TIME ON MY HANDS

This joke of a Science Fiction short story eventually became my
novel DAUGHTER MOON. It started one boring day when I opened up
a book of cliché phrases which writers should avoid. I was amused
by all the listings on TIME. Suddenly, I took it as a challenge:
My goal was to write a Science Fiction story that used EVERY
cliché phrase about TIME. It was never published; in fact, one
editor returned the manuscript back to me with big circles around
all the cliché phrases that offended him (this played hell with
my OCR for this eBook). I had so much fun writing it that
afterward I realized that this would make a great novel, one
that I would have fun working on for one to three years: and I
already had a default plot. From boredom to amusement to a
challenge to a novel that took me two and a half years to write
the first draft.
I am not very good at “selling” my art. But I will say this: a
surprising percentage of this short story wound up in my novel
DAUGHTER MOON; general themes, phrases, future attitudes &
characters.

Science Fiction short story at 6152 words.