John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 15

THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER Price Reduced!

Good news! I am lowering the eBook price of my fantasy novel, The Sword and the Sorcerer!

The data I’ve been reading suggests readers are looking to pay between $2.99 and $3.99 for an eBook, especially on Amazon, so I’m dropping the price of SatS to $2.99. (The nice thing about being an indie author is being able to adapt quickly to trends.)

The only trouble with this move is that I was donating 20% of the sales of The Sword and the Sorcerer to Freedom to Marry to help them continue their fight for marriage equality nationwide. I initially set the price at $4.99, so I could donate a buck a sale.

I don’t want to reduce the reach of my ability to help. If I stick to the 20% number, that’ll cut down on what I’m donating per sale.

So I’ve decided to reduce my profit margin instead. I will continue to donate one dollar from the sale of every electronic copy of The Sword and the Sorcerer to Freedom to Marry. If you buy the print edition, I’ll donate two bucks.

Click on the links below to get The Sword and the Sorcerer at the new, lower price and to help out an organization dedicated to justice for all. Here’s the book description in case you need an additional incentive!

He wanted his father’s love. What he got instead will change the world.

Gothemus Draco – world’s most powerful sorcerer – is dead. Locked away in his tower are the tools for total domination of every city-state in the Known World. The person who possesses them can become a king, and everyone, it seems, has a claim – his warlord brother, the fairy from whom he stole a powerful artifact, even the sorceress who murdered him.

But the man who shaped the balance of power through wizardry isn’t done playing games with world politics. Just because Gothemus is dead doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have plans. Against all understanding, his magic lives on after his demise, preventing anyone from breaking into the tower.

Meanwhile, he’s left a gift for his son Calibot – Wyrmblade. The legendary dragon sword makes its wielder nearly invincible, and Gothemus has enchanted it with all sorts of new abilities.

But Calibot wants nothing to do with Wyrmblade or his father. He’s a poet with a powerful patron, and he’s been estranged from his father for years. All he desires is a peaceful life of composing verse and to one day marry the man he loves – a former soldier and advisor to the duke.

He may have no choice, though. Gothemus decreed Calibot should retrieve his body and lay him to rest. All signs point to a mysterious destiny Gothemus designed that Calibot cannot avoid.

With only the aid of his true love and his father’s inept apprentice, Calibot must leave the safety of his life at court and venture to the stronghold of those who murdered Gothemus, retrieve the body, and return it to his tower. Everyone with a stake in the future of the Known World will try to stop him, and Calibot must take care he doesn’t lose his life . . . or his soul!

The Sword and the Sorcerer is a full-length fantasy novel by the author of the Wolf Dasher series. Set against a backdrop of magic and dragons, of betrayal and greed, it is a story of one man’s journey to lay his father – and his inner demons – to rest.

Click here to purchase The Sword and the Sorcerer from Amazon.com for $2.99.

Click here to purchase The Sword and the Sorcerer from Smashwords for $2.99.

Click here to purchase the print edition of The Sword and the Sorcerer for $12.99.

Click here to donate to Freedom to Marry.

Filed under: e-Publishing, The Sword and the Sorcerer Tagged: Freedom to Marry, Gay marriage, John Phythyon, marriage equality, The Sword and the Sorcerer

Why you’re going to make it

John R. Phythyon, Jr.:

Good advice and inspiration for us all. . . .

Originally posted on C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m:

As indie authors, we’re all encouraged to work harder. That’s frustrating to hear because I don’t know any indie authors who aren’t working hard. But I’ve got good news. Your chances of achieving some measure of success are better than we’ve been led to believe. Here’s why:

1. Businesses fail all the time, big and small. But our overhead is so low, we can continue after we fail! When your hardware store goes out of business, you’re done.  We get a few kicks in the ass, but authors also get more kicks at the can.

2. Every business that ever made it to sustainable got there because the boss/producer didn’t quit. Many of the biggest success stories come from people who failed and failed and failed at their chosen path but were too dumb to quit. Stubborn is our advantage.

Being a writer isn’t just a job. It’s an identity. It’s a compulsion. How…

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Filed under: e-Publishing, Writing

Nothing Beats a Comfortable Workstation

Once again, I’ve struggled to blog regularly. It’s this moving thing. It takes so very much of my time, it’s all I can do to find a moment to breathe, let alone do my job.

However, I’m very excited, because things are coming together nicely. Wednesday, our stuff arrived. Due to a series of complications I won’t go into here, we spent two weeks without most of our belongings. They beat us to Columbus and then sat in storage.

But they’re here now, and that means something very dear to my heart — I’ve got my desk back!

So happy to have my full desk for the first time in four years!

I’ve been writing with my computer on my lap. For several days, I relied on my phone to connect me to the internet. Now, though, I’ve got my desk back in front of me, my office chair underneath me. I’ve got a proper workstation again.

And it’s even better than that. For the first time in years, I’ve got my whole desk again.

For emotional reasons, I quit working in my office at the apartment I had 2010. I sat on my couch out in the front room with the computer on my lap.

When I moved in with Jill in 2012, the tiny house she rented at the time had no room for my enormous workstation. I stored the desk in her garage and continued working on the couch.

That summer, we moved into the house we thought would be our forever home. But there wasn’t room for the whole desk in there. I managed to get the main unit and the hutch set up. But the rest of it sat in my daughter’s room where it collected dust and piles of clutter.

But we’re in Ohio now. We have a new house with plenty of space. For the first time since I abandoned the backroom of my apartment, I have a dedicated office space (which we’re calling, The Study). I’ve already written two chapters of Ghost of Chance in it, and it feels great.

I’ve still got work to do, putting the study together and unpacking things to decorate my desk. But I’ve got my full workstation for the first time in almost four years. The comfort and satisfaction are immeasurable.

Let the work begin!

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: John Phythyon, writing

Focus is Required to Finish a Novel While Moving

I’ve written several times in the past about the difficulty of finishing a novel. Writing book-length fiction requires dedication, courage, and maybe a little insanity.

I haven’t finished my current work-in-progress, Ghost of a Chance, yet, but I am 42 chapters into it. By early next week, it will be the longest book I’ve ever written, and I am hoping to type, “The End,” by the time we Americans are celebrating the birth of our nation with hot dogs and explosions.

Finishing a novel is extraordinary, but it might be even more so this time. As regular readers of this blog know, I’ve been moving this summer. That has put a serious crimp in my ability to get anything else done.

For the entire first three weeks of June (and the last week of May), I’ve been packing. On the 20th, We loaded everyone up and left town. This past week, we’ve been staying with a friend while we waited to close on the house — a fact that was complicated severely by an unexpected hiccup in the financing that involved me spending hours on the phone with bureaucrats in another state.

Work time has been at a premium. I’ve had precious little ability to do much blogging or other marketing work. My sales have suffered a bit as a result, although I am seeing residual effects from promotions I ran last month.

But I have carved out time to write. I make a little time five days a week (a little less last week what with packing, cleaning, and driving) to try to write one chapter. That’s averaged about 3000 words a day, which is a solid day’s work for me.

Sometimes, I’ve had to write in more than one session, because I get interrupted by moving concerns. Sometimes I couldn’t write a whole chapter, only a portion of one. But I kept making steady progress.

I’ll be writing the 43rd chapter this afternoon. I’ve revealed most of the major villain’s plan. I’ve tied up a lot of loose ends and drawn back the curtain on clues I’ve been laying for three books on what’s really happening in Alfar. It just remains for the big confrontation and conclusion.

And I’m really excited about it. This has been a difficult book to write. There was so much to do plot-wise it was difficult to see how to get from beginning to end.

But I’m almost there. And it’s good.

It amazes me I’ve been able to stay on target with all the distractions. It astounds me I can focus enough to write, especially with the stress of the last few weeks melting my brain.

But it’s also been a comfort. For a little while each day, I get to ignore the crap swirling around me with the move. I put my mind in Alfar and deal with Wolf’s and his friends’ problems instead of mine. In that way, this may have been the perfect time to be working on the first draft of a novel. As hard as writing a book-length piece of fiction is, it may actually have been easier this time, because it was an escape from the pressure of moving cross-country.

Regardless, I’ve been staying on target with my weekly word count. I’m going to finish this book on time, which will make it possible to have the rest of its development schedule stay on time.

Writing a novel requires will. It seems I have even more of that than I thought I did.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: John Phythyon, writing

Leaving Kansas

I haven’t had time to blog recently. I’ve been completely consumed with moving. If I’d been smart, I’d have pre-written several blogs and scheduled them to post while I was relocating from Kansas to Ohio, but the whole process was so overwhelming, I didn’t have time to do it, even though I thought of it several times.

I spent almost the entire week last week doing one of three things — finishing the packing, cleaning the house, and driving to Ohio. Aside from sleeping, it was all I had time for, and the sleeping part didn’t get a lot of attention.

We planned. I’d been working on this for weeks. Even then, it was such an enormous task, it nearly wasn’t completed.

So it was with some sense of relief that I packed the dog and cat into my truck, Jill had the kids in her bug, and we rolled east on I-70.

But it wasn’t until we were well into Missouri that the enormity of this change began to occur to me. I’m a fairly introspective guy, and I like to over-analyze things and draw conclusions that probably aren’t true. But I’d been so busy trying to make this happen, I hadn’t had time to think about what it means to me.

Everyone else has. The teenagers are terrified at the prospect of leaving friends behind; the pre-teen is excited about the opportunity to remake herself in a new environment; and Jill is excited for a new opportunity and saddened by the reality that she had to leave her hometown to get it.

But me? I’ve hardly had a moment to consider, and despite saying goodbye to the house as we pulled away, I never really got a chance to say goodbye to Kansas.

I came to the Sunflower State as a 23-year-old graduate student. I fell in love with Lawrence — a liberal oasis in conservative Kansas — and stayed. Even after I took a job in Madison, Wisconsin in 1995, I came back to Lawrence after only a year away to start a business with my friends.

For all practical purposes, I’ve spent my entire adult life in Kansas. A Bohemian artiste like me became a businessman there. Granted, I founded and ran a game-publishing company, but I had to learn how to run a business, and I discovered I liked it — something I never would have believed of myself before 1996. I parlayed that business into a career of writing all sorts of business documents — ad and marketing copy, business letters, grant proposals, brochures, web copy — and I realized I was good at that and liked it too. All of that experience writing commercial documents for other companies prepared me to be an independent author. You can’t just write the books as an indie. You have to manage the business side of publishing too, and my experience from 1996 to 2011 laid the foundation for me to be able to do that.

I spent eight years in the hobby games industry, writing and designing games, marketing them to consumers, and winning three awards for my work. I was elected to the board of directors of the trade association, and left my position as Vice President to take over public relations.

I committed career suicide after a hostile takeover of the board and spent two years working as a vet tech for the animal hospital that cared for my dogs.  Me — a guy who always eschewed science in school despite being the son of a college biology professor and an ER nurse — was suddenly working in medicine. It was hard but fascinating work, but it wasn’t a career path. Still, my understanding of animals and how to care for them is so much better than it was before.

I eventually got re-involved with community theater, and I won all of the best roles I’ve ever had in Kansas. I got to play Motel in Fiddler on the Roof, Lumiere in Disney’s Beauty & the Beast, Archibald Craven in The Secret Garden, Sharktooth in How I Became a Pirate, and Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar. I wrote and directed a two-act comedy that was well received. I became a teacher in youth theater programs and was beloved by my students. I parlayed all that experience into a freelance gig as the local paper’s theater critic. I hate leaving the teaching and newspaper jobs. They were really rewarding.

I found the greatest love and deepest betrayal in Kansas. I adopted a daughter in 2005. Nine years later, we still don’t have the relationship either of us wants, but we’re trying, and I love her so much it hurts. I had a woman I thought I loved try to destroy me, ruining my life for almost two years. I’m still paying for the mistake of being involved with her too long. But I also met and fell in love with Jill — the woman I didn’t know I’d been searching for my whole life. She gave me her love and two stepchildren I adore. She believes in me in a way no one else ever has. If I hadn’t been in Kansas at the right time, we likely never would have met.

And of course, I finally achieved the dream I’d been working on my entire life. I became a published author in Kansas. To date, I’ve published four novels, a novella, and three short stories. And that doesn’t count all the material I published while working in games.

I’ve experienced tragedy and triumph in Kansas. I adopted and buried three dogs. I married, divorced, and married again. I lost my daughter and got her back. I’ve gotten terrific jobs, been laid off, been rich and been poor. I’ve made friends, some of which turned on me when the chips were down, but a few of them stood by no matter what happened. For that latter group, I am truly thankful.

Kansas has been an amazing adventure. I spent half my life there. Now 46, I’m leaving it again. As I rolled east on I-70 — a trip I’ve made multiple times — it occurred to me that, this time, it was different. This time, I was only going one way. There would be no return trip. I wasn’t coming back.

That’s not entirely true, of course. Jill’s family still lives in Lawrence. We’ll visit. The children have other parents they will return to see. It’s not like I’ll never set foot in the Sunflower State again.

But it’s not my home anymore. It’s not the place where I became a real adult and lived a life anymore. Kansas is no longer my present; it’s my past.

And I’ve been so busy trying to get everything done so we could we leave, I had no chance to contemplate any of this. I didn’t get to say goodbye.

So here is my farewell to the Sunflower State. Here is my closure.

Goodbye, Kansas. I will miss your turbulent weather — the way a warm day could suddenly turn cold and the sky go from blue to grey to green with little warning. I will miss your hot summers and generally mild winters (compared to the Wisconsin of my youth). I will miss your rolling hills. (Yes, there are actually portions of Kansas that aren’t flat; I lived in one of them.)

I will miss Kansas Public Radio. KPR is a really good public radio station, and I know several of the staff and consider them friends.

I will miss the laconic speech and the charm of calling a bag a sack, a draft beer a draw, and the habit of placing the accent on the first syllable of every word. I like the sound of the Kansas accent and the regular use of the word, “y’all.”

I will not miss your politics, Kansas. They were uncomfortable when I first arrived in 1991, and they have turned decidedly intolerable and oppressive since. The anti-intellectualism and bigotry of the majority of your legislature is no longer even thinly veiled. You have made this place somewhere I don’t wish to raise children.

I also won’t miss the ghosts of the multiple betrayals I suffered. I won’t see places that remind me of terrible things that happened to me in the past 23 years. I get to make a fresh set of memories, and I’m really looking forward to that.

But I will miss my friends. I will miss being able to see them on a semi-regular basis, and I will miss performing with the ones I shared a stage with. I miss playing Magic at Hometown Games, where the competition was really tough and the other players friendly and fun.

I did love you, Kansas. I still do in a way. I’m sorry it didn’t work out between us.

In a few weeks, once I’ve got my new house, driver’s license, and car tags, I will no longer be a Kansan. I’ll officially become a Buckeye instead of a Jayhawker. But Kansas will always be a part of me.

And, yes, I’ll miss it.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Kansas, Lawrence KS, Ohio

Father’s Day Finale

Sunday is my final Father’s Day.

That may seem like a weird thing to say, but it’s effectively true.  We’re moving to Ohio next week, and that’s going to change the dynamic in our house. My daughter is moving with us for the school year, but she’ll be spending summers with her mom, meaning she’ll be in Kansas on Father’s Day every year from henceforth.

Meanwhile, my stepchildren’s father insisted they be with him on Father’s Day, so every year, they’ll also be back in Kansas on the third Sunday of June.

Thus, I’ll effectively be an empty-nester on Father’s Day from now on.

It’s hard to know how to feel about this. Father’s Day has always been a surreal experience for me. I adopted my daughter when she was six. Her first Father’s Day see took me to see Madagascar — a children’s film I enjoyed well enough but that I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing (which conjured memories of taking my own dad to see Ghostbusters in 1984).

Our relationship grew rocky over time, and we have only recently begun repairing it. Thus, Father’s Day was always forced. We both felt like something was supposed to happen when we’d get together, but neither of really knew what it was or how to do it. This year, despite things having improved somewhat, she’s angry with me for moving her to Ohio and insists she isn’t going. So we’re very likely to repeat our annual dance of awkwardly going through the motions, of trying to know what you’re supposed to do on Father’s Day.

Things have been just as uncomfortable with the stepchildren. In their case, it’s out of a sense of loyalty. They already had a dad before I came along. So even though I am the male they live with 12 days out of every 14 (and soon more), the one who parents them, takes an interest in what they like, and helps them grow into the adults they want to be, they don’t wish me a happy Father’s Day. They don’t buy me a card or give me a present.

And I understand. They don’t want to be disloyal to their father, the man my stepson once made certain I understood was his “real dad.”

So it’s not like Father’s Day has really been all that great for me. You see all the ads for how you want to show your appreciation for everything Dad is and does, but I’ve never had a Father’s Day that went anything like that.

Perhaps then, it’ll be a relief when there are no more Father’s Days. I won’t have to smile and accept and think about everyone else’s feelings while keeping a firm lock on my own. Maybe this year’s “grand” finale will be a good thing.

Being a parent is a largely thankless job. You have to take your joy, your rewards, your love from your children at an angle. They don’t straight up thank you for everything you do for them. Maybe if they get to be graduation speaker, they’ll thank you publicly then, although they’re just as likely to thank that important teacher who inspired them. Or if they win an Oscar they might include you in the thanks with their manager and the other people who worked on the movie. Or if they score a touchdown in a big game, they’ll say, “Hi, Mom!” to the camera.

And that’s okay. It is the way of things. I only ever rarely expressed any direct gratitude to my own parents.

But I feel a certain emptiness knowing one of the days artificially set aside for some acknowledgement, however subtle, will be gone after Sunday. Maybe that makes me self-centered.

I hope it only means I’m human.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Father's Day

Writing Mode Means Sleepless Nights

I’m not sleeping well these days.

It’s not stress, although there’s plenty of that what with trying to move and all. It’s not really pain, although packing, cleaning, and toting heavy stuff from here to there does tend to make my sciatica flare.

No, the real issue is I’m writing a book.

I know. I’m a writer. That’s what I always do, right?

Well, not exactly. I spend a ton of time rewriting. My novels go through five drafts minimum before they are published, so at least 80% of the project is editing, making notes, rewriting, proofing, etc.

And since I’m an indie author, I also have to do all my own marketing. Of course, if I were trad-published I’d pretty much have to do that anyway, since only bestselling authors — the ones who don’t need it — get any real marketing support.

No, the actual writing part of the book takes a surprisingly small percentage of time in the writing life.

But I’m writing one right now. I’m 32 chapters into the first draft of Ghost of a Chance, the next Wolf Dasher novel. I’ve answered all the questions I left hanging at the end of Roses Are White. (You have read, Roses Are White, right? If not, what are you waiting for? It’s only $2.99. Get it here!) I’ve raised a whole bunch of new questions in this plot, and I am starting to answer those. I’ve nearly finished the second act and am rounding into the third. (Somewhat unintentionally, I write in a three-act structure.) I am having a ball!

And that’s why I’m not sleeping very well. When I hit this stage in the first draft, the plot of the novel and the writing of the words consumes me. I think about it all the time. When I’m doing laundry, I’m considering the next plot twist. When I’m mowing the lawn, I’m pre-writing clever phrases in my head. When I’m fixing dinner, I’m considering solutions to the current problem the protagonist is facing.

And when I lie down at night, my brain starts thinking about what I’m going to write tomorrow. That makes restful sleep hard to come by.

I have trouble starting a book. Getting into those first few chapters is hard. I think it’s because my writing muscle is out of shape. It hasn’t been exercising consistently, so the hard work of making the words come out of my head is tougher. It’s like going back to the gym after you’ve been away for awhile. Those lifts feel a lot heavier.

But somewhere along the way, I hit a groove. The fat burns away and the solid muscle can do more work.

Then I can’t wait to write. I make sure I’ve got my time marked out, and I’ll sacrifice other chores to make sure I get down the words I want each day. Sometimes, I’ll even write two chapters a day instead of one.

That’s when I stop sleeping well. That’s when I have to find some way to empty my brain before bedtime, so I have a chance to make it through the night without tossing and turning. (Case in point, I’m writing this blog late at night before bed.)

There’s a lot of hazards they don’t tell you about when you embark on the writing life. Fortunately, some of them — like this one — are fun.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: Ghost of a Chance, John Phythyon, Roses Are White, Wolf Dasher, writing

Are We There Yet?

“Are we there yet?”

So goes the classic line from the backseat on the family road trip. Bored children, who haven’t yet learned that “half the fun is getting there,” drive their parents insane by asking again and again a question to which they already know the answer — “No. We’re not there yet.”

I feel like that kid in the backseat. I want to be in Ohio. Yesterday. This dragging things out over days, weeks, months, is killing me.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Jill took the job in March and telecommuted so the kids could finish the school year in Kansas.

But school’s over, and we’re still here. I’m splitting my time between trying to work and packing. I only today was able to schedule with the moving company. We have a house, but we haven’t closed on it yet. There’s a hundred things to do, and I just want to be done with them.

Are we there yet?

This sign will be a sight for sore eyes, when I see it again.

No. Not yet. By early next week we should have most of the packing done. It’ll become harder and harder to live here, because more and more of our stuff will be in boxes.

Then we’ll largely be marking time. We’ll be waiting for the move to happen.

There will be the tearful goodbyes, as Jill leaves her hometown, as I leave the place I’ve spent nearly my entire adult life, as the kids worry they’ll never see their friends again and fear they won’t make new ones.

And then there’s that long, 12-hour-or-so drive. Jill will have the kids, trying not to be driven crazy by the fighting that is sure to happen. I’ll have the pets, trying not to be driven crazy by the whining and meowing that is sure to happen. We’re getting drugs for the pets. I think it’s illegal to sedate the kids.

Of course, once we get there, we can’t get into the house right away. We have to wait for it to close. So our things will be in storage while we stay with Jill’s new best friend. We’ll have to wait to get our stuff. The move will go on longer.

So seriously, can we be there now? Can it just be over? Can we stop torturing ourselves and dragging things out?

I’ve been waiting to return to Ohio for about 44 years. I suppose I can wait three weeks longer.

But I really want to be there now. So I’m sure you understand my question:

Are we there yet?

Filed under: Uncategorized

Prices Reduced for Wolf Dasher Thrillers

One of the good things about being an indie author is the ability to adjust to the market as things are happening. See a trend? You can capitalize on it quickly.

Sadly, one of the trends I’ve noticed recently is price resistance from consumers. Last year, the prices of indie books had been moving upwards, and I set my novels at $4.99 to cash in.

Unfortunately, the reverse seems to be true now. Book buyers on Amazon are less likely to buy if the price slips much above $2.99.

The good news for me is that, since I have total price control over my books (something I wouldn’t have at a trad-pub house), I can adjust.

I am therefore reducing the price of the entire Wolf Dasher line to $2.99. You can now enjoy all of Wolf’s adventures for less than three bucks apiece. Pretty cool, eh?

So what are you waiting for? Pick up an entertaining, action-adventure yarn for your summer reading. They’re even more affordable than they used to be.

Click here to purchase Wolf’s first adventure, State of Grace from Amazon.com.

Wolf’s second thriller, Red Dragon Five, is available by clicking here.

Click this link to get Wolf’s third adventure, Roses Are White.

Want to know more about the Wolf Dasher series? Click here.

Filed under: e-Publishing, Red Dragon Five, Roses Are White, State of Grace Tagged: John Phythyon, Red Dragon Five, Roses Are White, State of Grace, Wolf Dasher

“Sleeping Beauty” Free to Celebrate Release of MALEFICENT

Fairy tales continue to get the reboot treatment, this time with Disney’s Maleficent. The film reimagines Disney’s own interpretation of “Sleeping Beauty” from the villain’s point of view, with Angelina Jolie in the titular role.

Maleficent has always been my favorite Disney villain. What’s not to like about a woman with magical powers, who can turn herself into a giant, fire-breathing dragon? Okay, there’s whole evil part, but still. Maleficent (Dig that name!) is pretty cool.

“Sleeping Beauty” is free this weekend to celebrate the release of Disney’s MALEFICENT!

So I’m celebrating the release of the film with a little giveaway. As you may know, I too have a reimagining of “Sleeping Beauty.” In my modern take on the classic story, our heroine is put into a magical coma not by a jealous witch but her own father. He fears her budding sexuality and seeks to “protect” her from 14-year-old boys with lust on their minds.

When the story opens, it’s two years later. Beth has been in a coma for two years now and only Carl still comes to visit her. Beth’s mother thinks he may be able to break the spell. But she’ll have to convince him first. And Beth’s father has other ideas.

“Sleeping Beauty: A Modern Fairy Tale” is an 8000-word short story, and you can get it free for your Kindle Friday through Sunday. It’s also got an excerpt from my novella, Beauty & the Beast: A Modern Fairy Tale, in the back matter. So you can go see Maleficent and then still have lots of reimagined fairy tale goodness to read afterwards! Click on the link below to download the short story for free!

Click here to download “Sleeping Beauty: A Modern Fairy Tale” free from Amazon.com!

Filed under: Sleeping Beauty Tagged: free, John Phythyon, Maleficent, Sleeping Beauty