I am a firm believer in the “traditional” approach to publishing, with its dreaded “gate-keepers” filtering literature’s incoming content for quality. And, of course, for commercial viability. It’s an imperfect, uncomfortable process, sure, but even an imperfect process is better than anarchy.

So then, why self-publish On The Head Of A Pin?

After years of writing without submission, mostly short stories but also a couple of novels, Pin forced itself into my consciousness … the way stories do. It started as a single sentence, which is still the opening line of the story, but quickly exploded into the sort of metafictional literary stunt commercial authors typically wait to pull until well after they have achieved some degree of success.

Having completed it, I could have shelved it while working on more conventional fiction, but I recognized (as the story itself demonstrates) that Death might find me at any time.  And, Pin is clearly not the sort of thing that would turn an agent or editor on to a first-time author — try pitching a novella sometime, even a high-concept one.  “Private detective on a missing-person case, and the missing person is an angel?  Cool!  Only 20 thousand words?  Hmmm, have you considered expanding it into a novel?”

After you read Pin, you’ll realize the story could not be stretched far without undermining its pacing reference to the inter-medium romance between text and film.  From a literary standpoint, the story must remain in that unGoldilocks dead zone between the periodical-friendly short story and the house-friendly novel.

So the only option was to don armor and rush into the self-publishing riot.