With this story I sort of set off to write a Buckey the Space Pirate story because, to be honest, I didn’t have enough of them to put together in an anthology.

However, that was it. As usual I had no idea, no title, nothing.

Day 1: Thursday Jan 27. 3:45 a.m. (Wednesday night late)  Off to my trusty sheet of half-titles I go and the phrase “The Waiting…” catches my eye on my list of half-titles from Ellery Queen Magazine 2000-2001. So with that in mind I scan the Original Science Fiction list of half-titles from 1955 to 1960 and see “…of the Wind” so I have my title.

Again, I wanted to do a Buckey the Space Pirate story. Buckey is my oldest regular character. A Buckey story called “The Sexual Voyage of the Starship Shirley” was my third professional sale to OUI Magazine back in the same two week period that I sold to Damon Knight’s Clarion Awards and Writers of the Future Volume 1.

I wrote a couple of others in there, but Fred wasn’t with Buckey at that point. Then for an anthology edited by Mike Resnick I brought in Fred, the talking and time-traveling oak tree in the story “Cutting Down Fred.” I’ve written and sold another one or two Buckey stories since that story, but at the moment only “Cutting Down Fred” is available in electronic edition.

So that first night I wrote about 300 words and gave up and went to bed. I had no idea where I was going and didn’t care to be honest, which wasn’t a good sign.

The next night, Friday morning early, (Thursday night late) I finished another project early and went back to the story at 2 a.m.  By 4 a.m. I had the 2,100 word story done and then spent a half hour doing the cover.

Tonight, Friday night, I put it up electronically on Amazon, Pubit, and Smashwords and then here.

I kind of like this one because it’s just so darned silly and it’s about writing. And I had fun writing it once I got going. Usually I get up every hour to stretch, but on this one I just banged away the entire way through. And by the way, I tossed away the few words I had written the first night and just started fresh the second night. So that’s officially my first false start in the challenge. There will be more.

TOTAL HOURS SPENT (Including writing, publishing, and cover and putting it up here and writing this post) just under 4.5 hours spread over three days.

Started January 27th. Posted and published electronically early January 28th.

Word Count: About 2,100 words.