For the last few years I have been writing snippets of this and that, prompted by the weekly challenge over at More Odds Than Ends. I post these on my blog as a sort of amuse-bouche, the appetizer bite that the chef brings to a patron without charge, to try out their reactions and test his own craft. Recently, I did that with a snippet of a time-travel story, which blew up further than I’d planned, and as a result a week later there’s a second snippet, and lurking unseen in the depths is a full novella I wrote over eight days. It’s not that I don’t write time travel. It’s that I don’t think time travel is possible so other than an amusement of the brain, I don’t approach it as a rational scientist without tongue firmly in cheek.

So it is with this story. What started out as playing around evolved into something else, which one of the beta readers informed me read like “Zelazny’s sci Fi shorts […]There’s always a trace of the sideways and bizarre in them. Makes them feel like you’re looking into a world you don’t understand, not because you can’t, but because you don’t have all the required lifetime of context. But you know the context is there. It’s a snapshot of a whole other world, understandable and comprehendible if one could just see around the edge of the mirror a little bit better, maybe even peer around and see the backside of it….”

I took that as a high compliment, not just for the comparison to one of the genre greats, but because this is how I try to write. Immersion into a world not-our-own, escape from this one for a time, and there should be a whole world there, not just a cardboard carefully painted scene setting you’re afraid to poke lest it collapse entirely around you. Over the years the highest praise I’ve taken from reviewers of the stories I’ve crafted has been that they feel like there’s a world the story barely touches on. Some stories, I don’t want to delve too deep. Especially when I am writing the snippet scenes, the little amuse-bouche I can hand out for free, and promise more to the reader who goes on to buy my work.

Running Into Time will be available soon. Planned release is on Black Friday.

I’m off to an event at the local library, where I shall meet people, talk about books, and hopefully commit a bit of commerce! In-person book sales aren’t about making a profit then and there. They are much more about marketing and branding. Some local people will buy your merch because you are local. Some will pass on your name and information to readers they know. At this time of year, some will want to buy gifts for their loved ones. Some readers like to have a friendly face and a voice they can draw from while reading.

And it’s good for me to go out and be a little social for a few hours. I enjoy these events. Plus, I’ll have friends alongside me with their books as well. I’ll report back next week how it went.