Novella Preview

Only 3 more weeks before my next title hits the bookshelves. It's a novella . . . and when I tell people that, usually their nose wrinkles up and little furrows crease their brow. Basically a novella is simply a short story, about 20,000 words. Want to know how that measures up with some titles you may have already read?

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
418,053

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
76,944

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
95,356

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
28,944

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
122,685

So, as I said, my novella is 20k but it's in a collection with 8 other stories, bringing the whole book (The Courageous Bride Collection) in at a whopping 160,000. Here's a blurb for my contribution, The Doctor's Woman . . .

EMMALINE LARSON is no stranger to loss. Living in a land as wild as the natives who roam it, she's lost her father, her betrothed, and when DR. JAMES CLARK crashes into her world, she loses the last thing left to her -- her heart.

And here's the first page . . .

Chapter One 

Mendota, Minnesota, 1862 

Emmy Nelson had lived with death for as long as she could remember. She’d watched it happen. Witnessed the devastating effects. Wept with and embraced those howling in grief. Even lost her betrothed—a man she respected, maybe even loved.

But she’d never tasted the true bitterness of it until now—and the acrid flavor drove her to her knees. Early-November leaves crackled like broken bones beneath her weight, but alone at last, she gave in.

“Oh, Papa.”

Did that ragged voice really belong to her?

Her tears washed onto his grave like a benediction. How long she lay there, crying, she couldn’t say, long enough, though, to warrant Aunt Rosamund’s manservant, Jubal Warren, to put an end to it.

“Miss Emmaline.” Jubal’s footsteps padded across the backyard of the home she’d shared with her father, stopping well behind her. “Time we leave, child.”

Swallowing back anguish, she forced sorrow deep, and waited until it lodged behind her heart. She’d pull it out later, when there were no eyes to watch her grieve.

She flattened her palm on the freshly dug earth and whispered, “Neither of us wanted to say good-bye, did we, Papa?”

Overhead, tree branches groaned in the wind. Fitting, really. The death of a dream and a loved one ought to be blessed with a dirge.

“Miss Emmaline?” Jubal insisted.

This was it, then. Slowly, she rose, wiping the dirt from her hands and the pain from her soul. For now, anyway. She’d put off moving to Aunt Rosamund’s in Minneapolis far too long. But walking away from a lifelong hope of settling in Mendota took more than courage.

It took time.