It's Here!

It’s Here!

I’ve been working on pounding 13 fictional stories into shape for the past eight months - editing, re-reading, cross checking and proofing. Between my work and the waiting, it seems to have taken a long time. Now the book is ready and available.

These 13 stories weren’t written within the last eight months; that was simply the work to get them ready for publication. It took ten years to write them. Alecia Ball, a friend from my Peace Corps days in Romania helped immensely with her editing. I referred to her in an earlier blog post as a blacksmith, taking my words and hammering them into something useable.

Two of the stories, the Cowboy stories, are connected and together they could have been considered a short novel, but they were written years apart and I purposely separated them in the book by inserting several unconnected narratives.

I realize that novels are considered more saleable and that short stories are an antique form of expression, but I’m most comfortable when I write and think in the short form. My plots are not strong enough for a novel and I get tired of my characters before a novel is complete (I have tried) - not that those two deficiencies seem to inhibit many novelists. My tales were not written for publication, but for my own pleasure in their creation. Only because of the encouragement from a few select readers have I embarked on the publication of my first book.

Like Slim, the pitiful character in the last of the stories, I like to keep track of things. I have set a goal for the number of books to be printed. My hope is to get Slim’s and Cowboy’s and Red’s and Nana’s story into 5,000 pair of hands. If you would like a signed, first edition copy ({gratis with strings attached} while supplies last) please contact me via email at snowridge2000@yahoo.com The books are also available from the publisher at www.iuniverse.com , at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and, I believe at Books-A-Million web sites in either paperback, hardback or e-editions. Search the sites by my author name, Tim Hulings.