New Book
Since my first publication in 1990, my short fiction has appeared in a various magazines. A lot of it is now impossible to find. So I decided it was time to assemble some of my best stories in one place and make them available.
This is the result.
I relished the nostalgia of digging into dust covered boxes in my basement to find and reread stories I’d written long ago, some as far back as the 1980s. Strangely enough, I’ve also enjoyed dealing with all the petty details of publishing the book and preparing for the marketing. “Should the book be 6" x 9" or 5½" x 8½"?” “Palatino Linotype or Garamond?” “What order to put the stories in?” Perhaps exciting is not quite the right word, but somehow I found little whiffs of contentment managing all those details.
What was exciting was working with the cover designer and then with the digital creator who did the trailer video. I’ll post the trailer to my Facebook and Instagram profiles very soon.
Chasing New Suns contains six previously published short stories and novelettes, plus one bonus story published for the first time here. The stories are diverse, ranging from hard sci-fi to near-future sociological speculative fiction to alternate history. Most are quite serious, but a couple of them should make you laugh. If there’s a common thread to the stories, I think it has to do with human interconnectedness, shared understandings and identities, and unity. They’re all about characters either coming to understand human interconnectedness or wrestling with what their own role in achieving it should be.
The book includes “Communion”, a story about guilt, empathy, and human connection; “The Thursday Plan”, a story of an alternate history in which Apartheid never ended in South Africa; the Writers of the Future Award first place winning story “Five Days Until Sunset”; “Chasing the Sun”, which continues the spiritual quest begun in “Five Days Until Sunset”; and three other stories.
Where to Get It
It will be released on September 12th, but will be available for pre-order very soon in e-book and paperback format. I’ll send out an announcement through Substack and my social media profiles. You can also visit the web site (www.chasingnewsuns.com) for links directly to it at various online bookstores.
But if you live in Thunder Bay, rather than buying it from an internet behemoth, you might consider getting it from Entershine Bookshop at my big book launch extravaganza (see “Events”, below). That’s up to you.
Coming Soon
The short story collection is not my only work in the pipeline. At some point later this year or early in 2025, the magazine Analog Science Fiction & Fact will publish my short story “Interconnections and Porous Boundaries”. It’s a story about imposter syndrome, artificial ecosystems, interconnections, and the preciousness of life on Earth.
Events
On Thursday, August 29th, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, I’ll be a guest on the livestream podcast The Instant Story Show, hosted by science fiction author Martin L. Shoemaker. I’ll do a reading from Chasing New Suns, and Martin, honoring the oral storytelling tradition, and without any advance preparation, will narrate a brand new story, creating it on the fly based on prompts that I give him. If you want to join the livestream audience, send me an email or just keep an eye on my Facebook Page.
And for those of you in or near to Thunder Bay, I have two events coming up. On September 21st and 22nd, I’ll have a table at ThunderCon, where I’ll be selling and signing copies of Writers of the Future Volume 40 and Chasing New Suns.
And on the evening of Thursday, September 26th, Entershine Bookshop will host the launch event for Chasing New Suns. If you’re in Thunder Bay, I’d love for you to come help me celebrate the release of my first short story collection.
What I’m Working on Now
Preparing for the publication of Chasing New Suns has taken a lot of my time and attention, and so I haven’t done as much writing lately as I would have liked. But I am making progress on the prequel to “Five Days Until Sunset”. The part I’m writing now centers on a woman who will be one of two or three main characters in the novel-length work.
But I’m also trying to see if I can craft her plotline into a short story at the same time. That might actually be a bad idea: I keep succumbing to the temptation to add more ideas and additional layers of complexity to the story. Those layers could work well in a novel, but not for a short story. I feel as if one hand thinks we’re trying to finish wrapping a bow around a shiny ball, but the other hand thinks we’re trying to juggle, and keeps tossing more balls into the mix. It’s fun and frustrating at the same time.
How to Support an Up-and-Coming Writer
If you’ve read my work and enjoyed it, please consider doing one or more of the following:
Forward this newsletter to someone else you think may enjoy what I write.
If you read Chasing New Suns, write an honest review on Amazon, Goodreads, or some other platform.
Go into a bookstore with the Chasing New Suns ISBN number (978-1-0688724-0-2) and ask them if they have it in stock or can get it.
The spirit that breathes life into any writer is people reading their work. If you have been reading mine, I thank you. And if you’ve read something of mine and liked it, don’t be shy to send me a note telling me what you liked about it.
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