The New Book

Hoppy gave me some encouragement, and then my nonfiction project fell through which gave me enough time to deal with the extra work. Plus for once I’m not sick, which is a marvelous change from the rest of this past year.

So I’m assembling a collection of stories, at long last.

I’m putting together the eBook first, the hard way, using Calibre. It’s free and I’m decent at HTML, so it’s easy enough. I’ve got a cover artist who may be willing to do illustrations too, which is a glorious thing — more on her later. Eventually I’ll be putting the finished project into shape for one of the Print On Demand markets — I despise Amazon, and so was thinking IngramSpark as my venue for both. I’m open to advice on that point.

These are some of the stories I’m thinking of including in my collection. I’d be grateful if y’all could give me your feedback down in the Comments, both advice as to which to choose and any rough spots you notice. Note that I’m doing some serious editing; some of them have already gotten a facelift from the published version. There will also be a few new stories, including some of my own all-time favorites that never made it to a magazine.

I don’t want to go too long, so maybe sixteen stories in total, and I already have a handful. It should work out to about 25,000 words, longer if I do any introductory material.

The first four I’m certain about.

These are the ones I need to pick between:

  1. Automat
  2. Gestalt
  3. Gone
  4. Time Piece
  5. Buddy
  6. Not a Local
  7. Lights Out
  8. Making a House a Home
  9. Immutable Truth
  10. What’s a Meta Phor (needs a new title)
  11. So I’m Dead Then
  12. Inside the Black Box
  13. Androids Aping People (needs a new title)
  14. Slaves to the Slush Pile
  15. Human Interaction

I’ve got four new ones all set to go, so I only need seven or eight out of the fifteen above. Which is good, because there’s a little overlap in themes.

Also, if you have any personal favorites that are more than a year old, I’m willing to consider suggestions. I’ve got all the Flying Dutchman and Jack Valentine pieces set aside for future collections, but anything else is doable.

Thanks for your time!