Additions to my list of free PDFs…
Some of you might watch my list of free PDF downloads (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website) for additions and revisions. I don’t know how many of you take advantage of the material listed there, but there are no gimmicks, no obligations, just free gifts for my readers.
In fact, let me emphasize “free”: You pay nothing for each PDF except the few seconds it takes you to make a few clicks. However, if you want to treat these files as open-source software (that’s what they are essentially), you might feel compelled to pay me something. Don’t do it. I’d much rather you donate to your favorite charity. Skip the PACs, pols, and the NRA please, and do something good with your money. Give something to your local community food kitchen, Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and so forth (although we often treat human beings worse than other fauna and flora on Earth, the last two are favorites of mine).
So what’s new in the list? Let me first mention two complete novels, a first because before I limited it to short fiction. Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, books six and seven in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, await you. Yes, they are full novels! I hope you enjoy them.
There’s some new short fiction too. With Sleuthing, British-Style, Volume Three, I leave DI Patty and DS Logan, the protagonists from the first two volumes (the first is available wherever quality ebooks are sold while the second is also a free PDF download) to offer you a potpourri of eight novellas, a virtual tour, if you will, of policing throughout the UK (with a hint of the coming visit to Ireland in Intolerance). While some of these stories have been serialized in my blog (see the “Friday Fiction” archive), I collect them here together with a few new ones for your enjoyment.
Finally, and mostly for authors but also for readers curious about this crazy publishing business, I offer Revision 9 of my little course “Writing Fiction,” where I’ve continued to organize my thoughts on writing, preparation, and marketing fiction that I’ve developed since I started to think about “putting my fiction out there” as far back as 2001. Authors might find this material useful and often acerbic and brutally honest.
Of course, there are other free PDF downloads in that list you might have missed. Please peruse it and download at will.
And now a few technical comments: You can read PDFs on most any device. For example, they come to my Kindle as a document that I can read just like any .mobi file. (For some reason, my newest Kindle corrupts some of the files, taking off the “Sample” watermark and adding bold face in random places. Another slap in the face from Amazon? How I hate them! I’ve checked every download with my laptop, and they’re all okay.) I’m sure you can do the same even with your smart phone, but I don’t have one (and never will!), so I can’t test that. (Please let me know if you try that. Yes, people, especially commuters using public transportation, read on their smart phones as they travel to work. Don’t do it by putting your Tesla on autopilot, though!)
For these PDFs, you won’t get fancy covers, if any at all, and you won’t be underlining or have access to a dictionary (if your ereader has those features). I took notes for revising my little course “Writing Fiction” the old-fashioned way, on a legal pad, as I perused Revision 8. (I believe Revision 9 is much improved albeit more brutally honest.)
So…peruse the list and do your downloads!
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Comments are always welcome! (Please follow the rules on my “Join the Conversation” web page.)
Death on the Danube. Take a tour down the Danube with Esther Brookstone and new hubby Bastiann van Coevorden. This novel, Book Three in the series, is a tour de force in many ways, not just for the Danube tour. A strange passenger on their riverboat cruise is murdered, and Interpol agent Bastiann takes charge of the murder investigation. A twenty-first version of Christie’s Death on the Nile, this mystery/thriller has a lot more relation to current events and modern assassins in today’s world than the genre-setting Dame Agatha could ever have imagined. The ebook version is available wherever quality ebooks are sold, and the print version wherever you might find it (Amazon, B&N, or your local bookstore by request).
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
