay safe. It’s really that simple. If you don’t include a list of ingredients and someone has a peanut allergy, they’ll avoid your cake entirely just in case. But if they have one allergy and your ingredients point out their problem isn’t in the cake, you might even gain a new reader. Do people read cakes? This analogy has taken me down a dark alley and mugged me. Let’s move on.

I don’t think books should have CW included. If you want to put them in the back, or somewhere people can easily ignore them or find them, that’s great. But they shouldn’t be required by any means. There are inherent issues that can arise from that kind of prescriptivism. As is often the case, the best way lies somewhere along the middle path. Supplying a resource like I’ve done on my site here is easy and it’s kind. The vast majority of people don’t need CW, don’t care about them, and probably won’t ever even know about that particular page on my site. For the people who do need it though, there it is.

Just to reiterate: Horror is meant to be confronting. That doesn’t mean it should be traumatic, or that people avoiding trauma are somehow wrong, weak, or censors. If we can create whatever we want and protect people with trauma as well, why the fuck wouldn’t we? No one is telling you what you can or can’t write.

I bloody love a good novella. There was a time when the novella was super popular. Those good old days of magazine rack pulp fiction, with pocket-sized novellas in every pharmacy, newsagent, supermarket, you name it. Then production costs and distribution systems changed, and bookstore shelf real estate became an issue, so wide spines were more popular, and the novella fell out of favour. Now we come full circle, and with print on demand and ebooks especially, length of story and width of spine are not so relevant any more, so we’ve seen a great resurgence in the novella. I love the length, especially for horror and dark fiction. There’s something perfect about having the space for a storyline like a novel, but the immediacy and pace of a short story. Some of my most successful books have been novellas. Given the popularity of my recent post on great short story collections, I thought I’d do another post with great novellas. This isn’t by any means exhaustive, of course, but it’s a hell of a list to get you started.

By definition, a novella is a short novel. The Science Fiction Writers of America (and most other genre bodies) recognise that as any book or story that is between 17,501 and 40,000 words. Anything less is a short story or novelette. Anything more is a novel. Of course, it’s a flexible thing and often based on opinion. A bit over 40,000 words would still be considered a novella by some. Some people won’t consider anything a novel until it’s over 60,000 words. Regardless, generally speaking, we’re talking about short novels. So the list below might not always be books that are less than 40,000 words, but they are all short novels. I know I’ve missed some classics, so I apologise. And I’ll add to this as new ones pass my brain.

Like the short story list, I’ll start with my own. That’s the beauty of this being my blog. Thanks for reading! Then I’ll list a wide variety of others, alphabetical by author surname, to get your teeth into. Every title link goes to Goodreads so you can add anything to your TBR, or simply look them up wherever you prefer to shop. Of course, the big ol’ Zon is easy, but try to support local indie booksellers too.

Alan Baxter

My novellas include THE ROO, which is absolute gonzo creature feature mayhem, THE BOOK CLUB, which is a missing person crime mystery with cosmic horror, and the ELI CARVER books, best described as John Wick meets The Frighteners – loads of guns and ghosts. The third Eli Carver book, GHOST RECALL, which follows MANIFEST RECALL and RECALL NIGHT is out now. And of course, there’s THE GULP and THE FALL, two collections, each of five interconnected novellas of weird Australian isolated harbour town cosmic horror. I also wrote a dark horror novella with David Wood called Dark Rite.

Peter M Ball

Exile (Flotsam Series, #1) is the start of a great urban fantasy novella series.

Nathan Ballingrud

Ballingrud writer great novella length fiction, but one of the best is The Visible Filth, which can be found in Wounds: Six Stories from the Border of Hell.

Clive Barker

The Hellbound Heart is an absolute classic.

Laird Barron

Barron is another who writes amazing novellas. Try X’s For Eyes.

John Boden

Try Walk The Darkness Down.

Kealan Patrick Burke

Try Jack & Jill.

Aaron Dries

Dirty Heads is simply outstanding.

Brian Evenson

The Warren is unlike anything you’ll have read before.

Philip Fracassi

A few good ones, try Shiloh.

Lisa L Hannet

There’s a great novella called “By Touch and By Glance” in her collection Songs for Dark Seasons.

Ernest Hemingway

There’s a reason The Old Man and the Sea is a classic.

Mark Allan Gunnells

2B is a great book with cool twists.

Laurel Hightower

Crossroads will tear your heart out.

Gabino Iglesias

Try Zero Saints.

Kathleen Jennings

Flyaway is amazing Australian gothic.

Stephen Graham Jones

SGJ writes amazingly at any length but just won the Stoker for Night of the Mannequins. Try that!

Paul Haines

One of the best novellas you’ll ever read is “Wives” which you can find in Paul’s collection, The Last Days of Kali Yuga.

Brian Keene

Try his new one, With Teeth.

Todd Keisling

Rock and roll and cosmic horror in The Final Reconciliation.

Samantha Kolesnik

True Crime is harsh and amazing.

Ed Kurtz

Try A Wind of Knives.

Eric LaRocca

The epistolary Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is like nothing you’ll have read before.

Tim Lebbon

His novella White is one of the best I’ve read.

Victor LaValle

The Ballad of Black Tom reinvents Lovecraft in the best way.

Martin Livings

Rope is short and brutal.

Chad Lutzke

Check out Of Foster Homes and Flies.

Josh Malerman

The first thing by Malerman I ever read was A House at the Bottom of a Lake and it still blows my mind.

Richard Matheson

I Am Legend is still one of my all-time favourite books.

Christine Morgan

Long by novella standards, but it qualifies as a short novel for me, The Night Silver River Run Red is a great horror western.

Jason Nahrung

Salvage reinvents the vampire yarn.

Nnedi Okorafor

Binti (Binti, #1) is great sci-fi.

George Orwell

Animal Farm

Sarah Pinborough

The Language of Dying is lyrical and beautiful and heartbreaking.

Daniel I Russell

Try Critique.

Priya Sharma

Ormeshadow is wonderful.

Angela Slatter

Of Sorrow and Such is classic Slatter at her best.

Keith Stevenson (editor)

I’m including X6: A Novellanthology as it contains 6 great novellas and of particular note is Margo Lanagan’s “Sea Hearts” which became an amazing novel. This was also the original publication of Paul Haines’ “Wives” mentioned above.

Peter Straub

Magic Terror is a collection of four novellas, all amazing.

Steve Stred

The Window In the Ground is a cool concept cleverly realised.

John F D Taff

Fire & Rain (The Fearing #1) is the start of an amazing novella series, or you can also now buy it as an omnibus edition.

Sara Tantlinger

Try To Be Devoured. It’s incredible.

Stephen Volk

Whitstable is a wonderful piece of work.

Marlee Jane Ward

Welcome to Orphancorp is the start of a stellar novella trilogy.

Kaaron Warren

Without doubt, one of the best writers working today. Try Into Bones like Oil.

Corey J White

Killing Gravity (The Voidwitch Saga, #1) is the first of a brilliant SF novella trilogy.

Kim Wilkins

The Year of Ancient Ghosts is a collection of superb novellas.

Michael David Wilson

Try The Girl in the Video to be really weirded out.

I pre-recorded a reading for StokerCon 2021 where I read the opening pages of “Mother In Bloom”, the second novella in THE GULP. It was exclusive to the con, but now the con is over, so I’ve made it public. I hope you enjoy it.

A couple of writer friends I respect a great deal have mentioned something along these lines over the last day or two, so I thought I’d write a similar admission. I can often feel guilt and frustration and joy in equal measure. I genuinely love to see my fellow writers sharing great successes, be they new publishing deals, story sales, movie options, or anything else. It is fantastic to see those successes, and it proves those things are possible for all of us. Do I envy those successes too, because I want them for myself? Fuck yeah, I do. I can be happy for my peers and cranky it’s not me at the same time. We contain multitudes, us fleshy bags of need and yearning. And the thing is, I know damn well that every time I post about one of my successes, there are others out there who are equally happy-envious of me. Of course they are, they’re only human. But there’s an imbalance in this, because we only post the successes, not the toil and failure in between. We only show the beautiful rose, not the dirt and shit it was grown in. And that’s worth remembering.

For every success, I guarantee that there’s a lot of non-success. Failure isn’t the right word – we only fail when we quit – but lack of success is common. All the time we’re refusing to give in, we just have varying levels of success, from none to HOLY SHIT! But for every story sale, there are dozens of rejections. For every new book deal, there are dozens of “Thanks, but no thanks”. Even for every movie option, there are loads of enthusiastic messages from producers or studios that ultimately come to absolutely nothing.

No one is successful all the time. No one bats a home run with every ball they strike. But the weird thing is, we never post about all the times we miss. Honestly, we’d look like whinging sad sacks if we did, because as a writer it’s quite possible to miss almost daily. At least every week something I hoped might come good simply doesn’t. Or something that looks to be awesome crashes and burns for no good fucking reason halfway through take-off. It’s the nature of this industry.

So if we’ve had fifty rejections, but then we get an acceptance, you bet your best socks we sing and dance about it. The trouble is, for everyone else out there looking in, they only see the success. And it probably seems not that long since the last success, especially if we’re working really hard, because the successes are all we post about. So it looks like we’re out here swimming in a pool of acceptance letters like Scrooge McDuck diving into a mountain of cash. It’s a skewed perspective.

And even when we do post about our wonderful successes, we don’t post about the shit that might follow. If we sell a new book to a publisher, damn straight we sing out about it. When that book is published and fucking bombs, hardly selling any copies and quickly dropping off reader and reviewer radars… yeah, we don’t tend to sing so publicly about that. But it does happen. And we do go on and on about it, but with our friends in private. It’s the standard lie of social media – you see all the gloss and none of the dross.

But trust on me on this – the more you see someone winning, the harder they are working. There are a fuckton of horrible crashes and misses between every win, so if someone seems to be winning a lot, they are losing a lot too. This business is brutal and thankless and demoralising as hell a lot of the time. But we don’t quit. Every one of those wins is a reminder that they can happen, do happen, will happen again. So we keep going. Like Rocky in the last seconds of the round, we are not going down. AAADDRIIIAAANNNNNN! We write again. And again. Because we know how much we want it. We know we can do it. You have to dig through a lot of shit to grow a rose and that’s what we do, day after day. The only thing in this whole business we control is the writing. So that’s what we do, that’s what we fall back on, every time. We write, and we try to get better with every word. Nothing else is in our control.

I guarantee that almost no one is the runaway success they might appear to be. We’re all busting our arses to stay afloat, always hoping for more readers to build our career, more acceptances here and there among the slew of rejections. But in the bad times, we don’t post about it publicly – we knuckle down and work. Then when something good comes up, we sure as hell post about that. And because I know that to be true, when my peers post about their successes, even though I’m jealous it’s not me, I also mutter a heartfelt “Fuck yeah!” because not only do they deserve that success, it’s a reminder that it can happen to me too.

The only failure is quitting. Never give in, never surrender. Dig as much shit as necessary to grow as many roses as you can. I’m here to cheer you along, and hopefully every now and then you’ll be cheering for me too.

A Twitter post triggered a thread, so I thought I’d move it here too, because it’s relevant and I wanted to save it. Here’s the original tweet that got me thinking.

Vigorous one hour walk with Rufus achieved. Because exercise is important, y’all.

You know what, quick thread. Here’s how I do it. 1/

— Alan Baxter (@AlanBaxter) February 19, 2021

This is the short thread that followed, transcribed and extended for the blog:

Let’s start at the beginning. A sedentary lifestyle is one of the biggest killers out there. Sitting down for long periods of time is as bad as smoking for mortality. Don’t believe me? Look it up. Here’s a detailed study if you want all the data: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6133005/

That’s actually a pretty fascinating study, taking into account a variety of variables. It makes interesting reading if you’re nerdy for this stuff like I am. But here’s the key point: “This study demonstrates an increasing risk of disease and mortality with increasing total sitting time and TV viewing time. It also revealed a threshold of 6–8 h/day of total sitting and 3–4 h/day of TV viewing, above which risk for several important health outcomes increased more rapidly.”

So maybe the smoking analogy is stretching it, but not by much. Sitting around a lot is BAD for you. As writers, we obviously sit around a lot. One other thing with regards to that [personal trainer hat on*]: It doesn’t matter if you’re fit and healthy and you exercise for an hour every day. If you then sit around for 6 to 8 hours at work, the unhealthy effects of sitting are just as bad! A lot of people think they can sit around all day as long as they exercise morning and/or night to combat the inactivity. It doesn’t work like that. You may well be fit and strong from your exercise, but the problems of extended sitting are still there, still just as bad.

I’m a martial arts instructor. I train hard almost every day. I’m in pretty good shape. None of that means I can then sit around for 8 hours a day penning mad horror. I mean, that IS what I do, but not without breaks. You have to break up those sitting hours. I use a timer app on my desktop, set for 30 mins. The alarm goes off after 30 minutes, and I get out of the chair and move around. I might make a cuppa, go hang out the laundry, do some push-ups, practice one or two kung fu forms. There are numerous things you can do to move your limbs a lot and get your blood pumping. After 5 or 10 minutes of moving around, I go back to work. I reset the timer and start it again. If I’m really in the zone I might skip one alarm and go for an hour straight, but NEVER more than one. I can take a break and get back to work without losing focus because I’ve trained myself to do that. This is a job, so work on your job skills. I know sometimes I’m hanging in a mental net that’s fragile as lace and if I disturb that, I’ll lose my flow. I can snooze the alarm in those instances and push through. But there are always places you can jack out briefly, then get back in. This is a craft that uses more than just your mind and your typing fingers and you need to train every aspect of the art. Keeping a healthy body is part of that.

You might also get a standing desk, or work with a laptop while you walk on a treadmill. Anything is good as long as you get up and move around once or twice every hour AT LEAST. Now we all know dogs are awesome, but here’s another reason why. In the middle of every day I take an hour or so break, quick lunch, then walk Rufus. Long, fast-paced walks. I might take a 90 minute break if necessary, sometimes combine it with chores like post office runs or grabbing groceries. What’s important is moving my body, even if I’m teaching that night.

Obviously, a long dog walk or any other exercise outside is easier in Australia in summer (or winter!) than say, Maine, USA in February. But there’s a lot you can do at home. Body weight exercises, up and down the stairs, even just briskly walking a few laps of a small room gets the body and blood moving and helps to mitigate the problems of extended sitting.

So that’s my advice to you all, writers especially. But it applies to anyone with a sedentary job. Sitting around is a killer. MOVE YOSELF!

(*I’m not a practicing PT any more, but I was for over a decade.)

From our walk today: