I’m happy to announce that I have one definite and one possible book coming out this year, along with a story in an anthology, several nonfiction articles, and maybe some stories. Te Traveler is a YA science fiction novel coming out in September from Rogue Phoenix press. It’s about Tenobius, a Time Traveler whose Time Machine breaks down in Imperial Rome, and the only way he can get back to the present is by fixing the electronics with what he can scrounge or fabricate himself with Roman technology. The story is told from the point of view of Argus, the Roman street kid who helps him. Backstage at Wonderland is the tentative title of a book that has a tentative agent willing to represent the book if I trim it down. It’s the amazing story of an amusement park built in Revere, Massachusetts just north of Boston, in 1906. The story has been told before in brief chapters of local books and in one out-of-print book written by a couple of brother who grew up in Revere. But all the previous accounts are far too brief, and they miss the most interesting things, and get the facts wrong (the park closed in 1910, for instance, while virtually every internet site – citing that book by the brothers – gives the date as 1911.) And they miss the most amazing human stories that really make the Park history shine – the guy who started it all, who two years previously had been secretary of a baking powder company in Savannah, Georgia. The guy who built the Park, who refused to tell his previous history, and who had tried to build The Biggest Amusement Park in the World. The Park treasurer whose wife became a superstar. Herbert H. Pattee , who gave up a Broadway career to become a ride designer, then met his wife on the Tunnel of Love ride he designed. The one-legged wrestler and acrobat who became manager to the Firefighter show. And so on. Definitely a trip worth taking.
The anthology Live Free or Dragons, a collection of Fantasy stories set in New Hampshire, is at long last coming out this year – I thought it was going to end up in limbo, another Last Dangerous Visions. But years after they accepted my story, it is finally going to be released. My entry is George Washington and the Dragon, which I’m rather proud of.
In addition, my Light Touch columns continue to be published in Optics and Photonics News, including (this year) Preppy Optics, 44 Fewer Shades of Gray, and others.
And I may have some other stories coming out in the near future. I’ll also be updating my website at https://srichardwilkcom.wordpress.com , which hasn’t been updated in quite a while.
No. I’ve had several pieces published in anthologies, magazines, and online (including two stories in Analog). This isn’t even my first SF novel, although it’s the first to be published.
And, no, he isn’t killed by an ancestor (fitting though that might be). I’m not going to let him get out of his predicament that easily.
At any rate, I have several copies sitting on my table. The hitch is that the book doesn’t seem to be available anywhere on the internet – not on Amazon, not on any bookstore sites, not even on the publisher’s website (Plaidswede Press of Concord, NH). I can’t even find the book by googling its ISBN number.
I’ll let you know as soon as it becomes available on any website. In the meantime, here’s the cover:
In other news, we have a cover for The Traveler, and I’m on what I hope will be the last edit. Here’s the cover:
No. I started out doing all the entertainment along Revere Beach Boulevard, but settled (for reasons too complicated to go into here) to just do Wonderland. I’m glad I limited it to that – wonderland all by itself is a big enough topic. If there’s enough interest, I’ll go on to do more of Revere Beach.
It still amazes me that the Blue Line has a stop called “Wonderland”, and that several city buses put up “Wonderland” as their destination. I know it’s because the entire area is called “Wonderland”, and most people associate it with the greyhound track or the ballroom (or possibly the Mall that’s there now), but all of them owe their name to the amusement park.
And, don’t forget you have to build a new catamarine tube to replace the one that rolled off the end of your workbench.
(And the replacement tube’s albion factor has to be within the appropriate limits!)
