Free Fiction Friday - Sci-Fi and Steampunk
Free Fiction Friday - Sci-Fi and Steampunk
It's a good one.
Full disclosure, this is my first Storyorigin swap, so I am not entirely sure if I’ve done this right.
I’m doing a swap, and I thought I’d throw myself in the deep end by swapping with two authors at a time.
Hopefully, there’s enough of us here that our interest in their freebies will help them.
As always, you can click the cover images or the buttons to access the free stories.
In the blue corner, we have C.H.Duryea with
ZEKE TRAVERS AND THE RAPTOR OF DISASTER
I’m sold based on that title alone.
When Captain Zeke Travers and the crew of the Friendly Card face off against an ancient cosmic horror, they’ll need brains, brawn, and some serious bending of the laws of physics to survive. The Slagmasters—a motley band of interdimensional rogues and scoundrels—have set their sights on the semi-mythic Most Exalted Potentovoid of Skynixar, a prize they'll have to steal from the ruins of an abandoned alien temple. But taking this mysterious artifact awakens Vraxxtorr the Ceaseless, an extradimensional terror with a voracious appetite that transcends space and time. Can Zeke and the Slagmasters out-eat and out-think the vast and ancient evil, or will Vraxxtorr’s hunger consume all? The laws of physics will be bent to their breaking point in this rollicking sci-fi adventure.
and in the red corner we have Johnathan Fesmire with
THE OBSTRUCTED ENGINE
This prequel short story to "The Adventures of Bodacious Creed" reveals how Anna Lynn Boyd, young brothel madam and secret inventor, resurrected her pet cat, met her partner Jonny, and how Jonny became mute. There's science, adventure, heartbreak, and love in this tale that won an honorable mention in the Writers of the Future Contest.
Which book were you most interested in?
Authors won’t be able to see the results of this poll, just me. I will use the results to refine my decisions for future newsletter swaps.
Meandering afterthoughts.
This is the bit where I go so far off topic, you forget what you signed up for.
So, I’ve done the StoryOrigin thing at last. I wanted to do it for ages, but didn’t have the money (it costs authors money to join these networks and fire out free books).
I’ve paid for it using real people money from my new real people job.
It’s not as easy as being on stage or talking on stream for hours at a time or teaching myself how to write or edit or format or market or book events or speak on live radio or deal with hecklers or run open mics or host events or do live comedy or arrange podcast interviews or go on TV to build Lego or set up my own toyshop or be a judge at the Edinburgh Lit Fest or any of the other stuff I do or have done, but it does pay better than all of those things combined, which is depressing in its own special way, like finding out your crush likes you back, but she doesn’t remember your name and once accidentally kissed someone else because she thought he was you, and you don’t even have the same hair colour and also you were standing right next to him and she looked right through you like you were a sheet of particularly boring glass.
I’m fine. IT’S FINE. I SAID I AM FINE.
Anyway.
It does mean I should be able to keep upgrading this place, and Halfplanet, and the new automatic email thing on Sendfox, and perhaps even set up that bookstore I talked about, or at least fund my own Fringe show next summer without even needing to send desperate emails to loans companies.
That’s why I didn’t do one this year, by the way. On the day this email is scheduled to go out, I know of about twenty people who have their own shows going on in Edinburgh, some of whom I like.
But I needed to put money first, and the average audience size is three people at that Fringe. That, weighed against the average cost of trains, promoting, accomodation, and the inevitable expensive cocktail bar I will find myself affixed to like a barnacle, made the Fringe, again, unaffordable.
It’s been a weird few years of things getting in the way.
This time, 2025 is getting in the way of 2024.
I have done a time travel, sacrificing this year to make next year better.
I even had to turn down a friend’s offer of cheap accomodation, because I only got the offer after I’d decided not to put a show on, and my new job had just started, so I couldn’t weasle around the start date (which I’d already weasled for the Bowie convention).
It stings, but hopefully Britain will still allow comedy to exist in 2025.
Tonight, if I have the energy, I’ll probably be down a pub somewhere in Manchester, telling jokes to the three people who haven’t joined the Edinburgh thing.
Maybe I’ll see you there.
-P