Now and then I come across those mysterious of books: novellas, shorter in word/page count than a novel, but longer than a short story. Quite a few novellas are being published lately (the most reported these days is
Blockade Billy by
Stephen King just released). The great thing about novellas is that authors can build far more in-depth characters in a story which is long enough to accomodate it, but where the story itself doesn't lend to novel-length. I just finished
Chasing the Dragon, by
Nicholas Kaufmann, recently published by Chi-Zine Publications. You hear about these lesser known works, being in the business, and from time to time you come across such an original, extremely well-written story you wish more people heard about them. But such is the lesser known novella market. Enter people like me, with blogs, who can spread the word!
Chasing the Dragon is the story of a modern day St George the Dragonslayer. In fact, she's a direct descendant, named Georgia. Without going much into the plot, there is both the literal chasing the dragon, and figurative, this being the Cantonese slang for smoking heroine. The story is non-stop action, with such human (and inhuman) characters, I found myself looking forward to coming back to it. Also nice that it's available in an inexpensive paperback and kindle version. Anyway, I know Nick, and really enjoyed this story, so thought I'd put the word out!
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