My first short-story collection, Baker’s Dozen, remains my most popular book and best seller, by a long-shot. My second collection, Butt Stuff, tends to sell better in person (at conventions and such) because people see the title and are amused enough to pick it up.

It’s almost time for me to release a third collection. (Well, “almost” is relative; I would still need to do additional drafts and typesetting.) I have eleven short-stories for which I’ve completed the first drafts, and I feel like that’s a fair number for a book.

Except that some of them are very short, so much so that all eleven stories together equal just under 40,000 words.

Thankfully, I also have some novelettes — Flashes of Me and You and One Night in Asheville. If I add those, the word count jumps to almost 70,000. My goal would be to get it to 75,000 or so, to get it to about the same length as my other collections, so I’d just need to write one or two more stories. Or, since the “main” story in this one is the sequel to “As Hard As You Can”, maybe I just reprint that one in there so people don’t have to buy another book just to meet the characters in the first place. And maybe write a third story, to make a little trifecta.

What do you think?