Last July while on a solo camping trip in the wilderness, I found myself in between novel projects. Because I dictate most of my writing while hiking, I hated to let all that good creative time go to waste—so I wrote two short stories that had been on my back-burner, a science fiction piece called “A Delicate Balance” and an original fantasy story, a spinoff of my Terra Incognita trilogy, titled “Mythical Creatures.”

I had a secondary purpose for writing “Mythical Creatures” (okay, call it an ulterior motive).  My third Terra Incognita novel, The Key to Creation, was scheduled for publication in July 2011 (a year after my camping trip).  Not only did I think “Mythical Creatures” was a good story, I also hoped that it would generate interest in the finale of the Terra Incognita trilogy, maybe attracting new readers who would decide to check out the three novels.

After returning from the camping trip, I sent the audio files to my typist, who transcribed both stories and sent my draft files back.  I polished the two stories, finishing them by mid-August. “A Delicate Balance” and “Mythical Creatures” were ready to submit to magazines, and I sent them to top science fiction and fantasy publications.

By the end of September, “Mythical Creatures” came back from the first fantasy editor.  “We don’t generally publish traditional fantasy stories.” (Yes, newbies, even successful authors still garner rejection slips, especially in today’s extremely tight short story market.)  So I sent it to Fantasy market #2.  We still had nine months.

Two months later (November) Fantasy market #2 went out of business, and the story came back unread.

Hmmm. By now, only seven months remained before the story needed to come out.  Time was starting to get a little tight.  Print fiction magazines usually can’t turn work around that quickly, so I chose to send the story to a web-based Fantasy market, assuming they had more flexibility and swifter turnaround.  “Mythical Creatures” came back from them in late December.  “We don’t like stories with religious overtones.”  (The Terra Incognita trilogy is deeply rooted in a fantasy version of the Crusades, a bloody religious war that crosses continents.)

Meanwhile, I still hadn’t heard anything from Science Fiction market #1 about “A Delicate Balance,” even though it had been four months.  That’s not an unheard-of response time, but when I sent in a query, the editor responded with some embarrassment: the submission must have been lost somewhere; could I please resend it?  They would read it immediately.  So I resubmitted the story.

Now, with only six months left before June and the impending publication of The Key to Creation, I thought I might have to bite the bullet and release “Mythical Creatures” online myself, strictly for the promotional value.  Nevertheless, keeping my fingers crossed, I submitted the story to one more market, a major web-based SF and fantasy venue.  In my cover letter, I explained the situation, that this story was tied to the July release of a novel and that—if the editor liked the story—could it possibly be released by June? If that schedule was unrealistic, I asked for the story back right away, and we’d make it an eStory.

Meanwhile, a month after my query, I still hadn’t heard back on “A Delicate Balance,” so I queried again.  By February (more than six months after the submission), the story came back; the editor didn’t like the ending.  So I sent it to Analog magazine, which has published many of my SF stories.

March: still no response from the web magazine on “Mythical Creatures.”  Now only three months remained before my June deadline.  This didn’t look good.  I wrote a somewhat anxious letter, again emphasizing the ticking clock and saying “if you can’t publish this by June, please let me know and I’ll release it myself.”  By now that seemed the only viable alternative, but the editor responded promptly: The submission had gone astray somewhere. Could I please resend it?  I was promised an answer within a week, so I did re-send the story—and again included the reminder from the outset that if June was not a possible target release, then I would withdraw the story and publish “Mythical Creatures” myself.

In April, Stan Schmidt, the editor of Analog, wrote to say he liked “A Delicate Balance” and asked for a few minor clarifications to the text.  I made the edits, gave the story another close read (it had been nine months since I’d last read it, after all), and sent it back.  A week later he accepted the story for Analog.  I received and signed the contracts in early May.

Alas, still no answer on “Mythical Creatures,” and so by May 1, I sent a polite letter to the webzine editor withdrawing the story.  I’d written “Mythical Creatures” ten months earlier, which should have been plenty of time for its release in conjunction with the related novel.  Now, however, the only possible way to do it in time would be to publish the story ourselves.

At WordFire Press, Rebecca and I have been releasing many of our own eBooks, putting my out-of-print novels and short stories back in print in all the same venues that major publishers do.  We’re familiar with how to do it—so we got to work.

Lee Gibbons, the excellent cover artist for the Terra Incognita novels, had already sold us the rights to his paintings for use on our Terra Incognita rock CD covers, including part of his Key to Creation artwork for our third CD (currently in progress); I asked Lee if I could also use the ornate dagger handle as a graphic element for the eStory cover. I reread the story and gave it a final polish; Rebecca, who worked for many years as a professional copy-editor, proofed “Mythical Creatures,” then designed the cover using Lee’s artwork.

In order to sweeten the deal, to make the story more tempting to the Terra Incognita fans, we added bonus material: the full text, story, and all the lyrics from both Terra Incognita rock CDs (none of which has ever been available online).  We priced the whole package at $1.99.

Working together, we got the story up for sale within two weeks.

If I had done that in the first place, the story could have been available (and generating sales) since last August.

Read “Mythical Creatures” in Kindle, Nook, and other eReader formats.

This changes the whole publishing and release dymamic.  I had spent the better part of a year going through the traditional submission process with traditional publications—as I’ve done all my career.  I sold “A Delicate Balance” on its second submission to one of the most-respected science fiction magazines…but even that took nine months, the contract was signed in the tenth month, and I don’t know yet when the story will hit the newsstands (probably another six months or so). That isn’t an unusual amount of time by any means, and Analog has been very, very good to me over the years. It’s just the way magazines work.

My concern about the timely release of “Mythical Creatures” didn’t much matter to the other editors involved. It was my deadline, not theirs.  But even without a self-imposed deadline, do authors—and readers—need, or want, to wait more than a year between the writing and the publication of a new work? (And that’s if an editor accepts it early on…some highly successful novels were rejected half a dozen times, causing a delay of five years or more!)

Ebooks offer an express lane for authors interested in getting their books and stories into print as soon as possible—much faster than the speed of traditional publishing.

The clock is ticking.