For those who are not keeping track (everyone but me), it has been over two years since I published my last book on Amazon for Kindle. Please indulge me as I treat the appearance of my new novella as if it were a grand event and tell how "Slow Motion Man" came to be written. (For the uninitiated, a novella is a story that isn't long enough to be a novel, but is too short to be a short story. Don't ask me what a novelette is: a female novella?)
So I am celebrating.The best thing about a virtual online book release party - sorry, novella release party - is that you don't have to hire a caterer. Feel free to walk to the kitchen now and grab some finger food and a cup of fruit punch.
Approximately twenty-five years ago I wrote a short story called "Slo-Motion Man and the Royals." In that story the narrator remembered when he was a kid how he used to throw a ball against the wall of his house and keep track of games between four imaginary teams, one of which was called the Royals. Clearly he favored that team and somehow reached herculean heights of play on their behalf, as they often won the make-believe championship.
He also used to make up superheroes in his mind, and pictured how they would fare against equally super-powered villains. One of those super heroes was Slo-Motion Man, a freak of nature who could copy the super power of any other super hero, but with the drawback that, while using any super power, he moved in slow motion. How this played out in the narrator's mind was that Slo-Motion Man always defeated the bad guy, but he usually looked silly doing it.
I (the author) didn't comment during the writing of that story, but in looking back now I wonder if that awkward super hero to some extent symbolized the author more than he would have admitted. I didn't always defeat my own childhood problems, but I did feel silly trying at times, especially in front of girls.
And speaking of girls, unlike most stories of the coming of age variety, the character in that story was more concerned with his older sister's virginity than his own, since he caught her and a boyfriend clumsily moving in that general direction and worried that she might pulverize him for doing so. Well, I never had an older sister, but my younger sister would confirm without hesitation and perhaps in a raised voice that this piece of the story was pure and unadulterated fiction. In fact, in re-reading that story, it is also the weakest part of the plot.
"Slo-Motion Man and the Royals" appeared in a regional literary journal back when I wrote it, a magazine that took a lot of my stories at the time, for reasons best known to them. I tend to cringe at times when I re-read those stories, not because they are badly written, (though they aren't great either) but rather because I hadn't quite settled into my ultimate style of writing. My devoted but all-too-few fans will recognize it (hopefully) as a curious and heartwarming mixture of mystery, romance and humor. My writing was still developing back then, and only lacked elements of mystery, romance and humor to become recognizable. Going back to college as an English major and having to write short papers almost every day for Honors classes seemed to improve my writing. Go figure.
Anyway, my novella (remember my novella?) is not a rewrite of that short story. What I did was extract Slo-Motion Man from that short story - painlessly; he was not harmed in the process. I also gave him back the letter 'w' that, for some reason that escapes me now, was missing from his name at the time. So he became Slow Motion Man, aka Matt. Matt is given that super hero nickname by his girlfriend Roxy for delightful reasons I will let you enjoy finding out for yourselves when you read it, if that happy day should ever arrive.
Now, if I wanted to charge $2.99 or more for this sterling piece of writing, Amazon in their infinite wisdom would grant me 75% of the purchase price as a royalty. But since I charge that amount for my full-length books, I like to charge just 99 cents for my shorter works. So in order for Amazon to remain a profitable entity so that your stock portfolio keeps increasing, my royalty must therefore drop to 35%. Fortunately (?) my stories do not sell enough copies for this to become financially painful for me. For example, if 100,000 copies of the novella sold, I would lose nearly $190,000 with the 35% royalty. But if it sells 10 copies, I would lose just under $19. I saved more than that by not hiring a caterer.
Speaking of food, all that is left are the celery sticks, so I will bring this novella release party to a close. Don't worry; I will clean up the mess.
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