Once again, I reiterate that for authors/publishers looking to get a publicity boost by using one of their 5 allotted KDP Select freebie days in return for exclusively yanking their stuff from other stores so that it's Amazon's catalogue selection über alles:
It is a really,
really bad idea to do it on new-release Tuesdays and the 1st of each month because your book will get drowned and go unnoticed in the flood of stuff inundating the slushpile and thus the freebie/bargain-posting blogs and this forum as a result.
I just spent a significant chunk of my time this time posting 11 new assorted Christian books from official multi-store publisher promos and the amount of energy and enthusiasm I have for dipping into the KDP Select slushpile of glorified amateur offerings is rapidly sinking through the aesthenosphere down into the lower mantle.
Anyway, here's Phoenix Pick's ill-advisedly new-release Tuesdays-coinciding freebie
du semaine and DRM-free ePub/Mobi direct-purchase tie-in bargain deal.
The Forest of Time by Michael F. Flynn (
ISFDB,
Wikipedia) is sfnal travel-to-an-alternate-history novella which originally appeared in Analog magazine in 1987 and went on to be nominated for the Hugo, Analog, and Locus Poll Best Novella awards and has since appeared in a number of Best Of collections (
ISFDB for the novella).
I quite liked this when I
read it last year after having gotten it from a
previous PPick Free eBook of the Month, enough to go and buy the eponymous collection for $4.25 when it was on sale.
So you are getting a real bargain if you decide to spend the mere $1.99 that the full collection
The Forest of Time & Other Stories is being offered for, in a DRM-free ePub/Mobi bundle when
bought direct from Phoenix Pick using the link to the right-hand side on their dedicated promo listing post, which says it will be available at the deep-discount price until May 5th.
This collection has some nice notes for each story by the author, and is worth it for the very funny filksong "There's A Bimbo on the Cover of My Book!" which mocks that sort sf/fantasy cover art we've all seen so much of.
As for the novella itself, DRM-free for the next two days @ Amazon
main UK DE ES FR IT
Description (PPick really needs to come up with better blurbs; I included just the first paragraph of the author's note, broken up for legibility, since anything more is probably spoilery)
This novella is included in the anthology 'The Forest of Time and Other Stories' published by Phoenix Pick. It was nominated for the Hugo Award when originally published.
From the Author's Commentary:
I had wanted to write a “parallel Pennsylvania” story ever since reading H. Beam Piper’s “Gunpowder God” in high school. Growing up in Easton, Pennsylvania, the historical themes were all Revolutionary, so it was only natural that when I thought alternate history, I thought of that era.
Sometimes we forget how revolutionary our Revolution was. How many other revolutions have slipped from republicanism to bonapartism and wound up with a Napoleon, a Lenin, or a Khomeini?
After all, when you overthrow a System, those who must build something new afterward have only ever known the System. The acorn then does not fall far from the tree.
If I bother at all today, slushpile stuff will go in this thread.
Pro-tip for KDP Select exclusive freebie-izers which I reiterate: For best results, don't do it on new-release Tuesdays (Mondays are also bad), and don't do it on the 1st of each month.