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Why bother having a blog related to time travel fiction if you don't review a work of time travel fiction once in a while? That said, I just finished reading Stephen King's 11/22/63. For the first time in years, I can say that in 11/22/63 I picked up a Stephen King novel that I could not put down. I think the last time I was able to say that was way back in 1998 when he released Bag of Bones.

In 2011, English teacher Jake Epping's diner-owning acquaintance Al Templeton lets him in on a little secret: there's a rip, or a rabbit hole, or a bubble in time of some sort living in the back of his diner. This little portal into the past always opens to the same place on the same date at the same time: Septemer 9, 1958. Al tells Jake about this not just for kicks, but because for two minutes of present time and five years of the past, Al has been plotting to use the trip in time to track Lee Harvey Oswald, President John F. Kennedy's assassin.

Al's ultimate goal--which is the same goal to which any time traveler in a similar situation might aspire--was to stop Oswald from killing Kennedy, thereby putting right what once went wrong (to quote another famous time traveler). Unfortunately, years of Fatburgers and cigarette smoke have caught up with Templeton, and he is unable to complete the mission himself because he is overcome by the nasty final stages of lung cancer.

Enter Jake, who eventually takes Templeton's place as the would-be Oswald-stopper, only to find it's not so easy to change history. In fact, the past fights against the time traveler. Add to that the relationships and love for the late 1950s and early 1960s that Jake develops along the way, and changing the past becomes more difficult than ever (or too easy, depending on how you look at it).

All in all, 11/22/63 is vintage King. He baits you with the concept, hooks you with the internal monologue and likability of his central character, then reels you in with all the twists, turns, chaos, and beauty of masterful tale telling. You even get reacquainted with some old friends from another vintage King tale along the way. Unlike some of the repeat characters in that sprawling Dark Tower megaverse, Jake's encounter with a young girl and boy who once fought an evil clown is elemental to one of the story's significant subplots.

11/22/63 was the first novel I downloaded to the new Nook tablet I received for Christmas last year. At first I worried about that. I wanted my Nook tablet reading experience to be a grand one, and I knew that--as a longtime King fan--I had been disappointed by his previous several novel efforts (the short story collections are a different matter). However, my decision turned out to be a great one. Honestly, 11/22/63 made the very new experience of reading an entire novel for pleasure on a 7-inch electronic device feel as close as you can get to curling up with a thick printed book and subsequently falling Myst-like into an entirely different world.

Experiencing 11/22/63 was reading without being aware of the fact that you're reading. And that is exactly what first drew me to King's work back in 1987 and kept me reading all these years.

The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story bubbles gently along, the others burst. --Mark Twain

I once asked a Southern gothic luminary (who is no longer among the living but shall yet remain nameless) about the publishing process. It was the early 90s. I was barely an adult. I naively intimated that I had a burgeoning collection of short stories that I wanted to submit for publication somewhere. I wanted his advice on how to go about it.

The tall fellow at first smiled, then laughed out loud. He was not laughing with me.

"Write a novel," he said. "Sorry."

I was also sorry. Because he was right.

Collections of fictional shorts have been traditionally frowned upon as a means of breaking into the business of represented, renowned, and respectable book authorship. If your work was first published and critically raved about in the world of magazines, you might have a shot at publishing a collection. Otherwise, you'd better get cranking on your 100,000-word Great American Novel and leave the shorts to the side until people are willing to plunk down cash for anything that has your name on it.

Now comes the eBook. It has no physical heft, for it is comprised of data bits. It requires no name recognition to publish, although such recognition does help sales. It is typically low cost to produce and, depending on the author/publisher, can be low cost for a reader to obtain. So why should a story published as an eBook require a word count greater than 75,000 to be a popular, enjoyable read?

It shouldn't. More, I don't think it does.

The most wonderful thing I've discovered about eBooks is the diversity of style and length. I can escape for a short time from the daily grind by downloading and reading a satisfying work of short fiction. Or, I can completely engross myself in a long-haul novel. There's no reason to choose a novel over a shorter work--novella, novelette, or short story--other than my own interest in the story that unfolds within.

If you've followed this blog for any amount of time, you know that I am currently working on the second draft of my own novel. Therefore, I am not going to claim that the novel has no place in the eBook revolution. It most certainly does. I have no evidence, but I would venture a guess that the majority of indie author literature being released in eBook form is of novel length.

Still, I can't help but wonder if the eBook revolution might also bring about a resurgence of interest in shorter literary forms. Why not? Some of the greatest works of literature have been less than novel length. For example, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is approximately 26,000 words long, a third of what is considered modern novel length. Likewise, Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue clocks in around 120 pages.

The fact that the eBook format is less restrictive about the length of a work is one of the reasons I decided to go ahead and put my time travel novelette, Timecast, out there. I'm glad I did. The feedback so far has been encouraging, and that gives me further incentive to finish the novel. I also plan to release other shorter works in the coming months.

Maybe I'll even do a collection.

And not be sorry.

Women crawl all over me
I'm as smooth as a millionaire
Preacher always calls on me
I got a soothing way with a prayer
--Jeff Holmes/The Floating Men, "Long-winded Prayer"

A fortune teller in the French Quarter once told me that I would never make a good politician. "You're too honest, brother," he said.

He explained that in order to politick, you must be able to spin. In order to spin, you must be able to put yourself out in front of people, smile in their faces, and convince them to buy what you're selling without sounding like you're trying to convince them to buy what you're selling. I assume the same abilities are required for sales and marketing folks, who make a living convincing us consumers to plunk down money for things we don't really need and reasons we never entirely understand.

I'm not criticizing the practice. In fact, I'm rather envious. When I worked in newspaper, I sometimes made a point of expressing my appreciation to the sales and marketing folks for the jobs they do. Anyone who can beat the drum for the product day after day and not want to go home and crawl under the bed at night has my utmost, undying respect.

Last week, I finally released my time travel novelette Timecast (which I wrote about in my last post) to the world via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google eBooks, iTunes, and Goodreads. My confidence was boosted almost immediately when my first sale and first customer review appeared on Amazon.com. It was an unsolicited 5-star rave: "really enjoyable, well written, and nicely paced" the reviewer wrote. It was music to my ears.

That said, I can tell you that I'll never expect sales of Timecast to reach stellar heights. Not because of any fault with the story or its crafting. It's a unique short work of time travel fiction, if I do say so myself. The problem is that I'm an introvert, awkward at socializing in both real life and online. I can tweet about Timecast all I want, but unless I can sell you on it (establish it as something you want or need to read) you'll easily pass on it no matter how great I think it is.

What to do, then?

The only thing I can figure is that I need to find some way to play the extraverts' marketing game without creating undue stress and risk to my introverted nature. Although extraverts might think differently, introverts are most of the time quite happy being introverts. We are not broken extraverts. However, there are times such as these--when you're trying to market a book-- that being an introvert is darned inconvenient.

For now, I'm still figuring things out. Meanwhile, if you happen across this post, look me up on Twitter or Goodreads. Friend/follow/fan me and I'll friend/follow/fan you back if I can or should. Purchase a copy of Timecast for your favorite reading device (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iPhone/iPad, PC, Mac) and provide a review, if you're moved to do so. I'll do my best to support your work as well.

I know there are many of us introverted, reclusive storytellers out there struggling to be heard. And the only way we'll get heard is if we stick together and learn the promotional ropes because most of us will never, ever get a book deal that comes with successful marketing all gift-wrapped in a pretty box with a bow.

Five years ago, I set out to publish an eBook. The so-called eBook revolution was still a distant speck on the horizon. At the time, the Kindle had barely sparked. There was no Nook, Kobo, Sony Reader, or iRiver. I'm not entirely sure why I embarked on the journey, except that I had the idea for the story and it was burning a hole in my head.

I wrote and copyrighted the 10,000-word story. Upon completion, I discovered that I was uncertain of the exact type of work I had created. I originally called it a novella. Then I decided that it was much too short to be called a novella, so I called it a short story. Now I'm calling it a novelette based on the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) guidelines for manuscript sizes.

With great anticipation, I "designed" the eBook (only to find out much later that what I created was an absolute abomination in terms of the true meaning of the word "design"). I generated a PDF and circulated it among a few close friends. Then I let it die undistributed.

Why?

At the time, self-publishing and distributing an eBook didn't really seem all that easy to me. I researched it a little and gave up, choosing instead to submit the manuscript to a variety of traditionally published science fiction magazines. Inevitably, the manuscript either didn't fit into the publication's guidelines or was simply not what the editor was "looking for."

This Christmas, I was gifted with my first e-reader device (unless you count the e-Reader apps I had previously installed on my laptop and my phone). I love it. It caused me to immediately purchase and download the newest Stephen King work. Additionally, it inspired me to revisit my long dormant novelette. 

The process of self-publishing an eBook as been much simplified recently. It is as simple as uploading the book to the various eBook distribution channels (or using a service that does that for you). You can even upload your book if it is a design abomination. However, I chose to have my original manuscript professionally designed instead. Although an eBook is not the same as a print book, I still think it should be pleasing to and easy on the eyes.

Therefore, I am pleased to announce that my novelette will soon be available for download in Kindle and ePub formats from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBookstore, Kobo, and the Google eBookstore. I am also pleased to announce that the process (plus a little prodding from some friends and loved ones) has inspired me to renew my efforts to finish the second draft of my novel.

So, Happy New Year to all you budding authors out there. I'm going to spend 2012 writing. I hope you do as well.