The Fair Automaton (Cyber ... Wednesday?)

Have to say I like the sound of Cyber Wednesday.  Sounds like a character.  Hmmm...

A couple of days late, I know, but arguably better late than never, I've finished the files and am releasing The Fair Automaton as a short story into the world.

Until Sunday, that is.

Yep, it's a Cyber Week(ish) Freebie in honour of the UK's busiest shopping day -- which I missed, and did no online shopping on anyway -- mostly because it has a cool sci-fi sounding name that's always amused me.

You might remember this story as being painstakingly handwritten for National Stationery Week -- or you may not, because over 10 pages of my handwriting is enough to make anyone run for the hills.

It's been repackaged as a digital short story in a variety of formats, and these files will be available until Sunday, wherein I'll take them down again and whatever happens to them in the future is in the lap of the gods.  Or, indeed, myself, when I eventually get enough stories written to release as a collection.  But still.  Until Sunday.

Imagine it being said in a booming voice.

The Fair Automaton

The day the travelling fair rolls into town, North is determined to show his boyfriend Seith all he loves about it.  But while Seith's reaction isn't what North hoped for, he finds something amazing to attract him instead: a speaking, smiling mechanical man — an automaton.

Despite Seith's disdain, North can't help returning time and again to discover more of the machine's personality — and uncover more of its secrets.  It's not long before he finds himself becoming fond of it, but it's all perfectly harmless, right?

Until the machine breaks down, and North is blamed for it.  Is discovery of the machine's ultimate secret worth the cost of the personality North loves?

This freebie is no longer available.

Post-NaNo 2014: Now What? (Give Me Something To Do)

The thing with finishing NaNoWriMo is that there's weird sense of nothingness.  I know my story isn't finished but, for once this month (...not counting the start of it...) I'd like a little bit of a break.  The oddest thing, though, is that although every year I promise I'll finish my story afterwards and never do, this year I think I really might.  I'd like to know what actually happens, for a start, and in this case I'm only finding that out when I write.

It's been an up-and-down month, as I think my progress chart makes abundantly clear:

I didn't have a great start.  I actually thought I'd fail to finish for the first time in eleven years.  And then seeing some of the incredible word counts coming from some of the habitual overachievers kicked me up the arse -- though the last day was nuts because I'd really wanted to at least break 100k.  I finished up by writing 10,018 words yesterday to manage it.

My final total is 101,606 words (it seemed a nice round place to stop) and I'm now about 2/3 of the way through the story.  It needs heavy editing, I rambled a lot (you'd never guess, right?) and there are a lot of sex scenes in it because I worked on the theory that if I got bored or felt like I was slowing, then it was probably time to write one, but it's been fun so far.

You can probably figure out the way it's going from this Wordle image...

But like I said, I hit December 1 and this weird sense of inertia slips over me.  I want to write but I'm mentally exhausted -- and I've got Sunset Overdrive and Dragon Age: Inquisition waiting for me -- and, to make it all worse, it's Cyber Monday today.

Last year I prepped Three Graces as an ebook (with a downright awful first cover) and did a (very) limited release for Cyber Monday.  I think it got something like 15 downloads.  This year I'd wanted to do something else but since NaNo has been eating my brain so very badly I completely lost track of time until I started getting emails about Black Friday.  So I find myself on Cyber Monday with a cover for The Fair Automaton and a mostly-completed ebook, but here's the thing...

I don't like releasing short stories as single ebooks.  I mean, it's 5,000 words.  That's kinda small -- not that it felt it when I had to handwrite the damn thing.  I'd prefer to release at least three in a book at once, preferably five, and am only slightly hindered by the fact I have two with a third sitting in my head going "look at meeeeee" very quietly.  So I have nothing.  I am empty-handed on this most scifi-sounding of shopping 'holidays'.

So, instead, if you comment with two names and a situation, or a location, or anything you'd like a short story or flash-fic about, I'll write it for you.

It's not much, I know; I'm expecting a resounding silence, but I'd like to try anyway.  Smut, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, whatever, I'll give it a go.