Stitches in Time: A Trilogy – Now Available from Planet Logic Press
Here it is – my third and final collection of all the stories I’ve written over the years. It’s Stitches in Time: A Trilogy, and it presents three time-bending tales of alternate realities.
This concludes my pandemic-inspired project to publish all my fiction. I still have more than 70 original songs I need to record, but that’s another project for another time. And this collection is all about time!
There are several ways to order Stitches in Time online. Here are the links:
NOTE: If you purchase from me direct, you can request a copy signed to you or a friend or family member. Also, the direct site has a link to purchase all three of my collections at a reduced price. If you enjoy the stories, please place a review at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
This is the marketing blurb written for Amazon and other online book stores:
“Time goes on and on, and never stops for anyone. But what if there were infinite streams of time, each leading to an altered future? In Stitches in Time, a scientist discovers a way to control the flow of time, and uses it to recover a version of his lost son. Time rolls on, and when a young scientist crosses the barriers of time and space, he encounters an Earth that only he can save. And when our home planet is destroyed by war with an alien race, scientists search for a new Earth in a far-flung alternate reality. Don’t miss Stitches in Time, a trilogy of time-bending tales of worlds without end.”
Here’s a thumbnail look at each of the three stories in the Trilogy:
BOOK 1: A Stitch in Time
A scientist’s attempt to bring back his dead son results in a time-splice for a deceased advertising executive.
Perhaps you’ve been on a busy freeway in stop-and-go traffic when time seems to be moving in spurts. What if it does move just a frame at a time? What would the implications be? You’ll no doubt note the rather glaring absence of the internet in this tale since I had never heard of such a thing at the time. This story was written in Dallas in 1978.
BOOK 2: Rules of Ascension
In a world with no President, no Constitution, and no United States of America, there is only the Rules of Ascension.
This novel began as an unnamed “space opera” back in the ‘80s that later became the third story in the trilogy. But I did not complete it at the time. I filed that narrative away (intending to return to it later) and started a new story. This time, all the action takes place on Earth under a one-world government that is starting to fall apart. This story was begun on July 15, 2006 and completed on February 13, 2007 in Temple, Texas.
BOOK 3: Earth as It Is in Heaven
When Earth becomes unsuitable for human life, scientists probe alternate universes to find a new one.
This is what Stephen King would refer to as a “trunk novel.” I wrote it on a typewriter in the ‘80s, but once I reached a certain point in the story, I couldn’t make the ending work. So, I tossed it into a trunk (actually a file cabinet) and forgot about it. When I started a project to publish all my fiction, I found the old manuscript and began to keystroke it. This time, ideas flooded my mind and I completed it with what seemed like a most satisfactory denouement. I did not date the original story, but I started work on it again in 2018 and completed it on February 13, 2019.
From the book, here is the introduction to Stitches in Time, written on December 26, 2021:
“Worlds Without End”
As a political writer, I’ve written hundreds of columns having to do with what goes on in the world. In 1978, I created a world of my own. I didn’t think much about it at time; it was simply the latest in a series of short stories I was writing and hoping to sell.
I had gotten the bug to write while working at KRLD, a 50,000-watt AM powerhouse in Dallas that received a lot of books from publishing houses looking for on-air reviews. These went straight to the desk of the late, great commentator Alex Burton who sometimes passed them around the newsroom once he was done with them.
For some strange reason, two books that Alex gave to me were by the same author: Isaac Asimov. Both were short story collections: Buy Jupiter and Tales of the Black Widowers — one science fiction, and the other mysteries. I was impressed with both and sought out more of Asimov’s work, devouring everything I could find. Of course, I was also reading Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Mary Roberts Rinehart in the mystery field and Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Henry Kuttner in science fiction. I read Poe’s horror stories and graduated to those of Robert Bloch and later, Stephen King and Dean Koontz.
But as much as I loved reading, I wanted to write even more.
So, I wrote short stories and had the audacity to actually send them to editors who must have conspired against me since they were routinely rejected and returned in the self-addressed, stamped manila envelope that all unseasoned writers were required to provide. There were two things I could do at this point: give it up, or keep trying. I chose to keep on writing and sending stories until one day I received a letter from an actual professional magazine offering to buy one of my stories. The pay was 1-cent per word, but that was not the point. What mattered was getting published.
By this time, I was writing and selling articles and columns and even a couple of non-fiction books. But down deep, I wanted to write fiction. Over the next four decades, I continued to write stories and put them away, intending to publish them some day. In 2019, not getting any younger, I decided to make it happen.
I went back into my files and pulled out all the stories written on my old Royal typewriter with the round keys. There was a series about some college students who operated an amateur detective agency. There were some light science-fiction stories inspired by Asimov’s work. I retrieved two unfinished manuscripts including one that I had completely forgotten about. I keystroked them into digital form and finished them. There was one other long story I had abandoned that was begun after I had a computer. I finished it too. Digging deeper, I found four early shorts that were written in 1967 for my old comic book fanzine, The Symbol. I keystroked them into the computer and cleaned up the writing somewhat. I published all but one of these short stories in two collections: The Clock Tower and Other Stories and Darker Secrets.
That left one short story, A Stitch in Time, and two novels still to go and those are the ones you now hold in your hand.
These three tales are what you might refer to as what if stories. A what if story leads straight to what then. And therein lies the sense of wonder from a story of speculative or mystery fiction. Doyle asked, what if there was a man so observant that he could deduce the solution to any crime? Asimov asked, what if robots became sophisticated enough to exhibit human emotions? Bradbury asked, what if a fireman started fires instead of putting them out?
One afternoon in 1978, I formed a what if question while stuck in traffic on the R.L. Thornton Freeway in Dallas. Observing cars moving forward with starts and stops, I wondered if time might function that way as well. What if a scientist could isolate those micro-moments in time and splice them to other timelines? Once through the drivetime melee, I pulled out my trusty Royal and put in two pieces of paper with a sheet of carbon sandwiched between them and began to outline a story. A few days later, I completed A Stitch in Time. Once it was published, I knew it was ripe for a sequel.
I gave that my first shot in the eighties and completed 67 double-spaced pages before I got a case of writer’s block. I thought it was good to a point, but didn’t have a feel for how to develop and bring the story to a satisfying conclusion. The pages went into a file folder and into storage, becoming what Stephen King refers to as a “trunk novel.”
In 2007, I decided to give it another try. This time, I had more ideas than knew what to do with. What if Roosevelt had never contracted polio? What if world peace was forced upon the nations? What if a man from our world shifted to that other reality? What if they tried to kill him? It all came together but I never once submitted it to a publisher. I just saved the file and moved on.
Fast forward to 2019 when I got the idea of publishing all these stories. I had created a world of holonets, solar-buses, and time splices in Stitch, and had expanded that world in Rules of Ascension. With many of the same characters and new ones I had created, I wanted an additional story to form a trilogy. That’s when the trunk novel was rescued from the depths of my file cabinet. I picked up the story and ran with it, somehow knowing precisely where I wanted it to go. Ideas flooded into my mind. What if one planet’s climate was becoming dangerously colder while another was burning to a crisp? What if we could send an emissary across dimensional barriers to find another Earth? What if we could create a really large stasis field? What if we could access other worlds? What if we could explore countless realities in worlds without end?
Of course, Rules tied in with concepts and characters from Stitch, and the final story, Earth as It Is in Heaven, tied in with both of the prior narratives as well as referencing two tales from The Clock Tower and Other Stories.
And so, I present to you my world that began in real time on a busy Dallas freeway, progressed to a rules-based utopia (or dystopia) of government-mandated World Peace, and ended up as a tale of three galactic civilizations and how they interacted.
You may be wondering, since this concludes my fiction publishing project, if there will be any more stories. That all depends on how many more years God is willing to allow. Given enough time, I shall surely get the urge to ask what if a few more times, and extrapolate what then.
And you may have noticed some loose ends herein that might be tied up…
Lynn Woolley is a Texas-based author, broadcaster, and songwriter. Follow his podcast at https://www.PlanetLogic.us. Check out his author’s page at https://www.Amazon.com/author/lynnwoolley. Order books direct from Lynn at https://PlanetLogicPress.Square.Site. Email Lynn at lwoolley9189@gmail.com.
