Free Fiction... Monday?
Plus - Why I'm not doing a Fringe show this year.
Hi all.
I thought I’d break the pattern a bit this time because this particular FreeFiction thing is something I have written. There’s no creaking digital bookshelf, no pile of electrons zipping about inside eReaders. No crowd of fellow authors hoping to find their next biggest fan.
There is just one story. My story.
And it’s free.
Storytelling and Comedy
I’ve started to record and rehearse my sci-fi comedy standup show from 2023’s Manchester Fringe Festival (Phillip Carter’s Awkward Re-Entry), to release it online. That’s why I don’t have an in-person event this year: That and the compressing nature of spacetime. The universe may be infinite, but time is running like sand through my fingers. I want to throw some of that sand into a cool-looking sandcastle, but it’s not actually a sandcastle it’s a book or two or three or four.
I want to put more time and money and energy (sort of all the same thing) into books for a while. There’s the WHO KILLED THE HUMANS crowdfunder ticking away in the background, my upcoming collection of dark, weird, funny Sci-Fi that follows WHO KILLED THE HUMANS (but can be treated as a standalone collection) and I want to advertise that some more so I can actually put the book out there in the universe some time soon.
Then I’ve got the online show to sort out, deciding how to do the tickets, where to perform it (discord call seems a good choice right now, with a recording at the same time in case someone misses it).
Then I’ve got a few top secret story collections (following on from The Cosmic Comedy Collection). I’m 80,000 words into THE STEPHANIE GLITCH, about the same into THE EARTHLOOP TRILOGY, and I’ve been sending infrequent queries out just in case there’s a publisher out there fun enough to find me as interesting as you do.
There’s a lot of stories to tell. And I’m looking into new ways of telling them.
So I don’t feel like organising my own fringe show again right now. Edinburgh is just not possible, and Manchester would be one too many spinning plates. I think doing it might turn me into one of those weird sausages you get at the end of supermarkets. You know the ones, they’re all shrivelled and salty.
Imagine one of those sausages, but with my face, and a little scraggly beard that was glued on by the props department.
I’m still doing standup, but I don’t think I’ll do my own big show again until I’ve got an agent to sort it out for me. I was surprised how popular my show was, and it went well, but I want to be able to focus solely on the standing up telling a story bit, and not the other stuff in the background like making all the posters. So, smaller gigs it is, for now.
This was a draft poster, which I now use as part of my press packet. Note that the charcoal grey sky merges with this webpage, and the pink matches the buttons you see here at realphillipcarter.com. All my stories, sci-fi, comedy, poetry, are in their own weird ways connected to each other, and I wanted my branding to visualise that.
The free story
My standup covers everything from alien abductions to relationship material, often using one as a metaphor for the other. Today’s story fits that theme, and therefore, probably should come with a content warning.
Hologram Kebab
Hologram Kebab is a short story that contains numerous references to, and jokes about, someone cheating on his girlfriend. It starts off silly and dirty, showing the aftermath of a bad night out, and ends with an existential crisis the likes of which you’ve probably come to expect from me by now.
It’s sort of my brand.
So, Hologram Kebab is a weird little story as it would do just as well on stage as it does on the page.
And it’s free for now, not forever.
Try it, you might like it.
If you do enjoy the story, please do drop a rating on it on Amazon or wherever you got it from. If you have time to write a little review that would be fantastic, as those help new people decide if they want a book or not.
Hologram Kebab gets downloaded around once a day now, and I will miss that when it’s not free, but I plan to publish a new story as my next long term freebie. That one will replace HK, and I want to keep having at least one short story free at all times.
So get HK while you can, because it’ll be $0.99 soon enough, and a new, perhaps weirder story will take its place as the freebie for a few weeks.
-Phillip
Sharing my posts helps me find new readers. New readers help me find even more readers and having lots of readers makes look popular so media people think I’m cool and sexy and ask me to talk about things on their show and talking about things on their show helps me look even more popular which helps me sell more books which helps me get better shows and makes publishing books a lot easier because look at all those TV people who put out novels for no reason in particular and everyone buys those because he’s the man with the pretty face off the magic speaky box not because it’s a good book (it might be a good book but that’s not relevant) but my books will remain good even if I become famous telly man who tells jokes and stuff I promise thank you good bye see you soon.
Looks like I won’t get to see you now at the Manchester Fringe but I do empathise with your reasoning.