Robin Sloan talks about the process of writing his novel,

My novel started as a tweet.

I remember the moment very clearly. On November 15, 2008, my friend Rachel Leow posted a tweet that said simply: “just misread ‘24hr bookdrop’ as ‘24hr bookshop’. the disappointment is beyond words.”

I read this walking down a shady street, and it made me smile. It made me stop and think, too: What would a 24-hour bookstore look like, anyway? I imagined a seedy stretch of street, wide front windows, a few of those crazy rolling ladders… I saw it as I walked, and everything went into my notebook.

(This was on California Street in San Francisco, near 10th Avenue, if you want to type it into Google Maps and really sync up with my former self.)

The tweet and the image percolated, and sometime soon after the New Year, I sat down to write. The story started with a young man (admittedly, a lot like me) walking into a strange bookstore. Even as early as that, in the very first draft, the proprietor’s name was Penumbra. Mystery and antiquity and tall ladders came easily to Penumbra’s bookstore. But then I added some things that I thought deserved more screen time in short stories, things drawn from the San Francisco that I knew: Technology. Recreational programming. Data visualization. Google.

All of this turned into a short story. I was a blogger, so it felt natural to publish the story myself. I put it online, sent a few emails, and hoped for the best. I had the sensation of having navigated to a set of coordinates – the spot roughly at the intersection of books and technology – but not really knowing if I would find anybody else waiting there.

Turns out the intersection was booming.

The reaction to the story was swift and strong. There was a whole crowd of people (a lot like me) waiting for something like this – a crowd of people who were all enthusiastic about new technology but also dedicated to the power of the printed book. And of course, people who just enjoyed a good story, too.

Their enthusiasm gave Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore a whole little life online that spring, and it was their enduring enthusiasm – as new people found the story, week after week, month after month – that convinced me there was a much larger story lurking there. So Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore became a full-length novel.

Really, this book’s story is equal parts chance and determinism.

Chance, because what if I’d read a different tweet on November 15? What if it had been about space exploration or molecular gastronomy? What if Penumbra had been a chef instead of a bookseller?

Determinism, because there were a lot of people waiting at this intersection – waiting for this kind of story. Somebody was going to write it. I feel lucky that it got to be me.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

A book by Booki.sh