I released my second novel, Some Day Days, on 9 July 2015 as an ebook at smashwords.com, once again for FREE
It should be available in iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo shortly for FREE
It is also available at Amazon in a Kindle edition for $.99. Once I draw their attention to the fact that they are being undersold, they should reduce the price to FREE as well – in the USA. Smashwords offers a mobi ver that can be read on a Kindle, for FREE
Be careful what you wish for – wishes
can come true, as Hugh Gallagher discovers when the girl of his
dreams, the incomparable Selina Beri, comes seeking his expertise on
a piece of technology she needs to understand for her last final
exam. Can Hugh, the classic shy, geeky, university student, avoid
making a fool of himself with the girl he's loved from afar? A
romance set in the near future.
Some Day Days is a simple story
of first love and friendship set in Oxford and Cambridge England. It
reflects my taste for simplicity, understatement, humor, and clever
writing (though that's a goal rather than a claim.) Raymond Chandler
once wrote that there are two types of writers, writers who write
stories and writers who write writing. I aspire to write writing. I
started writing Some Day Days six years ago, and
finished revising it this year, so this work spans my current writing
phase.
It is something of an experimental
work, along the lines of Frankenstein. The original subtitle was a
romance in an undetermined number of pieces of which this is the
first twelve pieces. It began life as a novelette, to which I added a
novella length sequel, and then, as my imagination raced ahead, I
outlined a whole series of pieces until I had a memoir spanning four
years. I use the word "pieces" to describe its parts
because no one term describes them all. I have the original
novelette, its longer sequel, several chapters of varying lengths, an
essay, a gaming story and a ghost story, tied together as the memoir
of Hugh Gallagher, a third year student reading Physics and
Philosophy at Oxford University – let's say twenty years from now.
It does, however, have a beginning, middle and an end, and thus, the
essentials of a novel.
The first piece, Kiss of the White
Witch is a result of two challenges. The first arose in reading
somewhere about a challenge to write a short story centered on the
effects of a new technology in the future. I chose a device that
records one's life in video as a "dynamic diary" or a
"dyary". I wrote this before Google Glass, but after the
first such limited devices were being talked about. The second
challenge came from my dislike of stories that are told to the
reader, rather than having the story play out on its own. Talk being
cheap, it's easy to be a critic – so I decided to see if I could
write a story that unfolds mostly in dialog. The result was Kiss
of the White Witch.
Several drafts later, I found myself
wondering how I could bring the two characters together again, and
eventually wrote a sequel, a novella called A Shattered Heart
– the second piece in this work.
I now had two pieces, both too short and too long for
anything, leaving me no choice but to plow ahead and write more. Over
the past six years I've written the ten other pieces that make up the
rest of this work, which cover the first six months of the long
romance I had dreamed up.
One should never say never, so I won't.
I am, however, unlikely, to write more pieces, so this is most likely
a stand alone book. I considered adding an addenda outlining some of
the subsequent events, but Hugh wouldn't stand for that, "It's
my story to tell. Or not. I'll tell it my way, or not at all,"
(Artists! It seems that even a small literary effort sparks an
artistic temperament!) Still, it is, after all, his story to tell.
Or not. I've honored his wishes.
Some Day Days –
a little romance of first love set in the near future by the author
of A Summer in Amber, is
available at most fine ebook sellers.
And coming late summer/early fall 2015 Planets of Call,
a long space opera with a golden age of science fiction touch.
