The Ai Are About To Get Better At Manipulation And Control.

Why reading the free episodes on Kindle Vella matters.

Criticism on how bad the stuff on Kindle Vella is, is common, and much of it, accurate. Right along with its established serial authors, with well-honed story-telling skills, are even more authors still learning to tell good stories, and the craft of writing. But writing is just like any art and takes years of practice to do well. Any incentive to keep at it helps keep the writer at it. Amazon…

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Merry Christmas

Here is an old story from when I was just learning how to tell stories, (but thought I knew what I was doing, and didn’t understand why I could not sell it). I dug it out, fixed the bad grammar mistakes but otherwise left it as is. It is free and has under 1000 words all as a single episode on Kindle Vella. I hope you enjoy it. https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story/B0CPSPTY62

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Kerric the Mercenary: Episode 7, Run to DeSon

Kerric and his Warcat took the lead. At the edge of DarkGate, he turned Akrus off the road and headed due west. The moment they made it to those dark woods, he said, “Run,” and all Akrus’s anger vanished. He was off as if shot from an arrow.

At home, north of the Black Sand, running was dangerous. There, except for hunting sprints, if he ran, it was in fear, and he was running for his life. It wasn’t until Kerric brought him south of the Black Sand that his war cat had a chance to run full out without fear. Now, only mating and hunting brought his Warcat more pleasure. It was a pleasure Akrus rarely got to indulge in and the perfect reward for being dragged out of his rest.

Like the larger breed of Warcats in the north, the ones his men rode were built for running for days despite that not being a good idea in the north. Except the Tolar, nothing in the south could escape them over the long run, and very few on the short. Only experts here would pick up that this wasn’t the breed you found in the far south in the forest bordering the frozen waste. Those were a patchwork brown, instead of dark brown with black stripes on their hind quarter, and only three-quarters the size of the Warcats Kerric’s men rode. Nor were they as fast or have the endurance of this northern breed.

Yet those southern beasts stilled killed more of their own riders than the northern ones did, making seeing a rider a very rare occurrence in the far south, and nearly legendary this far away from that icy waste. That was, until Kerric, and his band arrived.

Kerric shifted his weight. With a snort, Akrus stopped trying to outrun the others, but kept his pace high enough to make them work at keeping up. They might have longer legs, but Akrus had more muscle. That meant more speed in a run among Warcats.

They hit the edge of the gorge and Akrus leaped from the side to the branches of those massive trees. The others followed. Riding the treetops might be common in the jungles north of the Black Sand but was unheard of here. That shortcut across the gorge instead of around it, as all others had to travel, was why his men would get there before the sun came up, despite having to saddle them before riding out.

Akrus leaped to the next tree, and then the next. Even in the dark, Warcats never jumped to a branch that can’t whole their weight, though sometimes, they bend more than their riders anticipate. That bending and springing back is what the Warcats used to move forward with such speed. It took all the rider’s concentration to stay in those saddles and not one of them could have done so the way Kerric did, without the thigh straps. That springing motion was why in the trees, Warcats move only a little slower than their ground eating normal pace.

Kerric spared enough attention from his own ride to see all of his men having a harder time of it than they should. It was one more sign that they had lost too much of their edge. The gorge was deep and wide, but not so much so that those Warcats could not cross it in half the night.

With well over a candle mark before even the false dawn, his men were on the road to the main keep of DeSon, something that would have been a four-day trip by the road using caravan wagons.

Tantos came out of the woods as they moved closer to the keep. “I found Corman camped on a woodcutter’s track nearing the Aring-DarkGate Road. He’s taking his time and will hit that road early morning tomorrow. If he pushes it, he could make Aring by late night, but more likely is planning another night on the road.”

Kerric nodded and looked over the lands of his prospective employer.

Episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,

Kara is Infinite

Kara, known as the fourth universe, has magic, its surface is infinite. The areas that humans colonized, has a greater population than all the human colonized planets in the other three universes combined. A combination of technology and magic has let mankind spread out fast there and have a higher standard of living than is possible with technology alone. Five hundred million plus continents…

Kara is Infinite

Read Three Story for Free

I currently have up, or I am posting three different stories for you to read free of charge. These stories are on Patreon, Substack and Ream Stories free of charge, so use whichever you prefer. Patreon Substack Ream Stories The first story, I Took a Walk, is up all three places in its entirety. It is a short novella bordering on a short story. I broke it into twelve short episodes and…

Read Three Story for Free

Preorder now: A Fall of Ashes

It is finally happening. After a lot of effort, my Dark Fantasy novel, A Fall of Ashes, is now available for preorder on Amazon for $2.99. The novel is scheduled for release in June. Ashes just wanted a husband, but she went too far, and in the wrong place. In order to escape being a tavern slave, she must serve the old witch that lives alone in the gorge. But old mistakes continue to haunt her…

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Adding another free one to my Substack. The Legion, a left over relic of a time when man fought wars thousand of years in the past is called on to explore the totally impossible fourth universe, a place with a planet of infinite radius and surface. The catch is while the laws of Physics are close enough you can live there, modern technology just wont work.

To Understand More on What Living in Mars Might be Like Read Donald of Mars.

In my story Donald of Mars, I use fiction to try to give people a more realistic view of what living in the underground tunnels that will make up a Mars colony will be like. Set only a few years after the first people have landed, it follows Donald as he tries to build a home, business, and relationships, among all the diverse people with all their different goals after completing a construction…

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