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Free stories based on Travis' Big Ideas: DEC 10 - DEC 14. (Plus NO REVOLUTION TOO SMALL!)

I've attempted to expand the purpose of this blog to go beyond talking about story ideas to launching some of my stories based on the ideas I blog about. This particular post will promote the stories, but also will talk about how the ideas from this blog fed into them.

The Unknown Biologic tale actually was a story of mine first, one from maybe five years or so ago which I revised quite a bit recently. I scoured the tale for an idea behind the story to justify creating a blog entry for it. The idea I picked was about aliens having DNA that matches the DNA of planet Earth. There were other points I could have talked about instead. I portray a future medical station in an interstellar war, featuring a main character who is a Hutterite. The Hutterian Brethren are Anabaptists like the Amish, with the same tradition of pacifism, but not the same attitude towards technology. The "Unknown Biologic" is the alien that they pick up, which happens to be very much like an oceanic Earth creature...

In Technically Magical and A Little Problem with the Dilithium Stone I played with variations on what is basically the same idea: What if creatures from fantasy along with their magic were mixed into stories featuring technology and/or science fiction? The two stories are very different from one another otherwise. In Technically Magical my gnome main character is debating whether or not to work for General Magical Services, which I meant to parallel General Electric. The story is serious in tone with some descriptions of magic mixed with technology that were interesting to me. It also portrays what "race" would mean in a world where separate races are practically separate species (elves, gnomes, humans, orcs, and dwarves). In contrast, "A Little Problem" is a light-hearted spoof of Star Trek where I made Vulcans into Dark Elves, Chekhov into a goblin, played with the magic and tech in a way I hope is fun, and made a number of inside Star Trek jokes, all in a way my readers so far have considered pretty amusing.

In Zombie Doc I took a number of the story ideas that I'd played with for this blog about zombies and put them into a story. I also in many ways drew on my own experiences being a medic in the Army. I entered the story into a contest with a strict word limit, so I had to keep it brief. All the characters in the story are based on people I actually knew at one time or another (OH WAIT--an author is not supposed to admit that : ). I hope zombie lovers will enjoy Zombie Doc, but I have to admit it isn't very scary or creepy. The strength of the tale lies more in its characters. Which is ironic, because I wrote it specifically to showcase story ideas, not characters...

All four of the above have been published through Kindle Direct Publishing via my company Bear Publications (yes, it's a real LLC). All four of the above will be available for a free download from December 10th to the 14th, 2013. I hope you download them in abundance and really like them. Though I'm a bit concerned about the fact that each one of the stories are very different from the rest. That may not be the best way for me to build a brand or make a name for myself as a writer...oh well.

In the meantime, please download the for-pay story (only 99 cents : ), No Revolution Too Small. This is my installment in the Mike Lynch series, "No Revolution is Too Big." When Mike asked me if I was interested in writing a tale matching his initial story, I wracked my brain for ideas and wound up using pieces of concepts I developed for the Nanite Infested Aliens blog post. What I've read of the entire series I like, but I hope you find my story especially worthwhile, which features intelligent nanites. (By the way, Mike Lynch and I worked together previously on The Crystal Portal, though in that case I'd done the initial work and sought his help afterward.)

SO four free stories altogether, December 10th-14th! PLUS No Revolution Too Small!
(Sample the fine NRTS artwork below:)

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