Working on Book # 10

I just completed the first draft of my newest book. Now to start polishing and massaging it. So far I haven't decided on a title yet so it is being called "Book Ten". It will turn out to be another short novel in the 42,000 - 46,000 words range. My other three novels have all fallen in this range. I guess I can only think of stories that run that length. I don't like to pad them to reach an arbitrary length goal.

Some ill-informed reviewers mistakenly call my short novel a novella. Here is the word count guide:
Classification --- Word count
Novel --- over 40,000 words
Novella --- 17,500 to 40,000 words
Novelette --- 7,500 to 17,500 words
Short story --- under 7,500 words

Not that there is anything wrong with writing novellas. Here are some of my favorite novellas:
Jack London's The Call of the Wild
John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
George Orwell's Animal Farm
Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange
Isaac Asimov's Nightfall
Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor
Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's
Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea
Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
H. G. Wells' The Time Machine

Time to get to work on the second draft of my new book.