While Lost in Willipaq is now a (quite
handsome) 255 page trade paperback, I will be keeping the abbreviated
e-versions up on the web; they're free. You can get to them from
here. Personally, I'd buy the book. Well—I'm selling it. But with seven new tales
and more than twice the pages of the free downloads, it's a steal, as well as
being longer. Seven new stories—The Song of the Rice Barge Coolie, E
Pluribus Human, The Red Sneaker Zones, The Year They Invented Frozen Lemonade,
Scope Virgin, Dead Man in the Yard and The Runaway Bungalow,
a novelette. A Second edition of Lost in Willipaq was never in the works. Yet here it is.
Buy it now—you'll be a better person for it; your kids will respect you, the
neighbors will be jealous and your teeth will be whiter-than-white.
And there's a fresh compendium of
collected tales, Platterland, in the
works for late 2010—with a novel, two novellas and a supply of fresh tales. As of this writing (Summer, 2009)
some of the stories I wanted to include will not be mine again
free and clear until then. I should be happy. And I am—the characters,
citizens of the tales—are browsing in pastures of plenty afforded by the small
press venues where I submit. In the fullness of time they will call home and Platterland will fly.
Meanwhile...
The Willipaq exegesis you have before you can rightly trace its existence to a
Gotcha moment when I was rewriting the script of A Special Providence prior to
going into the studio to record a batch of MP3s. Yes, there is life after
publication. To quote from the website:
"What happens to a Sci-Fi or Fantasy story after it has been published—the
remainder pile, a sporadic reprint, oblivion? Typically the afterlife of a tale
consists of gathering dust until the writer's heirs and assigns shred it for
packing nick-knacks and other writerly impedimenta. Not quite the half-life of
linoleum. And what of the loves, lives, hopes and aspirations of its citizens?
Must they float forever in a shimmering noösphere playing whist and watching the
flights of eidolons? Boring. Hence onetinleg.com. To misquote Walt Kelly's Pogo:
'We have seen the future and it's not yet...' The call, dear reader, is
yours..."
Providence was a story cobbled together around a synthesis of What If: an Old
Testament Jehovah opts for contemporary technology to make a personal
appearance/said Supreme Being will distribute largesse/the only available
beholder is a gormless loser who will settle for a jelly doughnut. I had in 2002
written in, then out, a long-suffering wife with a fixation on Carl Sagan's
Cosmos. Cosmos, while well-remembered by a select few had been off the air for
decades. Then comes 2005 and the Science Channel brings Cosmos back, digitally
remastered. Wow.
Rob Hunter
Pembroke, Maine August 2009