Short Friction: Short Stories, Novelettes, Flash Fiction & a Novella. (What’s the difference?)

This is a collection of stories of one kind or another (they’re all stories, right?). According to one Internet source, there are Short Stories, Novelettes’, something called Flash Fiction and Novellas, the differences revolving primarily around the number of words used. Here is what that one source says:

Flash Fiction: 53 - 1,000 words
Short Stories: 3,500 - 7,500
Novelettes’: 7,500 - 17,000
Novellas: 17,000 - 40,000
Novels: 40,000 + words

Do with this information as you want.

Some are excerpts from longer works. The Kill Gene is taken from my full length novel “Thugstore”. It is the backstory about a truly bad actor early in his journey toward becoming a sadistic murderous sociopath on the streets of Chicago or “Chiraq” as it is commonly know by many of that city’s residents. He is also a generations forward relative of James Dougle; the black man accused of murder in the lawless fictional town of Round Hill Arkansas in 1874 from the novel “At the Request of James Dougle”, the novella also included in this collection.

The lead off story is “The Day the Government Banned Bacon: The Last Straw Before Violent Revolution”. The title gives you a pretty good idea that this is a lighter fantasy piece not so much crime fiction as political satire. I try for a little humor in this piece much as in “The Brains of a Chicken; I ate one now I am one”. I guess in a way this is largely story of crime, and if you can put yourself in the place of a chicken you’ll understand why.

“Low and Slow; Sweet and Savory Murder” is, strangely enough, a murder tale set at a BBQ Cook-off. Sort of a Food Network meets Pulp Fiction. Not everyone who has read this gets the fact that it is based on an Edgar Allen Poe short story. 
“Die Clean: Dress for Success, Kill for Money” is also an excerpt from a longer novel, “Fire Sale” and features Frederick Eugene Crandall who’s nick name “Crankle” comes from the sadistic (and again sociopathic) Gutter Punk known as Snag as his mind fumbles with the name in a groggy state of cannabis induced brain fog. It is the plight of a hired assassin who also has a major role in “Thugstore”. If you are beginning to see a pattern you are not wrong; I tend to get my money’s worth out of my characters. 

“Butterflies Love Blood: Horror in a Pretty Package” is definitely a crime novelette, but not in the traditional sense of cops and robbers, killers and justice. But it does touch on what is perhaps the biggest crime of all; war crime.

All of these are available as discrete (or indiscrete some will say) works on Amazon.com. They have already been reviewed by Amazon readers so you can access these and know what’s wrong with the story even before you read it. 
These stories are all self-published as with many Amazon eBook authors because it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to find a legitimate publisher who is not concerned only with A-list authors. Or one who only accepts manuscripts for politically correct books about various sub groups in American culture (pre-op disabled, cross-gendered aliens with armpit fetishes who want to be able to use any bathroom that strikes them as right for that particular day). For that matter, finding a legit authors agent is about as easy as trying to flush a buffalo down the toilet. Thanks guys and girls in that profession, for wasting even more of my time than “publishers”. 

Enough of the ravings of a bitter old bastard. You’ll get enough of that if you start reading what is described above. 

-Randy Cade March 18, 2017