Tuesday Frrebies

Even more good free reading than usual. There's new fiction at several great sites including the always awesome Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, etc. And there's some quite good audio fiction too!  And Don;t miss
Regan Wulfrom's Free Fiction links at SF Signal (And be sure to say hi to poor Regan )

[art for Kelly Link's "Catskin" linked below]




Fiction
• At AE: "Roadkill Joe" by Milo James Fowler. Scuience Fiction.
      "Roadkill Joe is a very old soul — Can’t die cuz he’s a freak!"

• At Author's Site: "Boz" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Science Fiction.
     "Boz got his job on the colony ship The Beautiful Dreamer because he’s a competent introvert. He enjoys the fact that he’s spending years completely alone, monitoring the passengers passing the time in cold sleep. So when he wakes up one morning to Christmas carols, he gets scared. Very scared."

• At The Colored Lens: "The Wreck of the Emerald Sky – Part 2" by Sean Monaghan. Speculative Fiction.
      "He caught a loop and slipped up against the wall. It was a low thrust, perhaps five percent of a standard gee. Maneuvering thrusters."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "He Could Be Ambrose Bierce" by Shaenon Kelty Garrity.
     "On August 6, 1930," said Mona, "Justice Joseph Crater stepped into a taxi in New York City and was never seen again."

• At Interstellar Fiction: "Shuffle Town" by T. D. Edge. Science Fiction.
      "Rain lent some romance to the light blazing from the psycho-change tower above Reception but her heart trembled like a hamster away from its cage, even though she’d expected that."

• At Lightspeed: "Catskin" by Kelly Link. Fantasy.
      "Cats went in and out of the witch’s house all day long. The windows stayed open, and the doors, and there were other doors, cat-sized and private, in the walls and up in the attic. The cats were large and sleek and silent. No one knew their names, or even if they had names, except for the witch."

•  At Lightspeed: "Dreams in Dust" by D. Thomas Minton. Science Fiction.
     "The arrival of the dust-covered girl caught Keraf by surprise. The girl’s slender face, sun-beaten to a deep brown, blended seamlessly into the cloth wrapped around her head. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, but she wielded her rifle with ease."

• At Strange Horizons: "Wing" by Amal El-Mohtar. Speculative Fiction.
       "She reads—not the book around her neck, which is small, only as long and as wide as her thumb, black cord threaded through a sewn leather spine, knotted shut."

• At Weird Fiction Review: "Selections from Lives of Notorious Cooks" by Brendan Connell.
     "and then she became pregnant and gave birth to a child, but, being frightened of her father’s reaction to such an occurrence, left it in a field where it was eaten by dogs and so Apollo became angry and sent a demon dog called Poine to Argos."

• Now Posted: Yellow Mama #35. Horror. Noir.

• "Baby Boy" by AJ Hayes.
• "Like a Boss" by Michelle Ann King 
• "Santa's Crack" by Richard Godwin
• "The Flag" by Diana Ferraro 
• "Modraniht:A Fairy Tale" by Mike Kerins 
• "Holly Jolly" by Christopher Grant
• "Trimming the Tree" by Kenneth James Crist 
• "A Little Scotch Will Help" by D. S. Jones
• "The Naughty List" by Earl & Paul Dick 
• "As Filthy as the Night Is Long" by Basil Rosa 
• "Small Bites" by Chris Rhatigan 
• "On the Interstate" by Kip Hanson 
• "Ten Months" by Mark Hendry 
• "Out of Juice" by Cindy Rosmus 
• "The Night's Rainbow" by Ali Znaidi 
• "The Hounds Within My Property" & "Lonely" by ayaz daryl nielsen 
• "Apricots, Figs & In This Room" by Lyn Lifshin 
• "Sandy & Winnie" by Meg Baird
• "Facts about Bones & More than Oxygen" by Christopher Hivner 
• "Rare Days & Teardrop" by Marc Carver.

Flash Fiction

• At Flashes in the Dark: "Ovidia’s Metamorphosis" by Patricia Court. Horror.
• At Strange Horizons: "End Times" by Sarah Terry. Speculative Poetry.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Tariff" by Jae Miles. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Lightspeed: "Dreams in Dust" by D. Thomas Minton. Science Fiction.
      Described above.

• At 19 Nocturne Boulevard: "Warp'd Stories #3, Top Story, Chapter 4" by Julie Hoverson.
       "Sometimes a wing man is a bad thing. And sometimes inviting a new friend up for food just means dinner."

• At Protecting Project Pulp: “The Tree of Life” Part 2 of 2. by C. L. Moore. Science Fiction.
      "A queer, penetrating light shining upon his closed eyes roused Smith by degrees into wakefulness again. He lifted heavy lids and stared upward into the unwinking eye of Mars’ racing nearer moon. He lay there blinking dazedly for a while before enough of memory returned to rouse him. Then he sat up painfully, for every fiber of him ached, and stared round on a scene of the wildest destruction."

• At Toasted Cake: "Anything Chocolate" by Caren Gussoff.
     "No description found"

Other Genres

• Audio Fiction at Bound Off: "Our Trip to the Moon" by Bob Thurber and "Driving Lesson" by Natasha Fish.
• Audio Fiction at Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine:  "A Good Man of Business" by David Ingram. Mystery.
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "Wasteland Gallery" by Chris Schramm. Literary.

Monday Free Fiction

It's Monday, but it's not all bad. There are a few cool freebies today, including today's highlighted story "Swans" (It's by Kelly Link and it's at Fantasy Magazine. Enough said."









@Fantasy Magazine: "Swans" by Kelly Link.

"My name is Emma Bear, and I am eleven years old. I live on Black Ankle Road beside the Licking River. I live in a palace. My father is a king. I have a fairy godfather."

@Free eBooks Daily [All DRM]:

"The Watchers From Within Moments, Revealed" by Mark Paul Jacobs. Horror.
"Turing Evolved" by David Kitson. Science Fiction.
"Astra: Synchronicity" by Lisa Eskra. Science Fiction.
"Martian Invaders Meet Mom" by Rebecca Lickiss. YA/ Science Fiction.

Flash Fiction
@Brain Harvest: "Terahertz" by Simon Kewin. Speculative Fiction.
@Daily Science Fiction: "Deathbed" by Caroline M Yoachim.
@Every Day Fiction: "The Sounds in the Woods" by Jonathan Ruland. Horror.
@Flashes in the Dark: "Monsters" by Anthony Conium. Horror.
@Flashes in the Dark: "Shadows" by Neil Leckman. Horror.
@Flashes in the Dark: "The Fire Baby" By Michael Albani. Horror.
@Quantum Muse: "You and We" by Larry Hodges.
@365 tomorrows: "I Want To Go" by Timothy Marshal-Nichols. Science Fiction.
@365 tomorrows: "The County Agents" by Eric L. Sofer. Science Fiction.
@365 tomorrows: Your Child in Space by Alia Gee. Science Fiction.


Reviewed Free SF
@BestScienceFictionStories.com: "Scales" by Alastair Reynolds (2009).
@BestScienceFictionStories.com: "Flying in the Face of God" by Nina Allan.
@Variety SF: "A Woman's Place" by Mark Clifton (1955).
@Variety SF: "Eight Miles" by Sean McMullen (2010).

Serial Audio Fiction
@Author's Site: "The Starter (episode #24)" by Scott Sigler.
@Triplanetary: "Superman: The Radar Rocket (parts 14-20)" (1946)


Non-Fiction Podcasts
@SFFaudio: Podcast #118 "Scott, Jesse and Tamahome talk about Philip K. Dick’s wonderful novelette 'Upon The Dull Earth"
@SF Signal: Podcast (Episode 068) "ReaderCon Recap"
@Comics Podcsat Network: Deconstructing Comics #287 "Jeff Parker interview"
@Comics Podcsat Network: Weekly Comics Spotlight #205: 2011-07-13
@Roving Band of Misfits: Level Up — Episode #15 "Deathmatch, Staff of Ruin, and Worldbreakers" [via RPG Bloggers]

Fantastic Free Fiction

Some great free fiction today, including new fiction by some very big name writers, as well as classics and more. Many goodies for your eReader - even if your eReader is your computer.

An early heads up. Likely starting Monday or Tuesday, QuasarDragon will be adopting a much more streamlined look for the freebies posts. The amount of time spent on thumbnails and descriptions is causing me to fall behind in categories that deserve more attention.

Illustration from "The Dala Horse" below.








@Tor.com: "The Dala Horse" by Michael Swanwick. Fantasy.

"Long after the wars, there are things abroad in the world—things more than human. And they have scores to settle with one another"

@Tor.com: "Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes" by Michael Bishop.

"Dai had always wanted his own house, perhaps one that he built himself from the ground up—but not necessarily. After all, he’d built many structures in the past, either storage sheds or warehouses, each with its own purposes and symmetries, its own architectural eloquences and enduring specific satisfactions."

@Subterranean Press: "Valley of the Girls" by Kelly Link. Fantasy.

"[Hero], of course, knew something was up. Twins always know. Maybe she saw the way I watched her Face when there was an event and we all had to do the public thing."

@L5R: "Insurgency" by Shawn Carman. Fantasy.

The blindfold covering his eyes was completely saturated with seawater, and his clothes hung heavily on his frame, dripping with the essence of the ocean itself. The wind tore at his hair and threatened to rip his blindfold off, but he had wrapped it far too tightly for that. “Komori!” he roared above the sound of the sea and the thrashing of a huge, violent beast. He could feel its flesh rolling and pitching beneath his feet and hands. “Komori!”

Free Kindle Book @Pixel of Ink: "Right Ascension" by David Derrico. [via SF Signal]

"Set in the year 3040, Right Ascension explores mankind’s place in the Universe, how we ascended to that lofty position, and the horrifying price of that ascension."

Serial Fiction
@More Red Ink: "Kin (part 1 and Part 2)" by Bruce McAllister, from the February 2006 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction. [via SF Signal]

"The alien and the boy, who was twelve, sat in the windowless room high above the city that afternoon. The boy talked and the alien listened."

@More Red Ink: "Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song" by Ernest Hogan (Part 1 of 3)

"Like a miniature Jupiter gone insane, the paint-blob hangs in the middle of the room—a Jupiter whose tides and weather and powerful gravity snapped on the strain of the secret of its monstrous microscopic inhabitants"

Classic Science Fiction & Ghost Stories
@Internet Archive: "The Retreat to Mars" by Cecil B. White, from the August 1927 issue of Amazing Stories.

"An archaeologist discovers documents and artifacts from an advanced but deceased Martian civilization buried in the dark of Africa."

@Gutenberg:The Best Psychic Stories edited by Joseph Lewis French (1920).

Featuring stories by Jack London, Algernon Blackwood, Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce and others.

@Gutenberg: "The Scapegoat" by Richard Maples, from Galaxy Science Fiction June 1956.

"Who would not have pity for a poor, helpless victim? Nobody —except another poor victim!"

@Munseys and Gutenberg: "The Huddlers" by William Campbell Gault, from If Worlds of Science Fiction May 1953.

"He was a reporter from Venus with an assignment on Earth. He got his story but, against orders, he fell in love—and therein lies this story."

@Munseys and Gutenberg: "The Victor" by Bryce Walton, from If Worlds of Science Fiction March 1953.

"Under the new system of the Managerials, the fight was not for life but for death! And great was the ingenuity of—The Victor."

Reviewed Free Fiction
@BestScienceFictionStories.com: "Mouja" by Matt London. Fantasy / Horror.

"From the window of his guard hut, Takashi Shimada watched the trees. Three of the mouja lurked at the edge of the forest on the far side of the rice paddies. Takashi could just make out their shapes through the thick misty rain that made the flooded paddies seem to boil. [. . .] It did not matter if they traveled one mile per day or a hundred. The dead were coming, and they carried with them a hunger for human flesh."