MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Free (Smashwords) A Feral Darkness by Doranna Durgin [Celtic Fantasy w/Romance] + KDP

ATDrake · 01-24-2012, 11:44 PM

The KDP Select exclusive-or-else slushpile gets a late not-so-much-start-as-finish today, since I wasn't able to use my break time to post earlier as I'd planned to.

There is, however, some rather nice sf/fantasy offerings and mystery/thriller repubs and established author self-pubs, and the horror fans should be happy again, as it seems that more writers with at least a few published short stories under their belts have come out of the woodwork to offer free stuff.

I apologize in advance if you are picking this up past midnight and whatever you wanted has expired, although a decent number of the authors I recognize are ones that have done multi-day freebies. And I expect the ones who haven't will probably repeat at some point as they realize "hey, I haven't used up all 5 of my free days that get in exchange for renting out my soul being locked into one store for 90 days!"

Anyway, a minor change in format in the posting, as I thought I'd start with a medium-significant backlist fantasy work which should still be free for a couple more days, and to everyone, not just those fortunate enough to live in areas where Amazon doesn't charge them an extra $2 even for the $0.00 books even if they never use any 3G which may or may not have come with any Kindle they might actually own (i.e., India, as of late last year, according to an unfortunate poster in the Amazon forum who found that the PG-cribbed free classics were not-so-free for him).

This popped up late yesterday, but I thought I'd re-feature it for the benefit of those who'd be interested but would never normally look inside a Kindle-marked thread on the assumption that the stuff inside wouldn't apply to them.

A Feral Darkness by Doranna Durgin, is her backlist self-pub re-pub of a Celtic contemporary fantasy which she says borders on paranormal romance, originally published by Baen Books in 2001.

This has a mildly interesting history, as it actually was available as an e-book directly from Baen for over a decade as part of their Webscriptions, but was yanked from their store late last year by the author, leaving a nasty gap in that Webscription bundle month, which did not have its price adjusted to compensate, along with all her other books, with similar outcomes for their corresponding Webscription months.

Oh well, I guess I'm willing to give Baen a few extra bucks here and there.

Anyway, although the author seems to have set the new regular prices of her old e-books slightly above what Baen used to charge in the non-bundled version, she has generously made this one free to all via Smashwords, for a limited time, and she does do sporadic sales where she drops the price of her backlist to 99 cents, as well as selling novellas and tie-in short stories for that price.

And you can probably find it in a couple of other Smashwords-price-matching outlets, but not necessarily free in all regions. It's available to Canadians at Amazon, but still full price at Amazon UK, for example.

This, incidentally, is why I always link to a Smashwords version of a freebie if possible (notwithstanding the extra $2 surcharge for the disadvantageously located mentioned above; back when Canada still had the extra $2 charge on the free books, I had to think long and hard about whether that "free" book was worth the "shipping and handling". Actually, I tell a lie, because my immediate reaction was always: yeah, no. Especially when Sony or Kobo also had that title available to me without the extra charge and in a better format to boot, especially when it came to the Topaz titles.)

Long story short (too late!): free to all without DRM and in the format of your choice over @ Smashwords for who knows how long, so grab it if you want it.

Description
As a child, dog-loving Brenna Fallon naívely invokes an ancient Celtic deity to save her beloved hound--and inadvertently anchors the new-found power at a spring on her family's farm.

She doesn't know she's also left an opening for a far more malevolent force.

Years later, thanks to the actions of several angry young men, Brenna discovers the terrible potential of that gateway. With a devastating plague unfolding abruptly around her, she must depend on her wits, a stranger she doesn't trust, and a mysterious stray dog who becomes more than just a faithful companion as she struggles to drive back the threat of a modern Black Death.

Welded by a desperate sacrifice, woman, man, and dog face the feral darkness together.

The other stuff I went through this morning, plus a few later additions. It all still seems to be free, but caveat 1-clicker and check to make sure, because most of these are KDP with the deceptive Prime Lending pricing once the freebie expires, though I've found a few that are also openly Smashwords-freebied.

Previously-featured Nebula, Spectrum, and James Tiptree Jr. award-nominee M.C.A. Hogarth offers about a half-dozen shorter works free to all via Smashwords.

Previously-featured Australian sf/fantasy writer and fellow MR member author Patty Jansen returns with a short-novel length YA-looking sf tale with alien terrorists in it: The Far Horizon She also offers a selection of short stories free to all via Smashwords, including her previously-featured (but then-unfree-at-Smashwords) collection Out of Here.

Dave Wolverton, whom you may know from his Star Wars tie-in novels and other works (ISFDB entry), offers a short story which he says was a winner of that L. Ron Hubbard memorial Writers of the Future award, written as Dave Farland, and was the basis of the novel of the same name: On My Way to Paradise - Short Story

Previously featured fellow MR member author Maryann Miller offers a fairy tale rewritten for the modern day: The Visitor

Tina Wainscott writing as Jaime Rush offers a 2004 St. Martin's Press-published dark suspense thriller with romantic elements (but the blurb makes it sound like tracking down/surviving the stalker/killer is the primary plot), free to all via Smashwords: What She Doesn't Know

Previously-featured Big-6-paperbacked Robert W. Walker teams up with Lyn Polkabla to offer a Cuba-set murder mystery starring its first female Lieutenant Detective: Cuba Blue

Edward G. Talbot (ISFDB entry) offers a detective vs serial killer thriller short story: Femoral Depravity

Previously-featured screenwriter Ryne Douglas Pearson offers an FBI vs serial killer thriller: Top Ten

Previously-featured Big-6-paperbacked Bob Mayer returns with two military action thrillers: Black Ops: The Line, : Black Ops: The Gate

If you picked up the previous 2 of David Berardelli's newbie small-press Penumbra Publishing novels, you might as well get the 3rd offered thus far, a mysterious missing person thriller: Escape Clause

Previously-featured Justin Luke Zirilli, who has had a novel picked up for the AmazonEncore imprint which Amazon uses for its more promising indies offers another spin-off story which ties into his gay contemporary fiction novel: Servando and Rowan's Random Reunion (Gulliver's Travelers)

Patricia Traxler has had a book of poems published by the University of Missouri Press, and a mystery/thriller novel published by St. Martin's Minotaur imprint. She offers three literary fiction-looking short stories, two of which which she says have won a number of awards: Linkage for all three.

Bruce Memblatt (ISFDB entry) offers a literary fantasy/supernatural-looking short story about meeting a mysterious stranger: Music Man

David Bain (ISFDB entry) offers four short psychic/supernatural/horror-ish tales newly free: Linkage to pull up all of them (but beware, as one of the annoying things about KDP is that if something's recently come off being free, it's still included with the $0.00 search results). He also offers one of his stories about a psychic detective free to all via Smashwords: Island Ghosts: A Will Castleton Adventure

Matt R. Jones, if he's the one with this ISFDB entry, offers what looks like a spoofy vampires vs werewolves vs revenants novel: Hollywood Vampires: Unholy War

John Grover (ISFDB entry) teams up with B. Thomas Riley to offer a set of horror stories: Revenants: A Digital Chapbook

Alethea Kontis (ISFDB entry), who has co-written an official guide to Sherrilyn Kenyon's popular paranormal fantasy universe, contributes to this horror anthology from Delvling Press: Twisted Tales

Delvling also offers Kimberly Raiser's (ISFDB entry) supernatural/horror historical about the descendants of the lost colony of Roanoke: Children of Roen Part 1 Book 1 (Book One)

I previously included Christopher Webster's Anglo-Saxon poetry analysis and commentary on the basis that I like quasi-academic stuff or attempts thereof. He now offers some sort of thing about a background character from the classic Beowulf epic: Hrothgar

Happy reading if you spot something you think you might like and it's still fortuitously free.

ETA: I don't know this author and I don't care if their book is a horrible waste of electrons. Because they have some of the most brilliantly funny presumably fake reviews I have ever seen on something that wasn't Tuscan Milk or that 3 Wolf Moon Shirt on: Hookers or Cake (Animal Spirits, Pop Culture, God and Robots) I applaud this effort and I encourage you to read them for the lulz.

01-24-2012, 11:44 PM	#1
ATDrake Wizzard Posts: 11,517 Karma: 33048258 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Roundworld Device: Kindle 2 International, Sony PRS-T1, BlackBerry PlayBook, Acer Iconia	Free (Smashwords) A Feral Darkness by Doranna Durgin [Celtic Fantasy w/Romance] + KDP The KDP Select exclusive-or-else slushpile gets a late not-so-much-start-as-finish today, since I wasn't able to use my break time to post earlier as I'd planned to. There is, however, some rather nice sf/fantasy offerings and mystery/thriller repubs and established author self-pubs, and the horror fans should be happy again, as it seems that more writers with at least a few published short stories under their belts have come out of the woodwork to offer free stuff. I apologize in advance if you are picking this up past midnight and whatever you wanted has expired, although a decent number of the authors I recognize are ones that have done multi-day freebies. And I expect the ones who haven't will probably repeat at some point as they realize "hey, I haven't used up all 5 of my free days that get in exchange for renting out my soul being locked into one store for 90 days!" Anyway, a minor change in format in the posting, as I thought I'd start with a medium-significant backlist fantasy work which should still be free for a couple more days, and to everyone, not just those fortunate enough to live in areas where Amazon doesn't charge them an extra $2 even for the $0.00 books even if they never use any 3G which may or may not have come with any Kindle they might actually own (i.e., India, as of late last year, according to an unfortunate poster in the Amazon forum who found that the PG-cribbed free classics were not-so-free for him). This popped up late yesterday, but I thought I'd re-feature it for the benefit of those who'd be interested but would never normally look inside a Kindle-marked thread on the assumption that the stuff inside wouldn't apply to them. A Feral Darkness by Doranna Durgin, is her backlist self-pub re-pub of a Celtic contemporary fantasy which she says borders on paranormal romance, originally published by Baen Books in 2001. This has a mildly interesting history, as it actually was available as an e-book directly from Baen for over a decade as part of their Webscriptions, but was yanked from their store late last year by the author, leaving a nasty gap in that Webscription bundle month, which did not have its price adjusted to compensate, along with all her other books, with similar outcomes for their corresponding Webscription months. Oh well, I guess I'm willing to give Baen a few extra bucks here and there. Anyway, although the author seems to have set the new regular prices of her old e-books slightly above what Baen used to charge in the non-bundled version, she has generously made this one free to all via Smashwords, for a limited time, and she does do sporadic sales where she drops the price of her backlist to 99 cents, as well as selling novellas and tie-in short stories for that price. And you can probably find it in a couple of other Smashwords-price-matching outlets, but not necessarily free in all regions. It's available to Canadians at Amazon, but still full price at Amazon UK, for example. This, incidentally, is why I always link to a Smashwords version of a freebie if possible (notwithstanding the extra $2 surcharge for the disadvantageously located mentioned above; back when Canada still had the extra $2 charge on the free books, I had to think long and hard about whether that "free" book was worth the "shipping and handling". Actually, I tell a lie, because my immediate reaction was always: yeah, no. Especially when Sony or Kobo also had that title available to me without the extra charge and in a better format to boot, especially when it came to the Topaz titles.) Long story short (too late!): free to all without DRM and in the format of your choice over @ Smashwords for who knows how long, so grab it if you want it. Description As a child, dog-loving Brenna Fallon naívely invokes an ancient Celtic deity to save her beloved hound--and inadvertently anchors the new-found power at a spring on her family's farm. She doesn't know she's also left an opening for a far more malevolent force. Years later, thanks to the actions of several angry young men, Brenna discovers the terrible potential of that gateway. With a devastating plague unfolding abruptly around her, she must depend on her wits, a stranger she doesn't trust, and a mysterious stray dog who becomes more than just a faithful companion as she struggles to drive back the threat of a modern Black Death. Welded by a desperate sacrifice, woman, man, and dog face the feral darkness together. The other stuff I went through this morning, plus a few later additions. It all still seems to be free, but caveat 1-clicker and check to make sure, because most of these are KDP with the deceptive Prime Lending pricing once the freebie expires, though I've found a few that are also openly Smashwords-freebied. Previously-featured Nebula, Spectrum, and James Tiptree Jr. award-nominee M.C.A. Hogarth offers about a half-dozen shorter works free to all via Smashwords. Previously-featured Australian sf/fantasy writer and fellow MR member author Patty Jansen returns with a short-novel length YA-looking sf tale with alien terrorists in it: The Far Horizon She also offers a selection of short stories free to all via Smashwords, including her previously-featured (but then-unfree-at-Smashwords) collection Out of Here. Dave Wolverton, whom you may know from his Star Wars tie-in novels and other works (ISFDB entry), offers a short story which he says was a winner of that L. Ron Hubbard memorial Writers of the Future award, written as Dave Farland, and was the basis of the novel of the same name: On My Way to Paradise - Short Story Previously featured fellow MR member author Maryann Miller offers a fairy tale rewritten for the modern day: The Visitor Tina Wainscott writing as Jaime Rush offers a 2004 St. Martin's Press-published dark suspense thriller with romantic elements (but the blurb makes it sound like tracking down/surviving the stalker/killer is the primary plot), free to all via Smashwords: What She Doesn't Know Previously-featured Big-6-paperbacked Robert W. Walker teams up with Lyn Polkabla to offer a Cuba-set murder mystery starring its first female Lieutenant Detective: Cuba Blue Edward G. Talbot (ISFDB entry) offers a detective vs serial killer thriller short story: Femoral Depravity Previously-featured screenwriter Ryne Douglas Pearson offers an FBI vs serial killer thriller: Top Ten Previously-featured Big-6-paperbacked Bob Mayer returns with two military action thrillers: Black Ops: The Line, : Black Ops: The Gate If you picked up the previous 2 of David Berardelli's newbie small-press Penumbra Publishing novels, you might as well get the 3rd offered thus far, a mysterious missing person thriller: Escape Clause Previously-featured Justin Luke Zirilli, who has had a novel picked up for the AmazonEncore imprint which Amazon uses for its more promising indies offers another spin-off story which ties into his gay contemporary fiction novel: Servando and Rowan's Random Reunion (Gulliver's Travelers) Patricia Traxler has had a book of poems published by the University of Missouri Press, and a mystery/thriller novel published by St. Martin's Minotaur imprint. She offers three literary fiction-looking short stories, two of which which she says have won a number of awards: Linkage for all three. Bruce Memblatt (ISFDB entry) offers a literary fantasy/supernatural-looking short story about meeting a mysterious stranger: Music Man David Bain (ISFDB entry) offers four short psychic/supernatural/horror-ish tales newly free: Linkage to pull up all of them (but beware, as one of the annoying things about KDP is that if something's recently come off being free, it's still included with the $0.00 search results). He also offers one of his stories about a psychic detective free to all via Smashwords: Island Ghosts: A Will Castleton Adventure Matt R. Jones, if he's the one with this ISFDB entry, offers what looks like a spoofy vampires vs werewolves vs revenants novel: Hollywood Vampires: Unholy War John Grover (ISFDB entry) teams up with B. Thomas Riley to offer a set of horror stories: Revenants: A Digital Chapbook Alethea Kontis (ISFDB entry), who has co-written an official guide to Sherrilyn Kenyon's popular paranormal fantasy universe, contributes to this horror anthology from Delvling Press: Twisted Tales Delvling also offers Kimberly Raiser's (ISFDB entry) supernatural/horror historical about the descendants of the lost colony of Roanoke: Children of Roen Part 1 Book 1 (Book One) I previously included Christopher Webster's Anglo-Saxon poetry analysis and commentary on the basis that I like quasi-academic stuff or attempts thereof. He now offers some sort of thing about a background character from the classic Beowulf epic: Hrothgar Happy reading if you spot something you think you might like and it's still fortuitously free. ETA: I don't know this author and I don't care if their book is a horrible waste of electrons. Because they have some of the most brilliantly funny presumably fake reviews I have ever seen on something that wasn't Tuscan Milk or that 3 Wolf Moon Shirt on: Hookers or Cake (Animal Spirits, Pop Culture, God and Robots) I applaud this effort and I encourage you to read them for the lulz. Last edited by ATDrake; 01-25-2012 at 12:42 AM. Reason: Close open-ended parentheses for balance.