Novella.

Tut. What's Gav going on about down there? Paragraphing, is it? Gav has a thing about paragraphing. We find it best to nod politely and then find a less upsetting job for him that has nothing to do with paragraphing.

My thing is mostly comma splices.

The printer behind me is churning out envelopes with a soothing whirr, and my blue spinny chair makes me feel most wondrous like an emperor. And what a fine day it is to talk about novellas. Novellae. I was too late for Latin. Don't tell me it's Greek. Possibly French. Yes, I am fairly ashamed.

The novella in all its darling fewer-than-40,000-wordedness cropped up in our Monday morning meeting. We were having a thought. A devillishly fine one. How about, we were thinking, a novella competition? 'Cause we don't do novels. We do bite-sized morsicles like poetry and microfiction and the jolly old short story. But a novella encompasses petiteness like pretty much no other form. 'Cause it's like a novel, only knowingly diminutive. We love them anyway and we think they sit well with the whole Leaf ethos, especially the bit about publishing new and struggling but downright excellent types. We were reckoning, so we were, that folk with a novella to display to the world at large are probably not having a lot of luck with their mission.

And we rather want to know what you think about that. Unburden yourselves. Are you faintly in love with the whole juicy idea of the novella? Do you write 'em? And how are you faring when it comes to getting them accepted by a publisher? Would you be well up for the idea of a novella competition? Would you enter in your droves?

Please say yes. OH DO.

(Razzamatazz should be with us in the next couple of days, by the way. It's almost painfully splendid. Have a squint at the website and then have a bash at ordering a copy. £6.99 a go. It's a damnably fine book, ma'ams. Sirs. Damnably fine.)

Sam.