Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Toll Booth - [ Published ]

What to expect...

 How would you feel if your boss offered you the use of his vacation cabin in Hawaii and you arrived at this cabin in the woods instead? The key fits the lock and they have a nice quiet week alone. But what about the strange tracks outside the cabin? What is lurking just outside the door?

The buss picks you up to take you to a luxury resort but gets detoured to the frozen tundra of a small island in Alaska and then to the deserts of Africa. Now that's something to write home about.

What would you think when you open your door, expecting a nice warm and sunny view, and find yourself looking down into the mouth of an active volcano?

These adventures and several more await you within the covers of this book.

Authors notes on Toll Booth.

This was my second endeavor and another idea that had been bouncing around in my head for quite some time. Again, I stuck to moderate Science Fiction utilizing matter transmission mixed with a little time and dimensional travel. Odd as it may seem, the story decided to go in a different direction that what I had in mind; and that frustrates me to no end!

The whole premise here is that a small company has hit upon the secret of matter transmission whereby they could move commuters from one point in the country to almost any other point in the world. You could live where ever you wanted and essentially work anywhere else. No, it wasn't exactly the idea I had, but this implementation worked out better than my original idea.

I set other parameters as well, one of which was that it would be a series of short stories in the same vein as a series of Twilight Zone episodes; usually with an unexpected twist at the end. The other parameter was that it would use the same main characters throughout. Oh, I suppose you could call it the "Adventures of Reuben and Marcus", but that would be an oversimplification.

So far, the main comment is that it is to short. Well, I can always add more stories. I attempted to publish a rougher version of the first story, "The Golden Ticket", on another web site without much success. Perhaps that choice was not the best place to try it out, and it was a rough draft.

If you're wondering where the concept for this story came from, let me tell you that like most kids, I use to read comic books; especially space themed ones. There was one story about a young man way in the future that restored an old car from the 1910's. Once he had it running, he took it out for a ride and one dark night in the woods the road became very old looking with grass growing down the center. He didn't watch where he was going and went off the road and hit a tree. He woke up to the farmers daughter tending him... Whatever, the main idea here is that he moved back in time. When this idea resurfaced in my mind I envisioned that depending on which branch of the road you took through the woods you could go anywhere in the world. It was only a short jump from there to turn it into a matter transmitter and eventually, a time machine. The progression resulted in the series of short stories that I call "Toll Booth".

Anyway, I enjoyed the project and I may revisit it again some time in the future.

As for you the readers, "WHAT DO YOU THINK?"

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