This election is almost over! In a matter of days we’ll know if America will remain a land of democracy, or if it wall fall into fascism. That’s assuming in the months after the election the fascists don’t burn the country down in their attempts to steal the election. But that’s Big Challenge Number 2. Big Challenge Number 1 is getting out and voting to show that the majority of Americans don’t want Orange Hitler back in the White House.
Therefore, as with every
election for the last decade plus, I’m having an Election Day Sale on several
of my ebooks. From Friday November 1st,
through Election Day Tuesday November 5th, the following five ebooks will be
free to download. All I ask is that you
vote. If you need it, this site will
help you find your polling place. (Also,
apparently, it’s technically illegal for me to give you something to get you to
vote, but if a free ebook from an unknown author was the deciding factor on
whether or not you voted, then the case could be made that anything could have
been the deciding factor, like choosing not to vote because you didn’t want to
stand in line after stubbing your toe that morning. And it’s not like I’m dumb enough to just
give people a million dollars. Anyway, there’s
no way for me to know if you vote or not, so you can take a book and not vote. Which is fine, except in the sense that this
election will determine the very fate of the United States.)
If you’ve already voted,
then reward yourself with some free books.
If you haven’t voted yet, then grab something to read while you wait in
line. And if you’re not an American
citizen, grab an ebook anyway and participate in your government however you
can, because if nothing else, this election has shown that the forces of
authoritarianism are everywhere, and they unfortunately don’t sleep.
***
Everybody complains about
politics, but does anyone do anything about it? My attempt to do something
about it is to collect forty of my short stories with a political element into
my Political Pies anthology. The stories are either politically neutral or
equally condemning of the national parties. Instead of trying to sway you to
one ideology or another, my goal is to just get people thinking about politics
in the hopes a rose might grow out of all the political manure.
The All-You-Can-Read
Buffet is a collection of forty stories covering various genres and themes
ranging from six to over 4,200 words in length. Some of these stories I wrote a
decade ago, while others were written especially for this collection. All together,
they are a buffet of my writing. As such, I encourage you to read as much as
you want. Go back for seconds, thirds, fourths even. I won’t even mind if you
skip over the stuff you don’t like, but, to quote your mother, “How do you know
you don’t like it? Have you tried it?”
This work contains some
profanity and sexual situations. It is intended for mature audiences only.
A plague that kills men
has devastated the world’s population. Only a few thousand boys and men were
able to be quarantined. But Mike Shay is the only man known to have a natural
immunity to the plague. Therefore, he is practically the only man in a world of
women. He spends his days reading, playing video games, and making the
occasional sperm donation. Then Dr. Veronica Barrett shows up, disrupting what
passes for his life. She says she’s there to investigate his “mental
wellbeing,” but is there more to her visit?
Instead of the normal,
adolescent, heterosexual male fantasy of being the only guy on a planet of
women, “Relics” tries to give a more realistic view of Mike’s life.
As a science fiction
writer, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how technology will change the
way we live. I’ve come up with these ten short essays about science fictional
elements that will – almost certainly – one day become science fact as a way
for people to start coming to terms with them. Because I’ve spent time thinking
about clones and AIs, I feel I’ll be okay when they do finally show up whereas
most people will probably freak out. I hope these essays will get people to
start thinking about the future because, no matter what we do, the future is
coming.
Partway to a new colony
world, board member Geoffrey Ames is woken from hibernation by the caretaking
crew of the Lucian. They require him to look into the matter of their fellow crewman
Morgan Heller. Morgan’s claims – such as being over 1500 years old – would
normally land him in the psychiatric ward, except he can back up some of his
other claims.
