We’re exactly three months from the release of Genrenauts: The Shootout Solution, and to help promote the line, Tor.com Publishing has released a free sampler with previews of each of their launch list. In the two chapter preview of my novella, you get to meet Leah Tang and the Genrenauts, a group of interdimensional travelers that visit the home worlds of narrative genres to fix broken stories.

The sampler includes excerpts of novellas from:

Kai Ashante Wilson
Paul Cornell
Alter S. Reiss
Nnedi Okorafor
K.J. Parker
Angela Slatter
Matt Wallace
Daniel Polansky
Sylvia Spruck Wrigley
and
Michael R. Underwood (that’s me!)

I’ve read Matt Wallace’s novella Envy of Angels, which is excellent, as well as a couple of other samples. This launch list represents a great range of work, from anthropomorphic grimdark to interplanetary peril to magical caterers to an aging faerie on a desperate quest, and more.

Get the sampler for FREE right now on Kindle, Kobo, and direct from Macmillan. I presume it will arrive on iBooks and Nook shortly. And if you like your browsing visual, check out this cover roundup.

And once you’re done with the samples, please consider pre-ordering the full book for the stories where you enjoyed the sample. This new venture, presenting novellas once more as the full-fledged books they are, represents a widening of the field, creating a lot of opportunities for a wider range of fiction to get attention at a high level. Self-publishing helped re-popularize the novella format, and now Tor.com is looking to bring it to an even wider audience in a bigger way.

Writing a half-dozen novellas over the last year, I’ve come to appreciate them for their exciting hybridity. Novellas are long enough to introduce, develop, and investigate a world,  to deliver on a premise and characters, but short enough to be efficient, to cut to the quick, to not linger or overstay their welcome. They’re an excellent form for commuter culture, giving you something to look forward to finishing, and then to finish shortly after.

I’m very excited to be part of this Novella Renaissance, and I hope you’ll enjoy the books. I have two Genrenauts novellas with Tor.com, but I have the first season planned out to six novellas (all drafted), and I’d very much like to continue the series with Tor.com, which will be dependent on strong sales for the first two books.

This fall, #NovellasAretheNewNovel, and you can be a part of it, starting now.