Mine? Ah, that would be telling. It's not really shippy, as such, but there are various different relationships unfurling and overlapping as a result of plot. Also a little shaggage. But I'd rather not give away who ends up with whom, as there are at least two possible ways for it to go, plotwise, with angst for some either way. I think I'd rather you read it without particular expectations at this stage.

....man, I'm really not going to sell this well, am I? "Read this story. It's NC-17 for fairly seemly depictions of the big gay sex, but I'm not telling you who shags whom. Also I'm not telling you if there's a happily ever after, or whether it will be for who you'd like it to be. But, you know, you might like the story. Or not. Stuff happens."

Heh. I dare you to use it as a summary. "Stuff happens."

It's a brilliant story. And, goodness, Fay, you should write your own novel, and sell it, and become terribly rich.

IIRC, 45K would still be in novella territory, 'novel' starts (as far as classification for Hugo/Nebula purposes) at 50K, though of course novellas may be sold as novels in slim volumes depending on the market/what the publisher thinks they can get away with. Most SF novels used to run 60K-75K, though currently the market seems to like 80-100K because it's thicker and readers ("consumers") like more heft for their $$$.

45K would be right on target for a Young Adult novel, the theory being that kids like shorter novels because they have less attention-span, which if you consider the popularity of Harry Potter seems pretty dubious.

And, goodness, Fay, you should write your own novel, and sell it, and become terribly rich.

Yes. Yes, I absolutely concur. Now all I need is a plot....

Theodosia, is that in plain text or as a word document? I only ask because I spend nearly as much time trying to work out how long a novel length is as I actually do typing, and this kind of number might help me stop that.

Theodosia, is that in plain text or as a word document?

....I don't understand what difference it would make.

t /stupid

I don't understand what difference it would make.

Well, for some reason Word files are much larger than plain .txt ones: my Spike-Giles-sumt-free-gay-vampire epic is 505KB in plain text, but 783KB in a Word file.

Word adds lots of stuff -- versioning, formatting, user info -- whether or not it actually looks flashy onscreen. So the files will always be larger than a text file.

And ita knows why there's a difference. But this is why there's a question about it.