Got talking to a work buddy yesterday afternoon about publicity, Facebook and Twitter. He suggested giving a freebie eBook away as a kind of loss leader. Just to “Get the conversation going” as he put it. As I’m working evening shifts all this week, I’m using my day times revising some of my back catalogue of short stories ready for free release via Smashwords. Smashwords seem to have the widest distribution for various eBook formats, rather taking the pain out of providing separate editions for one group of platforms.

I think a good chunky read can be boilerplated together from a mix of sci-fi and supernatural stuff that doesn’t really fit in with my currently themed body of work. On the other hand, it’s amazing what you find when you start digging on your hard drive. Found a couple of short, thousand word pieces that fit in beautifully with the narrative for ‘A falling of Angels’, the next in the Cerberus series. Another few story fragments that can be hammered into fully fledged, and quite satisfying prose with a minimum of effort. There are a few that rage, a few that weep, and a couple with built in quirky smiles, like ‘Polish Ted’. Many of them set in an England I am all too familiar with. Although a few years ago I did rewrite a version of ‘Polish Ted’ for a US setting under the title ‘Cold Warrior’, and as a story it still worked beautifully. I might even bolt that one in as a ‘contrast and compare’ exercise. Just run the stories one after the other. See what the feedback is like. It’s as easy a way to put a 100,000 word collection together in a relatively short period of time.

Plenty of entertainment. For free. Give me a month or less.