Good news from the Black Lizard Lounge: I signed a
contract the other day for the publication of "Pearl's Valley."
“Pearl” is a longish story I wrote more than two years ago. It was a
difficult story to sell perhaps because of the length, which is 15,500 words.
That was a conscious choice on my part as 15,000 is about the length of some of
my favorite short stories by Raymond Chandler, such as "Red Wind" or
"Goldfish," or approximately one-quarter the length of two of
Dashiell Hammett's finest novels, The Maltese Falcon and Red Harvest, both of
which originally appeared as four part serials in Black Mask.
The publisher for "Pearl's Valley" will be
Dark Passages Publishing, which says it
"is a New York based imprint that endeavors to publish the best new crime
novellas." They plan to bring it out as (I guess) a little stand-alone
book and an e-book in March 2017.
I've been particularly fond of this story, which I sent
to about 43 prospective homes in response to which I received 39 rejections. I
guess I just had to find the right home.
Someone--John Gardner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy
or Kinky Friedman--said there are only two plots: a man goes on a journey, and
a stranger comes to town. "Pearl's Valley" was my man-goes-on-a-journey
story. “New Billy’s Blues,” my current writing project, is my
stranger-comes-to-town.
No comments:
Post a Comment