Surprise! Another two free Sci-Fi stories

from me, and then some more from some other humans.

Two emails in 24 hours?! I know, it’s a lot of content, but I’ve been busy finding free stories out in the wild. In the last few weeks I’ve joined more free bookshelves, made two of my own stories 100% free everywhere, and launched The Cosmic Comedy Collection, a free story from which is also inexplicably included in this email.

So with Architects, the free story from The Cosmic Comedy Collection, and my two free eBooks, you could plug into four free Sci-Fi stories today before you even take a curious glance at the other authors in this promo.

It’s a lot of stuff.

If you missed my Architects email, you can read it here.

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Chapter 1

The bit at the start

Today’s bookshelf is themed around Discovery. In my story (from TCCC) the discovery is of an aptly named alien species called Invadliens, who invade things. The Invadliens are cruel shapeshifting beasties who communicate only through outdated internet memes. But I’ve written it carefully, you don’t need to know anything about meme culture to find them funny.

One deleted scene included a human doing the Harlem Shake whilst playing the nose flute to cause the aliens to get a migraine.

So here it is.

Just click on the banner or this button, and you’ll find your way to the bookshelf.

And for anyone who has trouble with the button in their email, here is the text to copy and paste into your browser.

https://books.bookfunnel.com/newshortreads/dssix4bu29

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Chapter 2

The return of the free stuff

As I mentioned a few centimetres ago, I’ve also made two of my stories 100% free on Amazon, and other eBook retailers.

Because other retailers are available.

The two stories are HOLOGRAM KEBAB, and THE CERTAIN UNIVERSE, both of which have my usual existential, comedic tilt to them. HK is definitely the funnier one, being a comedy until its final lines, whereas TCU is an exploration of an alternate future universe where robot crabs cut weekends in half with their time-claws. That one’s a bit more conceptual, and if you were to read it in its original context near the endling chapters of WHO BUILT THE HUMANS?, you might have noticed a subtle reference to another character in there, a cameo echoing through space and time.

The universe is always bigger than it looks.

So they are 100% free. You can find the Amazon and Books2read link for both of them over at whobuiltthehumans.com.

They’ll be free for a long time, so no rush. The free bookshelf above is the main character today. That only lasts another week.

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Chapter 3

This time it’s cold and impersonal

Do you have Kindle Unlimited?

If you have, then this thing is also free. This time it’s a creative writing handbook, a hybrid of prompt and classroom that gives you reflective tasks so you can plot out and reshape any stories you come up with from the 52 prompts. It’s also got the story star, a story shape visualisation gadget which I used a lot back when I taught (and founded) Edge Hill Uni’s Creative Writing society.

Because I don’t just do silly jokes. I also do smart stuff sometimes.

(the jokes actually take up most of my processing power).

It might not be your kind of thing, I think about a quarter of my readers here are into writing themselves. But this one is for them!

It’s also going to be free, briefly, on the 22nd of December for everyone. No Kindle Unlimited required on that date (just an Amazon account). But if you don’t fancy waiting, the sales quite literally keep this whole substack thing going.

Then, in 2024, I’ll put the eBook on other retailers. As an author, you can only do the Kindle Unlimited thing if you’re exclusive to Amazon, which is a pain, but it’s how it works.

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See you in the next post!

Unless you’re on the paid tier, in which case, spoilers below!