Eric James Stone's Blog, page 18

Free: "Like Diamond Tears from Emerald Eyes"

Continuing the weekday story giveaway, today's free Kindle short story is "Like Diamond Tears from Emerald Eyes."

Jerton and his half-brother Larindo are a swordsman and a wizard for hire. When a mysterious veiled bride comes to town and offers them a fortune in diamonds to steal a box from a dead wizard's castle, Larindo insists that they take the job, against Jerton's better judgment.

The story is available free from Amazon's Kindle store until about midnight Pacific Time tonight, but you don't need a Kindle to read it. You can use the free Kindle app on your computer or smartphone.

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"In Memory" is Today's Free Kindle Story

Today's free Kindle story is "In Memory."  The story was a published finalist in the Writers of the Future Contest, and it was my first story sale ever.

Mathematician Kenneth Granley uploaded his mind into a computer years ago. Because his memory is in a computer, it should be perfect. But he's just discovered that someone's been tampering with his memories.

"In Memory" is available free from Amazon's Kindle store until about midnight Pacific Time tonight, but you don't need a Kindle to read it. You can use the free Kindle app on your computer or smartphone.

Today's free Kindle short story: "Betrayer of Trees"

Today's free offering is "Betrayer of Trees," which was my winning story for the Writers of the Future Contest.

When he was a young man, Janal betrayed the sentient trees that his people lived with. Now, fifty years later, he learns the true consequences of his actions.

The story is available free from Amazon's Kindle store until about midnight Pacific Time tonight, but you don't need a Kindle to read it. You can use the free Kindle app on your computer or smartphone.

Extra! Extra! Read All About "Tabloid Reporter to the Stars" for Free!

Today's free Kindle story is "Tabloid Reporter to the Stars," originally published in Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show. The story is available free from Amazon's Kindle store until about midnight Pacific Time tonight, but you don't need a Kindle to read it. You can use the free Kindle app on your computer or smartphone.

Lawrence Jensen is a disgraced science reporter forced to earn a living working for a tabloid. Then he wins the lottery to pick the journalist who will go on mankind's first interstellar mission. It's his shot at redemption — but can he ever overcome his past?

This wonderfully written science fiction story deftly pulls off laugh after laugh while also illuminating critical issues surrounding science, religion, culture, and, most importantly, what exactly is that thing we call truth.

–Jason Sanford, StorySouth [full review]

 

Today's Free Kindle Story: "The Ashes of His Fathers"

Today's free story, thanks to Amazon's Kindle Select program, is "The Ashes of His Fathers."  It's set in the year 2999, when a representative of a distant religious colony world returns to Earth with the ashes of the original colonists.

The story is available free from Amazon's Kindle store until about midnight Pacific Time tonight, but you don't need a Kindle to read it. You can use the free Kindle app on your computer or smartphone.

A free Kindle ebook every weekday

I'm testing out the new Kindle Select program. Through the program, Amazon Prime members can "borrow" one of my short stories for free at any time.  But it also means that some of my short stories will be available for everyone to buy for free during limited promotional periods.  So I'm going to test things out by offering one piece of short fiction free every weekday.

Today's free Kindle download is "Resonance," about the race to build the first space elevator.

I have no entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

I do not have my own entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.  However, I was very pleased to find this bit in the entry on Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show:

But Card's work does not dominate the magazine. If anything, the tone for the magazine – where the contents are pretty much evenly distributed along the sf/fantasy spectrum – has been set by the work of two other writers. Card has been fortunate in publishing a number of stories by Peter S BEAGLE, some of which are sf, such as "Trinity County, CA" (August/September 2010 #18) which depicts an alternate California where there is a need to get dragons under control. Of particular interest are the stories by Eric James Stone, whose contributions have helped cement his reputation as one of the most interesting new writers of the decade: examples include his fantasy of temptation "Salt of Judas" (March 2006 #2) and the ingenious melding of science and magic in "The Robot Sorcerer" (December 2008 #10). [Emphasis added.]

The backstory to Ringer

I've been watching the new series Ringer, and I've found it rather compelling.  But I figure a lot of viewer who started watching it aren't familiar with the origins of the major characters, so I thought I'd post a handy reference guide:

Bridget Kelly: Her real name is Buffy Summers. Some sort of demonic creature stole her vampire-slaying powers, cloned her, and gave her false memories of growing up with an identical twin sister.

Siobhan Martin: She's the evil twin clone of Buffy.

Agent Machado: Having escaped from a mysterious island that had kept him from aging since the 1800s, Richard Alpert became an FBI agent.

Andrew Martin: At some point during or after the Napoleonic Wars, Horatio Hornblower found that same mysterious island and, like Richard, stopped aging.  He now poses as a British financier.

Mr. Carpenter: Tiring of the celebrity bad boy image of being the son of murdered Hollywood star Aaron Echolls, Logan Echolls changed his name and became a teacher at a public high school in New York City.

The writers of Ringer have done an excellent job of merely hinting at the marvelously complex backstories of these characters (other than the "evil twin" thing with Siobhan).  In fact, "merely hinting" is probably too strong a phrase to describe their extreme subtlety.  (In this, they are quite unlike the writers at Castle, who have given rather broad hints that Richard Castle is merely a pseudonym for a time-traveler from the future, a cowboyish space-trader by the name of Malcolm Reynolds.)

"A Great Destiny" Comes Forth

My story "A Great Destiny" is now live on the Daily Science Fiction website, where you can read it for free.

"A Lincoln in Time" sees the light of day

My short story "A Lincoln in Time" is now available in Heir Apparent – Digital Science Fiction Anthology 4.  This is one of my persistence success stories.  Sometimes, after a story gets rejected at a few markets, I decide that the story isn't really all that good and I stop sending it out.  Occasionally, though, I still believe in the story and so I continue to send it out despite repeated rejections.  "A Lincoln in Time" is one of the stories I still believed in.

A couple of times it came close, but the editors wanted me to change the manuscript in ways that conflicted with my vision for the story, so I ended up withdrawing it.

Digital Science Fiction was the fifteenth market I submitted the story to, and I was very pleased that they liked it, and that their suggested editorial changes did not conflict with what I wanted for the story.

I originally wrote this story for the first Codexian Idol Contest, way back in 2005.  The contest involved submitting the first 500 words of a story in the first round, then next 1000 words in the second round, and the rest of the story in the final round.  "A Lincoln in Time" was first place in the first round and first place in the second round.  But when I read the ending of another story in the third round, I knew it would win.  That story ended up at InterGalactic Medicine Show: James Maxey's "To Know All Things That Are in the Earth."  For my story to come in second to that one is no shame.

To whet your appetite, here's the beginning of "A Lincoln in Time":

Booth raised his derringer, but it was too late—Lincoln had seen him coming. With an agility that belied his gangly frame, Lincoln sprang from his box seat, turning as he rose, and in one smooth motion drew a Smith & Wesson revolver and fired a bullet into Booth's right eye.

I shook my head. The patrons of Ford's Theatre began their usual panic at the gunshot. Ignoring them, I made my way to the box. Lincoln was comforting his wife as I stepped through the curtain. His hand moved for his gun until he recognized me.

"We need to talk, Mr. President," I said, stepping over Booth's body.

He nodded, so I activated the extemp field. The noise of the crowd vanished as they froze in place. I extended the field to include Lincoln.

"I must admit to being surprised by the accuracy of my shot," he said. "Not that I was aiming for his eye, but I thought my moving might make me miss him entirely."

To read the rest, go buy Heir Apparent – Digital Science Fiction Anthology 4 at Amazon. You'll also get nine more stories by:

Robert Lowell Russell
Brandon Nolta
George Walker
Paul Cook
Cassandra Rose Clarke
Ed Greenwood
Ronald D. Ferguson
Alex Kane
Martin L. Shoemaker