The five published books on my website are all the same length, about 52K, except for Consuela. It's a little bit shorter. At first I presented many books as novellas, individual longer short stories, long collections of stories, or even the occasional novel. But as I worked with the books, stories took a more mainstream shape. Novels got cut. Novellas merged with each other. Extra stories that padded out books disappeared. All of them became a very similar page count (250-280 pages) and suddenly all the little random "stories" had been replaced by streamlined books. 

I didn't start out with this in mind, because although my stories were often an awkward length, I've read and enjoyed books of any length and I didn't plan to add or crop words just to fulfill someone's idea of a book. But I'm glad it happened. Nowhere is this new streamlined kind of book more visible than in "Victoria." It started as a novella of 30K words, then it shrank to a much shorter story. Then it blended with "Alyce," an even shorter story (about 18K) that had been once released as part of the same series. After I went back to the old, longer version of Victoria--keeping the merge with Alyce--I had to rewire my mind to realize this is a novel now. I'd become programmed to automatically think of Victoria and Alyce as short. But together, they became a full novel. 

How nice! 

A Year with the Harrisons shrank to become a similar length and when two of the Facets stories were removed, Facets of Fantasy was also comparable. And so is Bellevere House, which started longer, but after a special rewrite just about Ed and Faye's relationship, became exactly the same length as the others. 

Yes! My books, like tangled hair, got themselves straightened out. 

And there will be more updates. 

For now, the books I've decided to move forward are A Year with the Harrisons; City of the Invaders; Bellevere House; and of course the upcoming The Prince's Ball. "Keep" is a relative term, inasmuch as de-emphasizing the other titles doesn't mean they are unpublished or eliminated. I put work into each one for a good reason and all will remain available on Amazon (and Facets of Fantasy; Ryan and Essie; and The Test of Devotion will also be wide on other platforms.) 

But these 5 books are the ones that draw the most attention and have consistently done so. A Year with the Harrisons has always had a spot in people's attention, and whether I like it or not, Bellevere House was viewed as interesting for its place within the overall VJA collection. City of the Invaders has kept a very under-the-radar, but very consistent following, and all promotional mention of The Prince's Ball seems to indicate a level of excitement. 

On the other hand The Birthday Present and Consuela have had lukewarm reactions, The Test of Devotion was in general rejected, and Ryan and Essie--in spite of its imaginative ideas--is the only book of mine to have never sold even one paid copy. That baffles me, but it's true. Facets of Fantasy is a bit harder to gauge because there was a lot of interest in it at first, but I wasn't sure what the interest consisted of and it might have worn off for a book that's a decade old. I also got so much vagueness in reactions to The Amulet of Renari that I'm not done dealing with it, because I don't know how it fell on readers. 

And there will be more updates. 

As of now, my expansion into more stores is only limited by how rapidly I can complete some more rewrites/new cover assignments. The more I do with my books, the more things spring forward that need to be done. Getting a story articulated in a way that will make readers understand why they should pick it up is hard, but I'm getting better at it. 

As I examined A Year with the Harrisons, I realized it had been a variation on Little Women all along. I started the book years before I began doing my other "retellings," and so I didn't spot that it was a retelling at first. But as time went on, the characters began to look familiar--Meg, Jo, Amy, Laurie, Mr. Laurence, Aunt March, Marmee and Mr. March. I really did leave out Beth. The story started with 3 sisters and though I sometimes considered adding a fourth, it just never really happened. So there are still just 3. Aunt March (Brenda) also gets a lot more screentime than in the book and I enlarged on her immediate family as well as her relationship to the "Marches" (the Harrison family.)

The Birthday Present is now a small prequel to The Prince's Ball and helps to set up its futuristic world. After using Alyce-type characters several times in a historical sort of setting, this story needs a fresh new look and futuristic should shake it up in the right way. 

Pricing now ranges from $2.99 to permafree. One GREAT thing about getting in more stores is that Amazon can be forced to make a book permafree to compete. 

​And there will be more updates. 

I won’t make this a heroine spotlight and I’m not quite sure why not. Betty occupies half of A Year with the Harrisons and her plot is at least equal to the other one. But still, it’s officially a “subplot” and so she isn’t a “heroine” in my mind even though the story is mostly about her and not about the Harrison girls.

Maybe she’s too old to be a heroine. “Heroine” sounds like a young adult, but Betty is a mother in her thirties who acts and feels even older than her age. Life has always been a little rough around the edges for her and she definitely has a tired tone to her sometimes. (When she’s not being sarcastic that is, which is one of her best qualities. Betty’s sarcasm is usually intentional, sometimes not.) Perhaps she’s too much of a real person to be a heroine too. Even if they’re faulty, heroines are idealized in so many ways for the reader.

Heroine or not, Betty gets a lot of screen time on the pages of A Year with the Harrisons. And her practical outlook on life contrasts in a really funny (and sometimes a little bittersweet) way with the living-in-a-bubble outlook her mother and sisters have.
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And there will be more updates.