Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

I’m back in Boston for week three of “Don’t-see-my-family-April”, and today work got me incredibly down.

However, as it is (or, as midnight just clicked over, was) International Pixel-Stained Peasant Day, I have lots of free fun stuff to read and cheer me tonight.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about you need to first see this, then read a couple of responses (like this, this, or this), and then see how it lead to this.

For those of you not clicking through the links, what it amounts to is a whole bunch of tech-hip authors posting (or linking to) their writing on the web for free.

You can hear three outspoken author types chat about this in an MP3 capture of a panel discussion here.

There’s a list of some of them, but not all of them, here. Or you can peruse the thing that arose here (what’s the term for a mutli-user flashmob blog?) for lots more links.

Here are some that I would recommend, in no particular order:

• Weiroot, a character piece, by Jeffrey Ford, probably my favourite living short story writer, and one my favourite novelists too!
• The kids (a.k.a. Gavin and/or Kelly) over at the LCRW/Small Beer collective have posted a veritable cornucopia of wonderful free stuff, notably including Kelly’s The Faery Handbag, and Richard Butner’s Other Agents.
• The Element of Fire, by Martha Wells. A whole novel, and one I liked. I’ve spoken of Wells here before.
• Missile Gap, by Charles Stross. A whole novella, and one I’m getting to read online before my paper copy gets here, since they just shipped this week.
• Novelist, nigh-governor, and road-trip planner extraordinaire Will Shetterly has a page linking to several of his stories, as well as a complete 159-page comic free online.
• Jay Lake brings us Glass: A Love Story
• Novelist, singer, songwriter, and caffeine-addict Emma Bull promises a week of free stuff, starting with lyrics to her contribution to a Chris Ewen project.
• Acclaimed and outspoken Aussie YA novelist, and academic, Justine Larbalestier gives us a three chapter tease of an upcoming work. Her husband also posts some mysterious stuff from his dark past.
• Another Aussie, Stephen Dedman, brings us a very short short.
• My pal Gwenda Bond, once known in her wilder days as “Apocalypse Barbie”, has a YA story about spirit animals.
• Sarah Monette brings us The Watcher In The Corners.

I’m sure there’s lots more good stuff I haven’t seen yet, but it was quite a welcome flood today, that’s for sure.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.