Yes, this blog is mostly about poetry but I thought I’d take a moment this morning to discuss some fiction issues that you, dear readers, have had questions on.

1. What is a mosaic novel? This question came up recently when I mentioned that I might try to put together a mosaic novel. Here is how Wikipedia defines a mosaic novel. Their definition doesn’t quite describe what I think of as a mosaic. For me, the mosaic will be all me but will be more snippets instead of a regular narrative; more like a linked short story collection. The best example I can give is a novel I previously recommended called Dear Everybody which uses things like letters and journal entries to tell the story. Hope that clears up the issue, a bit. I decided to work on one after I realized a few of my flash fiction pieces seemed to have the same character…so..we shall see what she is up to..
2. Fiction Chapbooks. This is kind of a fun topic to google but I’m going to link to this article over at H_NGM_N. I really want to publish a Fiction Chapbook at some point because I have a group of stories I wrote early this year (well at least one was last year – the longest in the bunch, ironically) that I feel are essentially DONE. As I researched Fiction Chapbooks, I came to realize there weren’t a lot of people publishing them and I can kind of understand that because you already have, for fiction: novels, short story collections, novellas..so how does a chapbook fit in? To me they are shorter than the short story collections, essentially the length of a LONG SHORT STORY. Say all together the stories equal about 10,000 words or perhaps think of it at about 20-40 pages double-spaced? Because there are so few people publishing them it is very difficult to give definitive numbers so not really sure how I’ll ever go about getting this particular project published but I’m still working on it. Several of the stories have been published and I feel there is one more I need to write to reach that low 20′s mark on pages and to finish off the “story.” These flash fiction pieces aren’t connected by character or place but are connected by theme.

So those are the two main questions that came up on the fiction front but I’d be happy to take other questions. I have only published a few fiction items, including my first print publication in Moonshine Review but I don’t feel, in anyway, that I’m an expert on writing prose. I’d actually like to study it more. I have taken quite a few seminars and I completed Intermediate Fiction as an undergrad. I may not write a lot of it, but I READ a lot of it; I’ve been told I’m a pretty decent editor of prose as well. It can definitely be easier to revise the work of others, rather than your own!

So prose writers and/or fans of prose writers, pose your questions and/or leave your thoughts.

-per chef e talk about the term mosaic novel as well as fiction chapbook issue