Time for Wolf Time

by wjw on May 29, 2014

My novelette “Wolf Time” is now available for download on Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Smashwords. And it’s a mere 99 cents! What have you got to lose?

There was a period of my career when my longer pieces were regularly spawning short fiction, and this is one of those stories. When I finished Voice of the Whirlwind, I knew that the story of Steward, the protagonist, was over— but I also liked Reese, his friend/puppetmaster who killed him in the penultimate scene. So I decided to continue the story with Reese as a protagonist.

It’s a kind of sideways sequel, as Solip:System was to Hardwired.

It occurs to me now that I should have had this and Video Star, both set in the VotW future, available before I put Whirlwind up for sale a couple weeks ago. Because that would have made more sense.

Oh well. Better late than never.

Michael Grosberg May 29, 2014 at 1:41 pm: Great cover! Fits the story perfectly.
Back when I just discovered your work in the mid 90’s I decided to try my hand at comics and my first idea was to base one on Wolf Time. I found out I was too lazy to draw the same character again and again in different poses, but I still have some sample cells and studies for the hardware and locales, including the power armor. I was almost obsessive about the world of VotW; something about it was very evocative and felt more fleshed-out and real than other Scifi universes. a study I did of the alien “Powers” helped me land my first gig as a 3D artist.
Logan May 30, 2014 at 2:28 am: I do love your stories. But I am not a fan of ebooks. I’m still buying this. Any plans to release a new short story collection, in dead tree style, anytime soon?
wjw May 30, 2014 at 7:20 am: Logan, most of the short fiction I’ve written since the last collection is still unpublished by the folks who have the rights to it (for a while longer, I guess).

But I’m certainly open to another collection once the rights have cleared.
John Appel May 30, 2014 at 5:47 pm: I’d never even known this story existed! Slurping this up (via B&N) as soon as I get home.
wjw June 1, 2014 at 4:05 am: Michael, many thanks for the compliments. I always do vastly more worldbuilding than I can ever fit into a book, but I try to give the reader a hint of the complexity of the worldbuilding without actually breaking into exposition. I tried to have characters in VotW make the sorts of references to their common culture that we make all the time, without having the “as you know” dialog that would make the scene ponderous.

Except that now I’m engaging in ponderous exposition myself, so I’ll just shut up for a while.
marcus June 1, 2014 at 6:28 pm: how do you go about world building – say for an example the hardwired / voice of the whirlwind universe? do you do world books / “world folders”? do you use any of the techniques one can lend from table-top rpg:s? (i love your hardwired rpg world book – an extremely efficient book [everything directly to the point].) do you still do or play table top rpg:s? —> i’m asking because it does not seem like a dumb technique to use for listing things, characters, places and map the relations of these to each other. // or is everything more or less growing from the first sentence and from there you fix the world as you g0? or some other combination? (the first sentences of hard wired, for an example – is much like hunter s thompsons “the english language as a musical instrument” – and not just the first sentence – the whole book is music.)
wjw June 4, 2014 at 2:45 am: Worldbuilding on that scale is tough. I always try to think of secondary and tertiary effects of change. I write some things down, though I mostly keep it in my head.

It changes depending on what kind of story I want to write. VotW was designed to focus on a single character, so the entire world was designed as a vehicle for that character’s evolution. Aristoi and Metropolitan were designed as complex worlds that I wanted to show off, so the characters were designed to travel through as much of the world as possible so that the reader could view it.

I’d like to do more rpgs than I do now. It’s hard to get my busy, successful friends together all in one place. I used to game with George RR Martin every week, but now that he’s world-famous I never get to game with him, and barely see him at all.
marcus June 4, 2014 at 8:40 pm: Very interesting. Thank you very much for the reply!