A sort-of-short story continued from yesterday…

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The Freebie (continued)

After a little bit of additional research Callie’s innate suspicions were quieted down to manageable levels. She visited a number of “respectable” websites – publishing houses, literary agents, and authors – all of which talked about offering free books in exchange for reviews. The sites were so matter-of-fact about this process that Callie was quickly convinced that it must be legitimate. Of course, the speed of her acquiescence might have had the tiniest bit to do with her eagerness to acquire a library of her very own. And if it did, she thought, so what? What sort of bad things could possibly come from free books?

She’d laugh about it now if she could; if she wasn’t too scared to even think too loudly she’d laugh long and hard at how she had walked right into this one. Callie didn’t read a lot of horror – she had always found the genre a little trite for her tastes, relying as often as it did on surprisingly predictable (at least in the aftermath) foreshadowing. She tended to prefer heartier and more unusual literary fare. But she had read enough of these kinds of books to recognize the type – especially stuck inside it like she was. It was a disgrace, really. I mean, honestly, she thought, when had she become such a cliché? If her life were a story, she’d be the literary equivalent of the big-boobed blonde walking into the dark basement by herself, whistling loudly into the dark the entire time, vacantly calling out: “Is anyone there?” How had she not been able to see what was coming – how had she, who read all the time, not picked up on this particularly hackneyed plot line? Talk about adding insult to injury…
Continue reading The Freebie (Fiction) – Part Two, So Far

Let’s try this again… (teehee) (For an explanation of that, see yesterday. Incidentally, I’m still not finished writing this one, so don’t know how many parts you’ll get.

I promised my soon-to-be mother-in-law that I’d get some more of my fiction on here one of these days, so here goes – it’s a rather darkish tale about the price of free books, with no bearing on any real event I’m aware of, thank goodness… (teehee) Enjoy!

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The Freebie

She was dying to finish the book. Literally.

How on earth had she ended up here, like this, crouched in a corner in her own living room, reading her death in every turn of the page? It was positively ridiculous, so contrived, there’s no way anyone would really write this garbage – at least not anyone she reads. She hates when a book is ridiculous and contrived. She has, in fact, been thinking about developing a special rating just for those books – the ones that expect the reader to suspend disbelief so far beyond the bounds of believability or to float in the outer fringes of the mental ether. They would get rated in raspberries, flashing emoticons that stick out their tongues and waggle their fingers in their ears and make goofy blurping sounds. If she were reading this story instead of living it, she would have to give the book a full five out of five raspberries, it was that over-the-top. Unfortunately, she had a feeling there wouldn’t be any review of this one.

Continue reading The Freebie (Fiction) – Part One of I Don’t Know How Many