Below you'll find a short (but growing) list of short fiction I make available for free. There's no commitment to do anything but read. However, if you enjoyed a story (or even if you didn't) and would like to let me know, please leave a comment either below or click-through to each of the stories and leave a comment there. You can read in HTML, MOBI/Kindle, or PDF format.

 

Fine Wine

In which an assassin makes a deal.

"Fine Wine" is a short piece I wrote in about an hour, with several edits following that initial brain dump. It started with a single sentence that just popped into my head: "Abelard ate a lot. That was why, after I'd slashed my knife across his belly..."

[ Read this story ]

I'm supporting Kindle writers by selecting for review the occasional eBook from Amazon's Kindle Store each month. This is the first of those selections.

Also, I'm taking LibraryThing's 50 Book Reading Challenge for 2010. This is my 8th read of the 50.

Eleganta: A novel of Fairykind by Denny Swartzlander is my February and first Kindle Pick of the Month. In a way, this is an experiment. First time writers publishing in the Kindle store either (1) couldn't get their novel published by a traditional publisher or (2) didn't submit to a traditional publisher. Either way, the traditional publishing route, which some people feel is pretty important to boosting quality, has been circumvented.

Full disclosure: My first fantasy novel was not picked up by a publisher, so I decided to put it out on my site, the Kindle store, and other online venues.

So, the experiment is to see if self-published eBooks meet the same quality standard as traditional books.

Eleganta left me undecided.

The titular character, a garden fairy, has just given birth to a baby, an occurrence not seen in over a decade. It is quickly decided that the baby must be brought to the fairy queen for protection, for an invading army of trolls—and one troll general in particular—is hell-bent on capturing her. Seems that the trolls grow sick and die when ingesting the current crop of fairies, so they're consumed (no pun intended) with creating a line of fairies not toxic to them. For reasons which remain unclear to me, Eleganta's baby is the key to this source.

So begins a journey for Eleganta, her daughter, and a warrior fairy charged with protecting them that should by all accounts be one charged with suspense and danger. There's plenty of danger (though I never really felt anyone was going to suffer from it) but little suspense. Eleganta and company go from one destination to another, sometimes quickly, sometimes stopping to frolic in the forest, so to speak, all the while chased by a pair of monstrous hound-like creatures. That in itself is a problem: the trolls want the baby alive, so why send a couple of creatures who will probably do nothing less than eat it if they ever capture it?

Another point of contention I couldn't get past: fairies fly, yet their villages are walled. Perhaps this is because they've been fighting the army of trolls for some time, so they've simply built their defenses up. But, still, I had imagined a different sort of lifestyle for fairy-kind, one that did not mirror our own so much.

In terms of writing, Eleganta varies from above average to below average. Character descriptions sometimes are info dumps, with too much, too soon and descriptions that are too detailed. I prefer to find out the nuances of a character as the story unfolds rather than having information thrown at me straight off. There are parts of Eleganta that are on par with anything you'd read elsewhere. Unfortunately, there are also other sections I felt could have used a bit more polish.

The storyline is good enough, though pacing was not the best and the characters are all-too-familiar or just flat. There was no one character I really connected with nor any characters I genuinely wanted to see succeed.

Perhaps the most telling sign of all: I couldn't finish Eleganta. I made it halfway. Knowing when to stop reading isn't always easy. In this case, I was having a hard time getting enthused about picking up my Kindle and diving into the story. If that isn't a sign tell me what to do, I don't know what is.

While Eleganta racked up nine five star reviews on Amazon, I didn't feel it quite met that level. I plan to give it three stars when I post my review there shortly.

[ Purchase Eleganta from Amazon.com ]

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One of the things I often do as I'm reading a novel or short story is keep track of words whose definitions I do not know or that I find interesting. Either way, these interesting words are ones I feel might be of use in my own writing. That, and it's good to expand one's vocabulary every once in a while.

Read my review of The Final Empire.

This time's Interesting Words come to us from Brandon Sanderson's The Final Empire. It's a short list, which probably tells you how difficult of a time you'll have with Sanderson's choice of vocabulary. In fact, I more or less knew the definitions of both of these, but wanted to get them written down anyway.

apathy: the trait of lacking enthusiasm for or interest in things generally

parasol: a handheld collapsible source of shade

[ Purchase The Final Empire from Amazon.com ]

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I'm taking LibraryThing's 50 Book Reading Challenge for 2010. This is my 7th read of the 50.

The Eyes of the Overworld by Jack Vance is part of the Tales of the Dying Earth omnibus. Other novels included in the compilation include The Dying Earth, Cugel's Saga, and Rhialto the Marvellous.

Jack Vance is one of the most prolific and popular science fiction and fantasy writers of our time. Many of his works are considered classics. The individual novels found in the Tales of the Dying Earth are certainly amongst them.

This second Tales novel is just that: unlike The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld is not a collection of short stories but a full-length novel. Here we have the character Cugel, who is likeable enough throughout most of the story, though I did find some of his qualities unsavory if not reprehensible at times. Still, he is our hero, so to speak, and it is his adventures we follow as the story progresses.

We begin with Cugel trying to sell some goods. Things are not going well, though, and at the urging of a fellow merchant, Cugel gets it in his head to go steal from Iucounu the Laughing Magician if only to acquire some magical items which he can then sell for profit. Cugel is caught in the act and, as penance, the Laughing Magician sends Cugel on a quest halfway round the world to bring back a favored item. Keeping Cugel in line is a parasite called Firx, who wraps himself about Cugel's liver and promises certain death if Cugel strays from his appointed task. Thus begins a series of odd and sometimes death-harrowing adventures as Cugel attempts to locate the wizard's prized item and return home, all the while keeping Firx content that he is in fact doing all he can to fulfill said quest.

Trouble arises when Cugel sees an opportunity for personal gain, which is at almost every turn, for Cugel is concerned with himself above all other things. He steals, he cheats, he lies, he even rapes a woman at one point in the story (though, to be fair, they are married and she does agree, but only after Cugel's extreme urging). Still, Cugel is likeable if only because nothing ever seems to go his way. He's the quintessential down-on-his-luck character who, after being beaten down so many times, we just want to see succeed even just once.

The Eyes of the Overworld is, of course, set in Vance's Dying Earth world, so far in our future that the Sun is nearing the end of its life and technology is so advanced (and its operation forgotten, in most cases) that it is more magic than science. Those who do know its operation are few and far between, and are actually called sorcerers and wizards rather than technologists, engineers, or scientists.

Vance's writing style is from another era; the book was originally published in 1966. The matter-of-fact narration is easy to follow, though, and the adventures Cugel finds himself on are engaging. This is another short novel, standing in at about 150 pages, and overall I found it a quick read. If I rated the books I review, I'd give it 3 stars out of 5.

[ Purchase Tales of the Dying Earth from Amazon.com ]

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Dropbox has become my cloud storage vendor of choice, replacing Office Live Workspace for those times when I need to synchronize files between multiple machines (think home vs. work; no more sneakernet with USB keys), when I want to make sure files are accessible from anywhere, and when I just need to get a large file (or files) from one place to another. It's also great as a secure backup solution.

Dropbox is free (2GB of storage, 50GB is $10/month, prices/storage go up from there), secure, and fast. One of the best things about it--and what ultimately made me abandon Office Live Workspace--has to do with the way Dropbox works.

You can access your Dropbox account through their web site, sure. But they also have a client application you install that creates a special "My Dropbox" folder:

You save/copy files into this local folder. The first time you do so, the Dropbox client app will auto-sync with the Dropbox servers, copying those files up into the cloud. Further, if you have Dropbox installed on other machines, those machines will have their individual local Dropbox folder sync'ed as well. In other words, since I have the Dropbox client app installed on my laptop at home and my work machine, anything I copy into my Dropbox folder on either machine is sync'ed with Dropbox's server as well as all machines where I have the client installed. Not only is it excellent redundancy, it's a great way to transfer files (especially when they're large) from one computer to another.

This differs from Office Live Workspace in one very crucial way: With Dropbox, you're in effect saving to your local machine. The Dropbox client software takes it from there, sync'ing automatically in the background when it notices changes. Office Live Workspace, on the other hand, saves files remotely into the cloud exclusively and in the foreground. This is slow. If you're like me and lived through the unreliability of computers in the 80's, you save a lot. Sometimes I add a sentence and hit a quick Ctrl-S. Then I have to watch as Office Live Workspace proceeds to save the document. Twenty seconds, thirty, or longer, and the save is done. I can't deal with that kind of slowness when I'm trying to save my work; I need to keep my thoughts flowing onto the screen.

The Dropbox client is unobtrusive, sitting idle in your tray (in Windows) until it detects a file change:

It performs its sync by changing the icon briefly.

Some other features taken from the Dropbox web site:

• 2GB of online storage for free, with up to 100GB available to paying customers.
• Sync files of any size or type.
• Sync Windows, Mac and Linux computers.
• Automatically syncs when new files or changes are detected.
• Work on files in your Dropbox even if you're offline. Your changes sync once your computer has an Internet connection again.
• Dropbox transfers will correctly resume where they left off if the connection drops.
• Efficient sync - only the pieces of a file that changed (not the whole file) are synced. This saves you time.
• Doesn't hog your Internet connection. You can manually set bandwidth limits.

I'm happy with the service and have yet to have any problems.

If you're at all interested in giving the service a try, you can use this link to sign-up. I get 250MB of additional space for the referral. Thanks!

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This is an always updated list of all the book reviews I have written, organized by author (alphabetized by last name) and title for ease-of-access.

Alternatively, you can browse the content of all of my book reviews.

 

Joe Abercrombie

• The Blade Itself

John Joseph Adams (editor)

• Seeds of Change

Tobias Buckell

• Crystal Rain
  
• Sly Mongoose

Louis McMaster Bujold

• The Sharing Knife
  • Beguilement
  • Legacy
  • Passage
  • Horizon

Orson Scott Card

• The Memory of Earth

Glen Cook

• Sweet Silver Blues
  

David Drake

• Lord of the Isles 

Dave Duncan

• The Alchemist Series
  
  • The Alchemist's Apprentice
  • The Alchemist's Code
  • The Alchemist's Pursuit
• The King's Blades
  • The Gilded Chain
  • Lord of the Fire Lands
  • Sky of Swords

Randall Garrett

• Lord Darcy

Robin Hobb

• The Liveship Traders
  • Ship of Magic
• Rain Wilds Chronicles
  
  • Dragon Keeper
• The Soldier Son Trilogy
  • Shaman's Crossing
  • Forest Mage
  • Renegade's Magic

Paul S. Kemp

• Ephemera 

Ellen Kushner

• The Privilege of the Sword

Mercedes Lackey

•  The Outstretched Shadow
  

Jane Lindskold

• Through Wolf's Eyes 

James Mallory

• The Outstretched Shadow
  

Paul Malmont

• The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril

Graham McNeill

• Heldenhammer

China Mieville

• Perdido Street Station

Tee Morris

• Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword
  

Tim Pratt

• The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl
• The Marla Mason series
  • Blood Engines
    

Cherie Priest

• Boneshaker

Brandon Sanderson

• The Mistborn Trilogy
  • The Final Empire

John Scalzi

• Old Man's War

Jon Sprunk

• Shadow's Son 

Denny Swartzlander

• Eleganta
  

Harry Turtledove 

• The Disunited States of America 

Jack Vance

• Tales of the Dying Earth
  • The Dying Earth
  • The Eyes of the Overworld
    

Jo Walton

• Farthing
  

Robert Charles Wilson

• Spin

I'm taking LibraryThing's 50 Book Reading Challenge for 2010. This is my 6th read of the 50.

The Dying Earth by Jack Vance is part of the Tales of the Dying Earth omnibus. Other novels included in the compilation include The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga, and Rhialto the Marvellous.

Jack Vance is one of the most prolific and popular science fiction and fantasy writers of our time. Many of his works are considered classics. The individual novels found in the Tales of the Dying Earth are certainly amongst them. I found it of particular interest that Vance, like myself, spent part of his childhood in the areas of San Francisco and Sacramento:

Vance's early childhood was spent in San Francisco. With the early separation of his parents, Vance's mother moved young Vance and his siblings to Vance's maternal grandfather's California ranch near Oakley in the delta of the Sacramento River. This early setting formed Vance's love of the outdoors, and allowed him time to indulge his passion as an avid reader. With the death of his grandfather, the Vance's family fortune nosedived, and Vance was forced to leave junior college and work to support himself, assisting his mother when able. Vance plied many trades for short stretches: a bell-hop (a "miserable year"), in a cannery, and on a gold dredge,^[3] before entering the University of California, Berkeley where, over a six-year period, he studied mining engineering, physics, journalism and English. Vance wrote one of his first science fiction stories for an English class assignment; his professor's reaction was “We also have a piece of science fiction” in a scornful tone, Vance’s first negative review.^[4] He worked for a while as an electrician in the naval shipyards at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii -- for "56 cents an hour". After working on a degaussing crew for a period, he left about a month before the attack on Pearl Harbor.^[3]

The Dying Earth was originally published in 1950. In length, it is more novella than novel, coming in at 130 pages (figure 32,500 words; 250 words/page * 130 pages), and is, in fact, a collection of short stories. The stories share a common world: a future so far advanced that technology has become more akin to magic, even to the point where the few who still understand how the technology works are called sorcerers. Going into this compilation, I thought I was going to be reading science fiction. It was with some surprise, therefore, that I found the stories more fantasy than science fiction despite the presence of very advanced technology. In fact, in this first segment of Tales, the only technology that is recognizable as such is a sort of jet car in the story Ulan Dhor. The rest of it is described in a distinctively Dungeons & Dragons manner, with "spells" being cast with such names as Phandaal's Mantle of Stealth and another called Prismatic Spray (I'm almost certain there is a spell of the same name in Dungeons & Dragons; it's been a long time since I've played). In any case, it's clear where the founders of the game, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, found at least some of their inspiration.

The stories in The Dying Earth are told with an almost fairy tale or fable quality to them. Vance's style is of the classic era: matter-of-fact and to the point. They're enjoyable reads nonetheless. Also, one story sometimes will lead into another, with characters spanning one or more stories or sometimes making a cameo or maybe even a quick mention. This does much to solidify the experience of being in a 'real' world as the characters often run into each other and have realistic interactions as a result.

At only 130 pages, this first part of Tales of the Dying Earth is a quick read. But because this is a compilation you've got books 2, 3, and 4 right there. The whole collection comes in at just over 700 pages.

[ Purchase Tales of the Dying Earth from Amazon.com ]

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