Novella or Prequel?

Book Cover I’ve spent the last few days knocked on my backside by Hella Flu, and in that time, I watched Vanilla Ice renovate a house (he crunked a pool, made a bathroom bling, and told me about single celled micro-organisms, and about encephalitis. No, really, I wasn’t having a fever hallucination. Vanilla Ice said “encephalitis” to me) and read a lot of novellas. I didn’t have the attention span or energy to read an entire book, so I was in a serious novellaly-minded mood. “Novellaly” is my new favorite word, too.

One of the books I picked up was The Guy Next Door, which will be available digitally and in paper come February. I flipped right to the Victoria Dahl story because I heard her tweeting about how it’s part of her new series that’s set in a microbrewery in Colorado, and I was in the mood for silly, sexy contemporary humor.

Y’all. I am so pissed. I’m not pissed at anyone in particular, though I may be glaring at the book cover a lot. I’m just pissed. It’s not a novella. It’s a prequel. It’s a tease. It was SO NOT WHAT I WANTED that when I got to the next page expecting more story and got the copyright information, I made a really strange noise, somewhere between a curse and a growl. Novellas are not prequels. Prequels are not novellas, and should not be sold as such. GRRRR. That makes me angry. ANGRY. ANGRY SARAH SMASH.

But what really pisses me off is that it was enjoyable and thought provoking, even while it was meanly teasing me. Beth Cantrell works at a sex shop and is embarrassed about her taste in very preppy, straight-laced men, while her coworkers are drawn to more edgy, outlandishly tattooed and dangerous-looking men. Beth’s sexually educated intellectually-speaking, but sexually fearful, as she’s bashful about her tastes in men as they contrast with her employment and her public image – yes, I had a hard time with that part, too. And particularly this line: “The men who asked her out were looking for a sexual savant. And deep in her heart, Beth wanted to be seduced. She was an old-school-feminist failure.” Yes, because feminism of any school is not at all about owning your own sexual preferences and is always about grabbing guys by the balls and leading them around, quickly. In comfortable shoes. No, wait, that’s lesbians. I get my stereotypes mixed up.

The hero, Eric Donovan, meets Beth at a local business convention, where their booths are nearby one another. He notices her, and tries to avoid being distracted by her adorable hotness while pouring samples and doing all the business and administrative stuff he does as part of the brewery. He is, for characterization’s sake, “the responsible brother,” and feels a little stifled by his role and responsibilities, so when Beth mistakes him for his brother Jamie, who has a definite playboy reputation, he stops himself from correcting her a few times, eager to experience for once the illicit thrill of a no-strings relationship. Yeah, because that always works in a romance novel or novella.

The story starts out in a confusion of expectations and I liked watching the characters slowly become a little more comfortable with themselves, and I should have seen there was too much going on to resolve in a short space but still. It really was like the opening chapters of a novel, and you know that rage of the thwarted romance reader denied her happy ending? Yeah. I got that rage RIGHT HERE. DAMMIT.

I haven’t read the Donovan story, though that’s on my radar to read in a hurry – nothing like reading an anthology backwards, right? I want to read something that finishes with a happy ending, not a tease for more. It’s a good thing I’m reading this anthology out of order, or I’d be even more irritable.

Has that ever happened to you? Does it bother you if a novella is not a complete story? Or do you look for the book that follows more eagerly because of it?

Categorized:

Ranty McRant

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  1. SylviaSybil says:

    When did prequel start meaning “excerpt”?  And when did people start charging for sample books?  *sighs, shakes head*

  2. SonomaLass says:

    I think different readers have different definitions of complete. I mean, nobody’s story is really complete until they are dead, but romance readers mostly don’t want to read stories that end with one of the main characters (or both) dying.  We buy the HEA, assuming that the connection between the characters is strong enough that we feel they will stay together whatever happens.

    One reason I personally enjoy ongoing series is that I like to see couple living their HEA, not just in precious baby epilogues, but in actual ups and downs of life after they’‘ve made that big commitment. I get that more outside of romance, because most romances end once the couple is together.  I like a saga that covers generations; to me, that feels complete.

    I agree that many romance readers will not be satisfied with the way this story ends, but I don’t agree that it is incomplete. It reaches a logical narrative ending; it concludes. The idea that these characters have fictional lives that go on and will face issues they have to resolve applies to most romances, too. This story sets the stage for the series that follows, as does the Lori Foster story in the same anthology.  Yes, the couple in that story is together happily at the end, but I expect they have a lot to face in the book(s) that follow.

    The comparison to Nalini Singh’s “Angel’s Pawn” is excellent. The couple in that companion novella recur in Archangel’s Consort, and I expect eventually they might get together in a more “permanent” (i.e., traditional genre romance) way.  As will happen when Eric and Beth get their own book; in the meantime, Eric and Beth will be secondary characters with this backstory.  Neither Nalini’s nor Victoria’s short piece is an excerpt, however.

  3. Rebecca Hb. says:

    “The men who asked her out were looking for a sexual savant. And deep in her heart, Beth wanted to be seduced. She was an old-school-feminist failure.” Yes, because feminism of any school is not at all about owning your own sexual preferences

    To be fair, she says “old-school-feminist”. There is some tendency in that crowd to look down on women who want to pursue certain roles – housewife, for instance – that I can see why “old-school-feminist failure” would feel applicable to someone who wants to be seduced.

  4. Noelle says:

    I probably should have included a “ha ha” or a “he he” with my earlier comment.  Obviously no one would think what I said is the way it actually went down. 

    I like Victoria Dahl’s books, but not crazy about the excerpt masquerading as a novella idea.  Of course, I haven’t read it, so this is just a general opinion.

  5. Merrian says:

    It sounds like this novella/excerpt/prequel is doing things that misconstrue the expectations and consent that I think a romance reader brings to a book.  This anthology is of romance stories which creates the expectation on the part of a reader like me, that these are love stories with a HEA resolution to the story. That is what in reading the anthology we give our consent to reading.  We haven’t consented to read a story whose resolution is uncertain and may well be a couple of years in the future, so our expectations haven’t been met.  We expect this uncertainty in a UF series and are prepared for it when we read and consent to the uncertainty and lack of HEA. A contemporary romance novel or novella comes with a different set of expectations that in this case haven’t been met.

  6. Barbara W. says:

    Okay, so now I’d be even more pissed.  First, the story I thought was a full novella is a teaser.  Secondly, the couple in it aren’t even in line to have their story told in the first or second book in the series.  I have to wait until the third to find out what happens to them.

    I would’t appreciate being forced to read books one and two so that I can watch them “grow” in their relationship just to get to the HEA I should have had in the novella I thought I paid for.

    Why couldn’t/shouldn’t/wasn’t this all labeled somewhere before the story?  A simple “this is Eric and Beth’s story which will be continued in Book C, the third in the Y series to be released in X, after A and B”.  Simple, right?  That way the buyer knows not to expect closure and knows that there are going to be more books to buy before this couple is going to see their full story told.

    AnnieK, Lori Foster’s a terrific author.  Her name could be biggest for a number of reasons, one of them being that her story is the longest.  Your comment’s a little crappy though.

  7. appomattoxco says:

    I once got what I thought was an abridged audio book and I’m still not sure what it was. I thought six hours for $6 after a discount would be a good deal. I don’t usually read Inspirationals but I was in the mood for Amercana. To this day I don’t know if this was just a prologue/teaser, it wasn’t labled as such, or if the author intended to string me along while the h tried to court every man in town before deciding on Jesus as the only man she needs.
    This might’ve been sort of Christian feminsm if she didn’t get rejected by the pastor for bike riding and funny hats.

    This version of Courting Trouble by Deeanne Gist isn’t on Audible anymore.

  8. library addict says:

    Thanks for the heads up, Sarah.

    I read Talk Me Down, but it wasn’t a keeper for me and I didn’t bother with the sequels. 

    But I quite enjoyed Victoria Dahl’s novella in the Midnight Kiss anthology.  It saved the whole anthology for me.

    So, I thought I’d give her another try and am looking forward to her Donovan Brothers Brewery series.  I will hold off reading this “prequel” novella though until the fall. At least the series will be coming out in back-to-back-to-back so we won’t have months to wait between the books.

    Doesn’t help with your frustration though. I’d have been bummed, too.

  9. AnnieK says:

    Barbara W, don’t want to get into a pi$$ing contest with you over your love of LF!
    Just stating my opinion. Crappy? I don’t think so.

  10. SB Sarah says:

    Look, there is no way to guess why a decision was made in publishing a book or a novella. There’s just no way to figure out why something was done, and even less room to ascribe motivation. I can’t say that someone was trying to swindle me or that this was a decision made to take advantage of me, any more than I could say that Dahl is currently in my kitchen stealing all my pumpkin bread just to get back at me for not liking her novella. You cannot presume to know motivation, especially when there’s an author, a few editors, some editor’s bosses and a handful of other people creating a book. It’s impossible and nine times out of ten any attempts to assign motivation will be so very, very incorrect.

    ETA: Aaaand of course now that I look back upthread, Noelle was kidding. Never mind!

    @JenniferEchols: “In this case, wouldn’t it be great if you could take all that backstory and give it its own space to let it bloom and grow on its own?”

    @merrian: “It sounds like this novella/excerpt/prequel is doing things that misconstrue the expectations and consent that I think a romance reader brings to a book.  This anthology is of romance stories which creates the expectation on the part of a reader like me, that these are love stories with a HEA resolution to the story.”

    I think that the biggest problem here is exactly what Merrian said. As a romance reader, I pick up a novella in an anthology expecting the complete story of a courtship, with a happy ending, in its entirety. I don’t want or expect a backstory, or the beginning of a story that will be continued later, especially not a story that will be continued three books from now.

    When I pick up an anthology of novellas, I expect complete stories, not a prequel, not a story that ends on what any romance reader knows is NOT the happily ever after. It is impossible to meet the expectations of every reader – witness the number of people who read this site looking for books I dislike because they love them, and vice versa – but there is one expectation that is pretty much universal among romance readers: we want the happy ending, and when it’s not there, we’re pissed.

    I was irritated because in an anthology of novellas, I expect the happy ending to be there. I do not expect to be teased for a future book. In my opinion this story isn’t a complete story when placed in a romance anthology because of the ending.  This story, in my opinion, would have been awesome as a separate accessory to the series – it’s an accessory, not an ensemble that stands on its own, in other words. And as a result, finding it in the context of other stories that are complete with HEA endings made a huge amount of difference, particularly because nothing in the anthology’s description indicates that this isn’t a complete novella with a happy ending.

    I think that Merrian is right about the expectations of the reader, which in my case were not met by this story, and led to me irritation.

  11. GrowlyCub says:

    I agree with Sarah that while it’s tempting to ascribe motives we are most likely wrong.  However, after reading the foreword by Foster (but not the actual story), it seem that ‘novella’ is also a lead-in for a couple who gets their own book later on (albeit not quite as far away in time and books as the Dahl couple).

    I can’t help but wonder if this was an experiment by the publisher to see if readers would enjoy/go along with this kind of setup, as two of three stories seemingly are not resolved until a later full-sized novel.

    Speaking for myself, it’s a failed experiment and I hope Harlequin is taking that into account for future projects, if they get similar feedback from other readers.

  12. Mary Ann says:

    First, I haven’t found this to be a satisfying conversation because with the exception of the editor and the author’s CP, none of us have had the opportunity to read the work.  Buried in the review is that the editor found the piece “enjoyable and thought provoking” (in addition to potential weaknesses) and sketched a story review that sounds interesting, and because it’s Dahl, we also can guess that it’s fun and sexy, too.  That this leads into such a strong pronouncement about story form, using the unread Dahl piece as the primary example, bites into the review of the story itself in a manner as irritating as a undeclared “teaser.”

    I’m totally comfortable with constraints within writing and within genre (the HEA constraint, for example).  I think constraints are rich for story and for the exploration of the full limits of a constraint.  It’s so exciting to see what contemporary romance writers have been doing with the HEA, for example.  I am not comfortable, however, with prescriptivism—rigid definitions upheld and applied no matter what.  I don’t know if the Dahl piece is a novella or prequel or novelette or short story or teaser—I haven’t read it!—as a reader, I mainly am looking for a story that makes be feel something important to me about the characters.  Digital publishing and contemporary print publishers are in the middle of a lot of experimentation with form and format, which is important work and interesting for readers—but writers still just have one responsibility, a good story.

    Could my experience with a story be spoiled by an irritation with the form?  Very possibly, totally.  But I’ve rarely seen such vitriolic responses to this kind of experimentation in a review that also set up sketches of interesting sounding characters from a proven author.  I think, then, this conversation might have proven more satisfying if we had the chance to have the work in front of us, to contemplate the story along with the editor’s questions.  Without the complete sources of text and experiences, so much of this conversation feels hollow. 

    I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this anthology.

  13. GrowlyCub says:

    Mary Ann,

    your assumption that none of the commenters here have read the story is false.

    I stand by my words.  To my mind, the Dahl novella is not a romance because it lacks the fundamental constraint that I am not willing to negotiate on, which is a HEA.

    I agree with Sonomalass that it is complete as in the h/h decide to go their own ways at the end of a sexual interlude, but it’s not a satisfying ending for me and obviously also not for Sarah or she would not have reacted as strongly as she did.

    I felt the same way and I was glad I was not the only one who went WTF? when I got to the last electron of the story.

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