But it's not a novella it's the first third of a novel. "Charlie," she emailed back presently, "this is great. Because "Palimpsest" was the only item in the collection to to have been bought by an editor, I decided to run it past my agent, who has a keen eye for commercial potential. That novella turned out to be "Palimpsest" (about which, more in another blog entry). I had enough material for a short collection, so it seemed sensible to write a completely original novella to accompany it-an extra something to keep the folks who'd already read all my short stories interested. This is something of a privilege if you're with a major publisher: the collective wisdom is that short story collections don't sell, so the advance is about half the size as that for a novel-if they buy one at all (which will only happen after several novels). Being a commercially-minded guy, the logical thing to do was to publish a short story collection. I was burned out from writing "Halting State" in 2005-06, so the plan was for me to take a year out from writing novels for Ace to finish the Merchant Princes for Tor.
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