Like a lot of millennials, my first encounter with a fantasy book came through the Harry Potter series.
When it came to reading time, everyone whipped out a copy of The Goblet of Fire — including yours untruly — or risk being cast out to the shadowlands of social exclusion.
So for 30 minutes, I’d flip through the pages like my gappy-toothed peers.
And quickly, there was a problem.
I hated it.
Not so much the story (I loved the movies), but the sheer length of it.
Even to this day, I get tired just looking at books more than a few hundred pages long, which posed an interesting question that I carried well into adulthood:
Is something wrong with me?
Putting aside I’m a fiction author who makes stuff up (which would most certainly qualify)…
I’m talking more about my ability to sit down and read long stuff.
Because… it sure seemed like everyone else could, so why not me?
This question always had the devious habit of cropping up during junctures of doubt or imposter syndrome in my writing, which I know happens to many a scribe on the best of days.
But when you’re writing fantasy?
A genre notorious for its doorstoppers?
That question would often ring in my ears for days, weeks even.
So much so that even your crotchety Overlord and daily host would take sabbaticals from writing when the ringing got too loud.
However, if there’s one good thing about the internet, it’s that I learned I’m not alone.
There are actually tens of thousands of fantasy-loving folks who also loathe the tomes for a myriad of reasons that range from difficulty concentrating on longer books (like me)…
To time-poor parents looking for fast escapes…
To readers who don’t want to read seven pages describing a forest.
This is the biggest problem with fantasy books in my uncertified, unqualified, but wholly correct opinion.
And it’s a gap in the market I only see growing.
Heck, only yesterday in a popular science fiction and fantasy Facebook group, someone asked for book recs under 250 pages, which was met by hundreds of replies.
Not one or two, or dozens…
HUNDREDS.
And you know what?
I can’t help but smile.
Not because The Divided Region is positioned well to take advantage of this underserved readership.
(Is it bad that I’m clearing shelf space for the inevitable short fantasy awards coming my way? 😬)
No, I smile for that wee little Watson lad 25+ years ago, and the young, doubtful writer he became decades later.
He didn’t have a screw loose.
He just didn’t like big books.
And if you’re the same, I have just the remedy for you:
https://djjwatsonstore.com/products/TDR-Bundle
DJJW