I sold a science fiction short story yesterday to the Amazon.com Amazon Shorts program. It's entitled Moon Over Aiyalon. Ray Bradbury read it many years ago and wrote me a nice letter telling me he liked it; however, in the years since I had written it, I had been unsuccessful in finding any publishers that agreed with Mr. Bradbury's assessment. Until now. In a few weeks the story will appear on Amazon.com, where anyone will be able to download it for only 49 cents.

It's a humorous story told in first person about an Israeli sideways time machine that proves unusually useful in countering terrorists.

Given the subject of the short story, it's ironic that the email from Amazon came on the fifth anniversary of 911.

The contract and author questionnaire that Amazon sent me is almost longer than the story; I'm still trying to fill it all out. On the bright side, they'll be promoting the story and conducting an advertizing campaign for it, and they will link it with my novel, so the two should drive sales for each other.