This week we should be celebrating the 9th birthday of my son.
Instead we are celebrating the 9th anniversary since his murder.
If you have any information, please call FBI Portland Office @ 207-774-9322
ask for Agent Andy Drewer.
November 14, 2013 10PM @ Southern Maine Community College Art Studio Bug-Light Parking Lot: 3 strangers armed with golf clubs, attacked me from behind while I was loading bags into the backseat of my car. They were a blond woman 60s-ish whom the others called "Claire", a natural red-haired woman also 60sish who called herself "Kendra", and a bald man, football player-body-type-build in his 30sish. I was 8 months pregnant. They murdered my baby, ruptured 3 discs in my spine, shattered 3 vertebra, broke my pelvis, hips, and knees. I was paralyzed for 5 months and was 18 months relearning to walk. The nerve damage has left me with limited use of my hands, legs, bladder, and intestines.
On top of that, they have also taken to harassing the baby's father, a disfigured, homeless, WW2 veteran, whom they call "Etoile". They spread hateful rumours about him claiming he is a cryptid, a demon, or most often what they term "an amphibious alien". He lives in pine branch lean-toos he builds in Old Orchard Beach and Ocean Park, and they have been hunting the locations of them, tearing them down, and smashing up his belongings.
April 10, 2015 1PM at 146 Portland Ave Old Orchard Beach Maine a gang of estimated 74 people, some of them wearing ku klux klan robes, invaded my farm, used a Blow Brothers sewage truck to pump 500+gallons of sewage into my motorhome flooding it to over the kitchen counters deep, ripped out all the cabinets and built in furniture, while 14 men armed with guns, held my family down on the ice and snow, with guns to our heads, and used cinder block bricks and a metal pole with metal wire loops to beat and behead 10 of my 12 foster children (the youngest age 4, the oldest age 16). May 15, 2015 they returned and nailed their heads to my front door. The 3 people of the November 14, 2013 attack were among the group.
September 12, 2015, 9AM a dozen+ of these same people arrived again in my driveway at 146, this time chanting: "Too gay for the family friendly town of Old Orchard Beach. Kill of be killed. Remember Saco Shaw's, Transgender Murder Store, kill the transvestites before they kill us all", one white haired man in a dark green pick up truck was leading the herd, while waving a rifle over his head and shooting at me and my pink motorhome, he shot several holes through my neighbour's shed. The crowd was accusing me of being a male-to-female "transgender terrorist" (they thought I was Muslim because I wear Catholic veiling).
June 26, 2016, the same 2 women of the first 2 attacks, arrived at my Scarborough WalMart workplace, and in a near repeat of the first attack, again while I was leaned over the back seat of my car putting bags in, this time they attacked with a chopping cart, re-injuring my spine, hip, and pelvis that was not yet fully healed from the first attack. The blond "Claire" woman was screaming "That's EelKat, she tried to kill my husband!" while the redhead screamed "I'm Kendra Silvermander it's my turn the shine!" They sped away in a early2000s-vintage gold Volvo SUV station wagon. This attack left me permanently crippled, and bedridden from 2016 until May 2022.
November 21, 2021: They shot "Etiole" in Biddeford, while he was staying at the tent-shanty-village with about 50 other homeless people along the Saco River in Biddeford. They made the claim he was a "suicide demon" citing that he was driving locals to suicide by putting "evil eye curses" on them.
These people murdered my baby, attempted to murder the baby's father, drove a backhoe over our house, and left me crippled for the rest of my life in their attempt to murder me.
I do not know who these people are. I never saw them before these attacks, and I've not seen them outside of these attacks. The police and FBI believe I was not the intended target, and that they were likely after my mother because of posts she makes on FaceBook and got us mixed up. The Old Orchard Beach and Biddeford Police and the FBI are seeking information leading to their identity and arrest.
More Info @ eelkat.com
Long detailed info on the over 200 attacks they have done between June 2001 and May 2022, including photos of them driving a backhoe over our house on August 8, 2013 and the details of the malicious "amphibious alien" rumour they have been spreading about a local homeless disabled veteran @
https://www.eelkat.com/AmphibiousAliens.html
Images:
July 4th 2013: my car in front of my house.
August 8, 2013: me getting home from work to find a backhoe sitting on top of my house.
The FBI already found the people with the backhoe incident, and learned that the backhoe driver was paid $600 and given a fake demolition paper, the paper stating one of my relatives (the one who paid him the $600) owned my land. The backhoe driver was unaware that the man he was dealing with was not the owner. I have lived at 146 Portland Ave since 1975 and have owned the land since 1983, it has never been owned by anyone else, even though we have now learned that both my mother and my father and 3 of my uncles had been actively going around Old Orchard Beach claiming they owned my land.
This happened 3 months before my son was murdered and the police and FBI believe my son was murdered BECAUSE of this picture being posted on FaceBook, and my mother making inciting/inflammatory posts about it on HER FaceBook, where she falsely accused me of being a witch. The FBI and OOB police believe the golf club wielding woman of November 14, 2013, is somehow connected to the backhoe driving over my house incident.
Since the murder, 3 other different backhoes have invading my land to dig up my yard, looking for the grave of my son. There is a family cemetery on my land, the stones dating mostly in the 1500s and 1600s, with a few from the past hundred years, the most recent being my son in 2013. 146 Portland Ave has belonged to my family since 1530, and I inherited it in 1983 from my grandmother Helen Ricker Allen. The most recent backhoe attack happened September 19, 2020, when they illegally cut down several trees in my yard, and started construction of a road through my yard between my pink 1975 Dodge Sportsman motorhome and BackElder Brooke, again the backhoe digging up and destroying large portions of my farm, in their search for my murdered son's grave. They dug up 16 of the graves in this attack.
We have had to remove the grave markers from the family grave in order to stop these vandals and their illegally trespassing construction equipment from destroying the graves.
The FBI believes these construction crews are being hired by the golf club wielding women, and believe she is trying to destroy the grave of my son, due to a fear of his golf club smashed skull being used as court evidence against her.
The most recent attacks by these people occurred November 21, 2021 and March 27, 2022 when they attacked my painted Volvo while it was parked at my dad's apartment in Biddeford, both times the vandals also cut all the wires to electricity, internet, and cable off the apartment building, effecting all 9 families living there.
The Old Orchard Beach and Biddeford Police Departments as well as the Portland FBI are seeking any information regarding any and all of these attacks on my family, my home, my land, or my cars.
If you have any information, please call FBI Portland Office @ 207-774-9322
ask for Agent Andy Drewer.
"So, here's the deal. I'm writing a book. My friend tells me it's a short story, but I say sh is wrong, I say it is a novel. See this is the word count chart I've been using and it says I am writing a novel. She says this chart is phoney. Who is right? |
I am writing a story but is it a novel, a novella, a short story? How do I tell? This is an incredibly common question asked in as many ways as there are writers to ask it, and is the question we are looking to answer today.
Is it a novel? Well, you didn't tell me how long your "book" actually is, so I can't tell you if it is a novel or not. I can however tell you that if you are going by that chart you sent to me, than yes, your book is nothing close to being a novel.
Not sure where you got this info:
"Short story - 7,500 words or less |
But it's very wrong.
For example. Stephen King's SHORT STORY "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" is 49,701 words long, and yet according to your chart 40,000 equals a novel!
I can't say your friend it right, not knowing what your friend's numbers are, but I can tell you that the chart you sent me with your question is so incredibly wrong that it is down right laughable. It's not even close to right.
Here is the correct version:
Flash fiction - 3,000 words or less; fewer than 10 pages |
Some publishing houses use a chart which looks more like this:
Flash fiction - 5,000 words or less
Short-short - 5,000 - 15,000 words
Short story - 15,000 - 25,000 words
Novelette - 25,000 - 45,000 words
Novella - 45,000 - 90,000 words
Novel - 90,000 to 250,000 words
Epic length novel 250,000 words or more
Many
self-publishers, not knowing anything about the publishing industry,
make up their own rules about what is and is not a novel. There are very
few traditional publishers who will consider anything under 120,000
words a novel. Most traditional publishing houses will not read a
manuscript shorter than 120,000 words long.
The problem here is that many new writers are looking to NaNoWriMo and it's write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days idea, as a source of inspiration. They neglect however to read all the fine print on NaNoWriMo's website, like the part where it says that 50,000 words isn't long enough to be the length of a FINISHED novel, but is rather the average finished length of the FIRST DRAFT of a novel.
It is expected that you use NaNoWriMo to get your first draft written in 50,000 words, and that you will then edit that draft into a publishable 120,000 words later on. However new writers don't read the fine print and instead jump in and write 50,000 words, than try to get those 50,000 words published without even bothering to fix spelling and grammar let alone trying to polish it and lengthen it and than they wonder why no publisher will even look at it.
50,000 words: is it a novel? No! Hell no! Not even close!
Another problem is caused by ebooks. Ebooks do not rely on printing presses to tell them how long a book should be, so ebooks can be anything from 1 page to 1,000 pages or more. Is an ebook a novel? Only if it's between 75,000 and 250,000 words.
Remember ebooks are great but ebooks are not books. Books are made out of paper and have pages to flip through. Ebooks are, like audiobooks, a way to make the contents of a book accessible to everyone.
Keep in mind that while ebook sales are steadily rising, ebooks still account for fewer than 30% of book sales, fewer than 2% of the population owns an ereader, and fewer than 3% of books are available in ebook format. People who do read ebooks read a lot of them, but 75% of the readers are people over the age of 65 who do not even own a computer or a cellphone let alone an ereader. Young writers forget that just because they have technology all around them, doesn't mean they are in the majority.
Fact is, youths with their techno gadgets are a very small minority of the world's population and only a very small percent of those youths read books, of those that do read books only a small percent of them use ereaders.
While publishers are adding ebooks to their backlists, a majority of books are still being published as 280 page mass market paperbacks, and if you are seeking to be published, than you MUST write a story 280 pages long (120,000 words) no IF, ANDs, or BUTs about it. No amount of "But NaNoWriMo said 50,0000 words is a novel", is going the convince a publisher otherwise, because a publisher has a huge machine that only prints up books 280 pages long. No more no less. 280 pages. You either write a book that machine can print up, or you don't.
When you go to publisher's websites and look at what they ask for, you will find that most every one of them says:
"Seeks manuscripts of 90,000 to 120,000 words; will not look at anything under 75,000 or over 150,000. Most of our books are edited to 280 printed pages." |
You can search hundreds of publisher websites and you will be hard pressed to find any publisher big or small, that will consider ANYTHING shorter (or longer) than 280 pages. 280 pages is the standard, not because it's easier to read or anything like that, but rather because it's the cheapest trim size (known as mass market paperback) for print shops to print up.
A publisher is not looking at how good your writing is, as much as they are looking at how well you can write what they can publish cheaply enough to make a profit.
Your 40,000 word "book" is going to print up at 85 to 95 pages long. Is it a novel? No! A novel is described as any story 280 pages long. Your 85 page "book" is only one third the size of a novel. Not even close to being a novel.
If
you write a book significantly shorter (or longer) than the standard
mass
market trim size, the publisher has to pay extra fees to have the
printing press change their paper rollers and signature gluers around.
This costs the publisher several thousand extra dollars, which means
instead of earning dollars per book sold they are now earning pennies
per book sold. In order to justify doing this, they have to be guaranteed
your book is going to sell millions and get picked up for movie rights.
Sure you may have a
spectacular story that readers will love, but readers are not willing to
pay more than $5 or $7 for a paperback book, and if the publisher can
not sell your book in that price range, they are going to refuse to
publish it not matter how great it may be.
When your book goes to a publishing house, the editor is going to look at it asking:
"Can this be edited up (or down) to 280 pages?" |
They are not asking if it is good writing or if the story is great. They don't care about that because ANY story no matter how crappy it is, can be edited into something great and ALL writing no matter how shitty and full of errors can be edited into perfect grammar.
The editor will be looking at page count first and foremost.
If your story is really wicked super duper good, the best thing he's ever read spectacular than the editor will ask you to plump the script up to 120,000 words.
If you tell them you won't do it because your story is only 50,000 words long and you barely made it to that, how in the heck are you going to add a whole 'nother 70,000 words to it so it can actually be called a novel, well then there are plenty of other authors out there who are more than willing to stick to guidelines and edit their books up to 120,000 words, so why should they waste their time on someone who's too much of a spoiled brat to work with the editor and make the book publishable?
If you start bragging you can't or won't edit your book from 95 pages to 280 pages than you'll be viewed as a snotty egotistical spoiled brat not worth wasting time or money on, and they will move on to the next author.
Sorry
to say it, but you are only a drop in a bucket, and for every great
manuscript you send there are thousands more just as good as yours
sitting in that slushpile waiting to be read by that same editor.
You have to decide what is more important to you: getting published or writing the book your way?
If getting published is important than you are going to have to learn to make huge additions to your stories by creating new characters, subplots, and adding chapters, in order to comply with the publisher.
If
writing the book your way is important, and if your way means calling 40,000 words a novel, than really your only option is
to self publish.
Remember the issue here is not how great your story is, but that the publisher is using a machine that only produces books 280 pages long, so you can bitch and moan and scream and cry and boo-hoo all you want, but if their machine only makes books 280 pages long, there ain't nothing you can do to change that unless you have a few million dollars in pocket change laying around so you can buy the publishing house a machine which does glue up books significantly less than 280 pages long. They simply can not make a book 85 pages long if they do not own the machinery required to create a 85 page book!
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