It was a long wait, but Baen Books finally turned down Passengers and Perils, the sequel to my Vancean space opera, Template.  Since I’m in an experimental mode (or mood) these days, I’ve decided to self-publish the book in a new (to me) way.

It was originally written in eight episodes of about 10,000 words each, which I intended to sell to a magazine, one by one, then put together as a single volume and self-publish.  I sold the first episode, “Stopover at Meech’s World,” to Amazing Stories but then that magazine ran into difficulties and couldn’t take the rest.

Mags generally aren’t too enthusiastic about picking up a truncated series, so I finished the story as an episodic novel, bounced it off Baen, and now I’m back where I started.

I’m using Amazon’s short-stories Kindle feature, and will put out half of an episode at a time, at 99 cents each.  I’ll do two half-episodes a week over eight weeks and hope to see them build some momentum. 

Later, I’ll reassemble them into a $4.99 ebook and $12.99 POD paperback, as usual.

I’m hoping that getting into Amazon’s shorts market will win me some new readers, which is always my ambition.

The first episode, one half of the story “Stopover at Meech’s World” that ran in Amazing, is now live on Amazon.  I’ll put up the next installment on Saturday.