In the latest news from Smashwords, Any Tomorrow: The Calling has passed the automated vetting process and is now up for review by the “vetting review team”.  I suspect that passing the automated vetting had something to do with the updated file I submitted on Monday, although I was never notified that there was a problem.  Anyway, my eBook is one step closer to the Premium Catalog.

In a related subject, I have decided that it might be a good idea to submit a long description as well as a short one.  I just wonder about how much detail to provide.  In considering this the old admonition from Einstein that you don’t really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother came to mind.  The description has to be compelling, but simple and clear enough for granny to understand.  I’m pretty okay with my short description, but I think the long one needs some work.

And I’d better state before I get started that I’m not a big fan of detailed descriptions.  I’ve had the experience of reading a description on a book dust jacket, or the back of a book, or on a site, that is so detailed that I already know the plot before I start.  If I know the storyline and the result up front, why bother buying the book?  I guess I’m a fan of dark water.  I prefer to just jump into it and see what happens.  Sometimes you’ll hit rocks, sometimes mud and seaweed, but sometimes you’ll find that the water is deep and clear below the surface, well worth taking a chance.

Short description:

Any Tomorrow: The Calling is the story of an unwilling fellowship compelled by an undeniable destiny who find their ultimate meaning in a world savaged by a nuclear and biological apocalypse. Caught up in a relentless flood whose headwaters formed five thousand years earlier in ancient Mesopotamia, a young Jewish physicist in pre-war Germany unwittingly triggers a series of events that will determine not only the destiny of his world, but of all the worlds that are. Any Tomorrow: The Calling is a story about the destiny of a few and the fate of everything.

Long description:

Any Tomorrow: The Calling is the first eBook of the Any Tomorrow Trilogy.  It is the beginning of a journey through time and space, from the beginning of the world to its end, as a reticent fellowship is formed and compelled by an unyielding fate to restore order to the world and all the worlds that are.  But before this can be accomplished, before the journey is begun there must be a beginning.  Any Tomorrow: The Calling is the beginning and consists of three parts. 

In ‘The Edge of Time’,  a brilliant young Jewish theoretical physicist in pre-war Germany named Gustav Linder is isolated in his own thoughts from dramatic changes in the world that spawn the rise of Nazism.  He has dreams of a past and future inexorably linked and of which he is an essential part.  To understand his role, he travels to the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk, where an archeologist has discovered the temple of Ereshkigal, a powerful and sinister deity who longs for the destruction of everything.  While the evil of Ereshkigal is revealed, Gustav is confronted by a more basic terror, the Large Man, SS Sturmbannführer Werner Guderien, who proposes a position for him in a new academic research institute whose unspoken mission shares that of the evil Ereshkigal.  Now Gustav is faced with a terrible choice ― to support the new Reich with his research or to flee to America.  What he doesn’t know is that the decision has already been made for him.

‘The Hunter’ introduces Henry Turner, a boy who had all the advantages, yet at age thirteen hears a voice fills the empty places and leads him to a life as a sociopath, a murderer without remorse.  Yet he is a sociopath with a purpose, to fulfill the will of the same evil that haunts Gustav Linder.  Through his experiences Henry transitions from a simple sociopath to a hit man for a Miami drug cartel, yet through every transition he remains true to the voice of pleasure and pain in his mind.  Finally, his ultimate purpose is revealed to him and he begins his journey southward to rendezvous with his destiny.

In ‘The Key’, the full story begins to emerge.  Tyler Nolan, his fragile psyche caught in a struggle between reality and madness, is an Agency intelligence analyst trapped in a secret deep underground facility alone the day a worldwide nuclear-biological holocaust brings everything to an end.  Tyler is alone ― or is he?  Is there someone or something else there with him?  Finally, when the facility’s power fails, he must get out or die.  He must push past his fears and find the escape shaft to the surface.  But the surface holds terrible secrets, and an evil that has been waiting more than five millennia is about to become manifest.

The three parts of Any Tomorrow: The Calling seem disparate, yet are woven together by the common bond of an ancient, pervasive evil and lays the groundwork for the succeeding eBooks, Any Tomorrow: The Curse and Any Tomorrow: The Culling.

Well there it is. What do you think?  Would granny understand?  Maybe if she was a fan of speculative fiction.

As always, if you have any comments, questions, or concerns about this post or any of my posts, please let me know.  I would really appreciate your feedback.  Thanks.
© Copyright 2011 by Kevin Fraleigh.