The other day, someone asked me how many stories I'd had published. Answering the question turned out to be harder than I expected. Oh, it was easy enough to come up with the eight full-length books, but trying to figure out the novellas...
It's hard to believe that I couldn't come up with an answer immediately. I took a wild stab and said, "and maybe seven or eight novellas." As it turns out I was right. The answer was eight.
I suppose if I'd had more time to think about it, I could have come up with the answer by running through my couples. Of course I remember Troll and Lia, Nic and Kimi, and the others--I've spent months with them and they're old friends. I've just kind of lost track of the number of my old friends over time. This kind of surprised me.
Shortly after I was published, someone asked another writer I knew a question about one of her books. This is an author who'd been published for more than ten years at that point. This author wasn't able to answer. She couldn't remember and this stunned me.
Now, I kind of get it. The scrapbook of past couples is pretty full then there's the stories that I worked up proposals on, but never sold. All those characters are in my head, too. Then there's the stories I've started, but haven't actually reached a point where they can be submitted and the characters that I haven't written yet, but are hanging around anyway. That's a lot of people and yes, it takes me a little time to figure out which of my h/h have been published and which ones haven't. But I know the answer now.
How many stories have I published? Sixteen. Eight novels and eight novellas.
