Losing Lanterns - Finished!

Hey, don't bother reading this long, meandering post! Just look at the cover, then run over to Amazon right now and grab the book in whichever format you prefer. It's pretty cheap, and better than anything you'll find in the ratty old blogosphere.

Still here? Hrm. Well... Okay, I guess I'll have to blather on about how I ended up writing this - as in history'n all that. Once upon a time, there was Eposic. They published my story, "Starshadows in Sideways Time" in The Book of Exodi (out of print).

After that book, the next one was scheduled to be Out of Order, in which the theme was, as you might have guessed, stories with a mixed-up temporal presentation. I don't remember if time travel was a requirement or if Faulknerizing would be allowed. My submission for that book was "As Always," the precursor to Part One of this novella.

Well, Eposic accepted "As Always," but went out of business before Out of Order was published, so I got the story back. I sent it to a couple of other places. I also sent the story that would become Part Three of Losing Lanterns around a bit. "As Always" actually got accepted by another outfit that went out of business before publication. I got a couple more rejections and got bored with the whole process. I know, I know, but it just occurred to me that I already knew how to get art and do layouts and all that, so maybe there was no reason to burn all those hours dealing with the ritual bullshit of submitting stories elsewhere.

I had intended all along for the two stories to mesh into a larger collection once they were done with their appearances in third party magazines, so I decided to just go ahead and re-shape them into a novel. Or a novella. Whatever.

Then I finished it, and everybody hated the end. Eventually, I agreed with them.

Then I finished it again, and here it is.