Story Launch: "Freeing Truth" + First Batch of Audiobooks Launches! + NEW PUBLISHING SITE: deviantART

Good news: I'm starting again on The Current next week!

In other news, one week ago, I launched my newest short story, "Freeing Truth." This was written as part of a school assignment, which was to make a creative piece (story, poem, painting, sculpture, etc.) involving the quote, "The truth shall make you free," in the light of Cory Doctorow's dystopian, modern-day 1984 novel, Little Brother, which was the "all-school read" for this past summer. The result is "Freeing Truth," my longest short story to date, at about 5.25 pages long in Word. Like "Trust Fall" before it, "Freeing Truth" is split into "chapters;" there are six in this one, as opposed to five in "Trust Fall." The story is of the fantasy genre, and involves a selfish king who holds a mysterious power in his castle. A youth then tries to steal it and learns a startling fact about the king and the kingdom. "Freeing Truth" is currently available on both the ZU Forums and Figment, and in the next few weeks, it will also be available on deviantART (more on that later).

Today marked the launch of the first batch of audio versions of my short stories! In case you never noticed the "Audiobooks" page here, it's been here for about three months with a message saying "Coming soon! (I promise!)" Well, it wasn't quite as soon as I'd hoped, but I'd say not bad! Each audiobook is read by me, unabridged. If you download the whole thing (as a ZIP file), you get some extra goodies. Unfortunately, that's not out yet, as I haven't recorded all of the audiobooks yet. The first nine have been recorded, as well as the version of "Trust Fall" with the extended second chapter, the version of the audiobook that will only be available in the ZIP file. I will also be recording "The Blind Man Who Could See" later today (UPDATE, 17:38: Done and available!), and maybe another, as well. If you enjoy books more when you can listen to them, then you'll benefit from the really dramatic (at least most of the time) audio versions of my stories! Even if you're a visual reader, you can still enjoy! Just head over to the "Audiobooks" page, and you can download (individually) the available audiobooks. (There is a small error in "Twelve Chimes" when my microphone apparently cut off for a second. No need for you to worry, as I will be fixing that--by rerecording that cut-off sentence--and re-uploading the file within the next week or so.)

"Resolution" Reveal/Launch ; NEW PUBLISHING SITE

It's been a while, and I've made very little progress on I&L4. Deal with it. I've been busy.

With what, you ask? With "Resolution," of course! Wait, what? No, I haven't been busy writing New Year's resolutions. Those are pointless. Instead, I've been writing "Resolution," my entry in the Zelda Universe Forums' January 2011 Writing Contest, for which the theme was "resolution." The results? Well, they came in tonight, and ...I got second place. Again. I guess I can't win. But hey, last time I entered a ZU writing contest, I didn't rank ("Trust Fall," August 2010). Also remember that I got second place in my first writing contest, too ("Twelve Chimes," October 2009). "Resolution" is a thriller, which is a genre I have never bothered (or actually wanted to bother) getting close to before, but I couldn't avoid it this time. (The following is exclusive information, so be glad you're reading this!) Originally, the story was going to involve an established serial killer writing a list of resolutions, a.k.a. his next victims. (That's pretty much it for the exclusive stuff.) The final product is barely a shadow of the original idea, the only similarity being the main character, William, writing his resolution, which includes a short list of people he wants to murder. Why? William is a patient at the Woodstone Institute mental asylum for post-traumatic stress disorder. He wants to know how he develoed the disorder, but he'll have to stay for a month to give the psychiatrists enough time to figure it out. Well, he doesn't want to stick around in that dump for a whole month, so he decides to escape. Which involves brutally murdering a few people. "Resolution" is available on the ZU Forums (no membership necessary, as usual) in this thread and now on Figment.com. Wait. Figment.com? Wuzzat? To find out you're going to have to...