Where Do Your Stories Come From? Echotide

This is a repost from my Facebook and Instagram posting series.

So, if you've already seen these, feel free to bypass.

Below you'll find all of the social media posts about Echotide and my inspiration for the stories.

If you want to pick up a copy, you can find it here. Depending on when you're reading this it'll either be available for preorder or it'll be released already.



This collection is a time travel themed collection made up of stories I wrote almost a decade ago and others that were completed only a year ago. Either old or new, I hope you enjoy your visit to the Echotide Emporium.







“Where do your stories come from?”

I asked and answered this question with my One Snowy Night collection leading up to the release, and figured with Echotide, I might as well do the same leading up to its April 24th release.

 
This collection as a whole wasn't conceived as a collection initially. I had two time travel themed short stories I'd written that had nowhere to go, so very similar to the inception of OSN, I decided to write some more time travel tales and thus Echotide was born.

 
As you all know, I love a good framing device, and this collection is no different. The Echotide Emporium is the linchpin of this collection. In the framing stories, Echotide and Closing Time at the Echotide Emporium, the store is presented as a place out of time containing relics and artifacts from various time periods. The main character, Mary, is running from something in 1940s Harper, Alabama. She finds refuge in the store and witnesses the stories as she interacts with each artifact.

 
The stories within this collection are dark sci-fi and speculative fiction. Think Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Black Mirror. Where OSN was multi-genre with a horror core, this is a blend of cosmic horror, dark sci-fi, technology gone wrong, and sometimes hope in the face of the unknown type of stories.

 
Enjoy this quote from the opening story -

“The death of James Chisholm (the Third of his name, don’t you dare forget it) had rocked the town of Harper, Alabama, since Mary had put him to a quick and definitive end. James, through his family’s wealth and influence, had so far avoided going to Europe or the Pacific for war, although there were times Mary thought it would have been better for them both if he had died a hero in the service.”







Where do your stories come from?”

Last time I posted this question, it was about the framing story in my upcoming collection, Echotide. For this post, I want to chat about the second story in the collection- Vanishing Point, Inc. The original title was Vanishing Point, LLC, but I decided a company like the one in my story would not be an LLC…

 
This was the third story I conceived of when imagining this collection. The name is a reference/homage to the Vanishing Point in DC Comics (IYKYK). I had long played around with the idea of time traveling tour guides and wanted to explore how capitalism and time travel would intersect. Also, I was able to incorporate some scenes I had thought up back when I was playing Assassin’s Creed: Origins back in 2017 when I tried to imagine what seeing the great pyramids would have been like to a tourist from the modern day. This story leans into my hard sci-fi roots and I tried to stray away from techno-babble and make everything seem grounded as much as I could.

 
This story also references technology that I have in other places (see STATIC in The Albatross).
This story takes everything above and packages it with a main character who is a tour guide leading an expedition for the titular Vanishing Point. If you like stories that deal with the ethics of time travel with a bend toward hard sci-fi, this one is for you.

 
Enjoy this quote from Vanishing Point, Inc.-

“With a sudden jolt wrenching her breath away, Kharis was thrust into searing daylight. The transfer complete, she opened her eyes to an unrelenting sun hanging high in a cerulean sky. The air, thick with a dry head, wrapped around her like an oppressive blanket. She felt grains of sand beneath her boots, the ground firm but yielding underfoot. As she adjusted to the brilliance, details began to clarify before her. Golden dunes stretched into infinity, their surfaces shifting and shimmering like some vast ocean frozen mid-wave. The smell, a blend of dust and earth, assaulted the senses.”

Also, enjoy my limited artistic stylings to think of a logo for the company back when I was drafting this story in my notebook.

 
The book is available for preorder now. Can't wait for you to visit ancient Egypt.







“Where do your stories come from?”

Continuing this series- let’s talk about the next story in Echotide. Echoes of Desolation. This story takes place in Desolation, Nevada, and if you are either a reader of mine, or you’ve kept up with my fictional towns in the US, you’ll recognize this one.

 
Desolation, NV is one of those unlucky places in my grand literary universe. I first conjured it up for the six issue graphic novel I wrote back in 2014. That story is a supernatural gothic western that takes place in the 1800s (not published, but if you know an artist looking for work…). Desolation will feature again as the climax for my upcoming Whispers in Chaos books. It’s kind of like Raven’s Bend, ME and Elmwood, GA. It’s a location I revisit often in my fiction.

 
But for the purposes of this story, Desolation is the place that my protagonist, two paranormal ghost hunters, go to explore a spooky ghost town and come face to face with what they think at first is paranormal, but is actually related to time travel.

 
If I’m being honest, I feel like this is one of the weaker stories in the collection, if only because it might require some of the greater lore of my stories to understand fully. The place and referenced characters from the past show up in other places in my writing. The pre-knowledge of this could provide a fuller reading experience for this story, but in my gut, I feel like this one stands alone just fine.

Enjoy this excerpt from Echoes of Desolation-

“The ghost town earned its name, though even the most jaded ghost town connoisseur would have accused the namer of a lack of imagination. The main street was a broken arm, elbowed into nothing by time. Skeletons of storefronts lined the strip, their windows sunken and teeth-shattered, signage illegible. At the end, the town hall hunched with its widow’s-peak clock tower, presiding over the decay like a warden too proud to give up his post. The clockface wore a shade of dried blood around the edges, the hands forever knifed between three and four.”

The book is available for preorder now. Can't wait for you to visit Desolation, Nevada.

“Where do your stories come from?”

Next up in Echotide is The Time Capsule. This story takes place in Raven’s Bend, ME. My fictional stand in for the Lewiston and Auburn area of Maine. The specific setting for this story is based on Thorncrag Bird Sanctuary in Lewiston. So if you’re a local, I hope that this story will seem familiar.
I originally finished this back when I was writing stories for One Snowy Night- hence the Raven’s Bend setting, but since it takes place in the summer and not during the blizzard, I had to put it on the shelf. Once I started putting together Echotide, I felt like it had a home and slotted it into the story.

For the initial inception of this story, I wanted to try and recapture the sense of a classic 80s teen “Amblin-esque” storytelling experience. Then on the other half, it goes a bit darker. The premise is a group of teens go into the woods to bury a time capsule only to find a sealed bunker with their names engraved on the door. The first half of this story, everything leading up to the bunker discovery, was written all the way back in 2011ish when I was hiking there with my family. The second half and finale was finished along with the other Raven’s Bend stories of OSN back in 2022-2023.

 
Enjoy this quote from The Time Capsule-

“Shadows danced along hidden trails deep in Rosethorne Woods as animals chittered. Rosethorne, named after some long-forgotten settler, sat just outside the small town of Raven's Bend, Maine. Nestled in the scenic countryside close enough to town to see the imposing mills along the Androscoggin River, but far enough out to sit in silence from the bustling town. The solemn splendor of the forest was broken, or enhanced, by the echoes of four teens running and chasing each other along the paths.”

The book is available for preorder now. Can't wait for you to once again visit Raven’s Bend.





“Where do your stories come from?”

The next place visited through the Echotide Emporium is The Singularity Well. This story is inspired by old pulp adventures and films like Indiana Jones. Edward Harrington is an explorer cutting his way through the Amazon in search of a remote village untouched by time.

 
I really wanted to capture the vibe of a 1947 pulp serial and the Adventurer/Explorer protagonist trope. This story is a blend of scifi, magical realism, and a little bit of cosmic horror as the end approaches. The Singularity Well is maybe the first in the collection to dip into the realm of cosmic horror, but won’t be the last.

 
This one was wholly conceived and written for Echotide. I think the initial “what if” of the concept came about when I went from watching Raiders of the Lost Ark to Annihilation back to back one night. I also used this story to explore a bit of colonialism and how outsiders might come into places they are not wanted and the consequences of going blindly into situations they do not understand.

Enjoy this quote from The Singularity Well-

“The green oblivion pressed close about Edward Harrington, each damp frond and sprawling, coiling vine another blurred glyph in the language of the jungle. He had ceased, some time ago, to think of the Amazon as any kind of wilderness. It was merely a system, vast and closed, indifferent to the expeditions of man. How long since he had crossed the last navigable inlet, leaving behind the canoe and the half-hearted natives who ferried it? The precise days eluded him, as if time had lost its teeth upon the threshold of this place. Sweat glazed his back and ran in rills down his arms, pooling in the furrows of knuckles and the pinked bed of a blister. His jacket, a relic of tweed, now torn and irretrievably sodden, offered no protection against the drumming insects or the cold shock of rain, which came and went like the memory of childhood.”

The book is available for preorder now. Can't wait for you to visit this remote corner of the rainforest.





“Where do your stories come from?”

After visiting the Amazon in 1947, the next Echotide story is closer to our own time, but still vastly different from what we know of. Pulling the Thread is near future and deals with alternate timelines/realities.

 
This one focuses on a new scientist at a lab where they’ve discovered a way to look into alternate realities through a device he’s named “The Loom.” The lead scientist begins to obsess over these glimpses of “paths not taken” and wonders how to make his reality like the ones he sees in the viewing glass, much to the discomfort of the main character.

 
This story, like many in this collection, deals with the lack of power we have in the march of time and how ineffectual we can be when facing the past. I think the best genre for this one would be considered a psychological thriller about the loss of free will.

 
Enjoy this quote from Pulling the Thread-

"This,” he said, gesturing to the machine, “is the Loom.” Nodding back to the screen with the fuzzy images, he continued, “You are witnessing the permutations of existence itself." The images danced and dissolved with mesmerizing fluidity. "Each image," Mercer continued, his words threaded with a subtle urgency, "represents a path not taken, a divergence from the current trajectory of the universe. Every choice, every chance encounter, gives birth to a new reality." His gaze remained fixed on the screen. “We are scratching the layers of our universe, to see glimpses of alternate realities.”

"Is it... real?" She asked. "Are these actual lives?"

Mercer's eyes darted to her, then back to the display, the brief glance revealing more than any spoken answer. "Real, yes, in a sense that challenges conventional understanding. Reality is not fixed, Ms. Park. It is... negotiable."

The book is available for preorder now. Can't wait for you to peer into The Loom.





“Where do your stories come from?”

The Chronicle of the Cursed Clock is up next in Echotide, and this was one of my favorite ones to write. Henry Brouwer is a scientist/inventor who is about to make a presentation at a World Fair type of event. He’s invented a machine that can pull artifacts from the past, then places them back where they were pulled from.

 
This story is very much a soft scifi and uses a lot of handwaving to justify the technology, leaning into Victorian steampunk territory but doesn’t quite cross the line.

 
Henry was such a fun character to write. He is focused and precise, calculating everything down to the second. He prides himself on absolute precision, but is also ignorant to the way things happen in the real world. He embodies the quote from Jurassic Park- “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.” Henry has been so focused on making his invention work, he never gave thought to the larger implications of it. Henry’s character is very much inspired by the mythology that has sprung up from Nikola Tesla.

And as in many of my stories, Capitalism shows us as a bad guy in the narrative…

 
Enjoy this quote from Chronicle of the Cursed Clock-

Pacing again. Pocket watch out. Reset to zero. Less than a minute, by my calculations. I check again. The pinched hallway hums and churns with ambitious, desperate voices arguing theory, exhausted bodies slumped against wood crates. Oil stains on thin carpet, the smell biting at my eyes. I focus. Reset. Less than a minute. Time expands and contracts like the breath in my lungs. My hands tremble, and my voice spills from me in harsh mutters. Fine, they’re fine. My hands are fine. Precision work, pin-sharp. I draw a long breath, punch it back out of my chest. From the main stage, I can hear the announcer barking. The hallway melts away. I straighten my waistcoat and step forward. Ready for my moment in the light.

Three minutes more. Seven steps in either direction, or eight if I cut it tight. Breathing in time, not counting but knowing. Voices seep through from the main stage, always the same. “Wonderful! Ladies and gentlemen, truly a marvel.”

Smattering of applause. Polite, detached. They’ll go home to their ticking, their unsteadiness. Their ordinary. They have no conception of what awaits.

The book is available for preorder now. Can't wait for you to visit turn of the century NYC.





“Where do your stories come from?”

We go from turn of the century NYC in the last story to the far reaches of the cosmos for this one in Echotide.

 
This is quite possibly one of my favorites of the collection. It was also one of the first that I wrote when I started to pull this together with the exception of the two that inspired the collection.

This story focuses on a xenoarchiologist and her team on an assignment on an alien world whose civilization is eons dead. It focuses on humanity pushing into the cosmos trying to study something that is both more ancient and more advanced than we are. The Lachesis Loop contains elements of hard sci-fi and cosmic dread/horror as the characters dig deeper into what they’ve found on this dead alien world.

 
I love the flow of this story and I hope that the slow build to the reveal draws you in as much as I hope it does. I also hope the beginning feels like something you’d read if you picked up The Martian Way or some other classic sci-fi collection.

Enjoy this snippet from The Lachesis Loop-

Aubree stopped abruptly, looking up at the ruddy violet sky above her. The sun was setting, and she had been inside for hours, so the vision beaming through her helmet visor she counted as a blessing. The wind had shifted, and the dust storm currently sweeping the high deserts to the east would pass over Lachesis in half an hour. The sun, magnified by the haze, was a gorgeous magenta ball that flooded the barren desert with its incandescent light. It shrank in her vision as it dissolved into yellow-white sparks at its center, then dimmed to a small ember behind a gray veil. Tonight, some of that dust would come sifting down from the upper atmosphere to add another film to what had been burying the city for the last fifty thousand years.

 

The book is available for preorder now. Can't wait for you to join me in the ruins on Lachesis.





“Where do your stories come from?”

The next story in Echotide starts off feeling like magical realism and at the end deals with fate and facing a future you know but cannot change.

 
The Tides of Tomorrow was maybe the third or forth I wrote for this collection initially, and the idea came to me sitting on the shore in Rockland, Maine watching the waves come in. I started to envision a woman standing over the waves and looking into the future as they crashed over the sand and rocks.

 
And thus, the Tides of Tomorrow was born from that seed.

 
Aora, the main character, is an apprentice Tide Watcher to her grandmother. When it comes her time to read the tides, she sees something unexplainable and decides to follow a path laid out to her to find the source of her prescient abilities. I hope the ending of this story makes you question what you would do if you were in the same situation.

 
Enjoy this snippet from Tides of Tomorrow-

"But Grandmother, how will I know when I'm ready?"

Lysandra chuckled softly, the sound mixing with the gentle lapping of the waves. "The sea will tell you, child. Just as it has guided our family for countless years, it will show you the way when the time is right.

As the sun climbed higher in the sky, casting a golden sheen across the water, Aora and Lysandra turned away from the sea. They began their walk back to the village, their footsteps leaving ephemeral imprints in the sand, soon to be washed away by the ever-advancing tide. The beach gave way to scrubby dunes dotted with resilient sea grass, their slender blades bowing and swaying in the salt-laden breeze. Tiny sand pipers darted between the tufts, their spindly legs a blur of motion as they searched for their morning meal. In the distance, the village began to take shape, a collection of sturdy stone cottages and wooden huts that had weathered countless storms and seasons.

The book is available for preorder now. Can't wait for you to join me on the edges of the shore.







“Where do your stories come from?”

We’re getting close to the end of Echotide and are now moving far outside of time for The Last Librarian. I mentioned before that Vanishing Point’s name was inspired by the DC Comics setting. This story is a direct inspiration of that concept with a few tweaks. I honestly feel like this story could have been a high concept/experimental comic book put out by DC or Marvel in the early 90s.

 
The Archive is run by Drake, the Last Librarian, and exists outside of time and space. Here, it is his job to document and catalogue all of spacetime as it cycles through the timeline. He doesn’t know how long he’s been at the job, but knows the Archive and the timeline like the back of his hand. Until one day he notices an anomaly and must leave the Archive to investigate.

 
This story explores time as a cyclical beast and if you’ve read my fantasy novel, To Tread the Narrow Path, some of the concepts of time, fate, and destiny will feel familiar.

 
Enjoy this snippet from The Last Librarian-

The Archive sprawled around him, endless shelves reaching into infinity. Books, scrolls, and parchments hummed with the grand secrets of the universe. Drake breathed deeply, inhaling the scent and stardust and time itself. He began his rounds, footsteps echoing in the vastness. Each shelf pulsed with life as he passed, recognizing its keeper. Drake's fingers danced across spines, checking his handiwork. The universe never slept, always creating, always changing.

A smile touched his lips. This was his purpose, his joy. To witness, to record, to preserve. The weight of existence rested in these halls, and Drake carried it gladly.

The book is available for preorder now. Can't wait for you to join me at the end of time in the Archive.





“Where do your stories come from?”

This is it. This is the last story in Echotide before the final framing story.

 
Feathering is a soft scifi/dark urban fantasy taking place in a gritty late 1980s NYC.

 
Elena is a painter. She discovers she can make events happen by painting them. It starts small. Insignificant things. Then larger. Until she tries to use her power to change the past.

In my opinion, this story is one of the stronger ones in the collection and I’m glad it closes out the main block of stories. It is a fitting end to the collection and I’m happy at where it leaves the reader before Closing Time.

 
Enjoy this snippet from Feathering-

The graveyard shift at the Hudson Street Diner did not so much crawl as drag its spine across glass. Elena’s hands, already trembling from the second carafe of burnt coffee, balanced three chipped mugs on a tray as she approached the regulars. One wraith in a janitor’s uniform, two Wall Street zombies come down from the cocaine plateau, and a last-minute couple who kept their eyes fixed anywhere but each other. Behind the counter, someone’s radio whispered about warheads and a subway stabbing in Red Hook. She moved with the slow caution of someone whose bones had been threatening mutiny since 2 A.M.

 
The book is available for preorder now. Can't wait for you to join Elena in NYC in the late 80s.




And that's it. That's the collection. It is a wandering journey through both time and space dealing with intimate grief in the face of the inexorable march of time to the far reaches of the cosmos facing things humanity can never comprehend.


Thanks for coming along this journey with me through the Echotide Emporium. I hope you find something to your liking.