And Other Stories
So this is my other book: Don't Shoot Me In The Ass and Other Stories. (You might say it's my third book, but I actually wrote it in between the other two.) For a variety of reasons, it's unlikely ever to see the inside of a cover. For a different variety of reasons, I don't know that I'd care for it to. Probably because it hasn't gone through the publishing mill, it's really the only one I still like or can look at. And, actually, I've always thought it's, as the hip-hop kids say, some of my best shiznit.
There's action, suspense, high adventure, farce, cyber-thrills – all the fun stuff you virtually never find in short stories, which are unvaryingly "literary" in style. (Literary fiction being best defined as that in which nothing happens.) There's a lot of stuff here that will be familiar to readers of the other books: over-the-top action set-pieces with more guns than punctuation; examination of the effects of science and technology on our understanding of the perennial problems of philosophy and religion – especially the strange problem of being an acutely sensitive hairless hominid stuck on a wet rock hurtling through an empty cosmos; the psychological paradoxes of powerful-but-still-rather-on-edge women who are very handy with computers, guns, or both; etc. There are also a few other themes that interest me, but that haven't shown up elsewhere: the quiet capitulation of solitary young men getting a long way off from their last good relationship; unredeemed, unbearable tragedy – both personal and social, actual and imminent; and the meaning of our real and implied commitments to other people, especially when things begin to fall apart.
So, in the spirit of Cory Doctorow – who gives away all of his books electronically, at the same time they are published and sold on paper – I figured I'd throw this one out there. Here it is, the whole book, all 181 pages, all ten stories, as a PDF you can view, download, dump on your iThing, print – or even share around. Knock yourself out.
As an added amusement, I'm going to keep track of how many times this is downloaded. The running count will display here in real time.
downloads
as of
Finally, also just for grins: if you like the book and would like voluntarily to pay for it, and keep the author out of useful work for a bit longer, you can do so here. (Securely, through PayPal, with nothing but a valid credit card required.) Manufacturer's suggested retail price is US$1.00 – which is about what I actually get on the sale of a real physical paper book – but you can change the amount in the box there to whatever you like.
