New (strange) fiction
Let’s talk a little about Konshu and the Nightshift, published just a few days ago. It’s my new ebook about a cop who uncovers an energy theft operation in an exciting but unconventional way, and it’s on Amazon for a modest $1.49. It has a good description with two excerpts, so click the Zon link for more on that.
Konshu is also on Kindle Unlimited, which is another way of saying that subscribers to the service can read it for free, at least for the next few months. Being on KU, Konshu can’t appear on other ebook sites during the 90-day commitment. I’ve had mixed results with Kindle Unlimited, but hope has again surfaced like a spring flower.
Konshu is great reading, but it could be confusing on two points. First, it’s a novelette, and that means it’s longer than a short story and shorter than a novella, which is shorter than a novel. If you want a word count, that’s 9,745. When I was in college, fiction was either a novel or a short story. The terms novelette and novella were never used, but we read them anyhow. Now writers have finer gradations for length, even if the reading public hasn’t fully caught on.
The other point to clarify is the genre. Publishing is largely set up to classify fiction into categories, and the system works pretty well until two or three categories are fused in the same literary work. What we have with Konshu, is a police detective story set in the near future (science fiction) and executed with a paranormal flavor. Oh, and there’s even a touch of romance. Call it a mashup if you like, but I’m calling it a sci-fi detective tale.