Sample: Corvus by L Lee Lowe

I'm pleased to offer a sample from another online fiction writer. I'll let him tell you all about it in his own words...

I'm an indie writer, meaning that I write fiction - novels and short stories - but have no interest in conventional publication. Hence I make all my work available online, though I've recently issued a POD copy of my YA fantasy novel Mortal Ghost as a reader service (no royalties). Here is a link to a recent interview which will give you more information:

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/07/18/interview-l-lee-lowe-a-blogging-novelist/

At the moment I'm rewriting/revising my new F/SF novel, Corvus, which I plan to begin serialising online in a few months. It's set in a slightly alternate future in which the minds of teen offenders are uploaded into computers on the pretext of rehabilitation – a form of virtual wilderness therapy. The novel is part thriller, part love story, part riff on the nature of consciousness. Here is an extract:

His attention fell upon Josh's album, which lay open on her desk. Most of the photos on view were stiff, cheesy poses in front of bazaar or amphitheatre or cathedral, sunburnt faces of lads in khaki shorts and sandals who must have once been important to the old man, but to Laura interchangeable in their anonymity—there were no labels, not even a date—and about as lifelike as an effigy. A group of friends on holiday together, probably. She'd squinted over the pictures trying to recognise Josh, without success. If the faces of the young are a roadmap of their future, the resolution was too low for her to zoom to the present. Or maybe, quite simply, he was always holding the camera.

To read more, follow the link below...
http://corvus-lowe.blogspot.com

Sample: The Curly Situation by Jason Davis

Regular visitors who enjoy reading fiction online may like to consider The Curly Situation by Jason Davis, which he started publishing last month. In the author's own words...

It's a blog novel (or "blovel" if must blestroy the blingo). It's also an experiment. I write, you read, and we all get a laugh along the way. The story centres on Curly Gibson, an Aussie cricketer whose talent for accidental sporting success is surpassed only by his talent for getting shot at. I'll post twice a week, as long as I get nice comments and a few bucks in the tip jar. Puh-leeese. - JD

Here's the first chapter to whet your appetite...

Chapter 1.1 - Curly as car wreck

Friday, March 2, 2007

The day my life imploded, so completely did things head south that I later reasoned it must have been a horrific thing of beauty to behold. Like a fire in a fireworks factory. Or Britney Spears.
From where I stood, however, caught in the crossfire of my own personal shitfight, it struck me as a tad less than amusing.
Another thing that struck me was a pair of flippers, followed by my unused guitar, although I managed to sidestep the suitcase that followed close behind and thereby avoid serious brain injury. I watched as the case hit the concrete beside me and burst, spraying a geyser of underwear and dirty shirts across the carpark.
At the window two stories above me, was my (former) live-in girlfriend and trainee banshee. Live-in girlfriend, or was I now a live-out boyfriend? While she was frisbeeing my crockery out into the carpark, I’d walked upstairs and tried my front door. Locked. Possibly barricaded. So you could say she currently held the position of power in the relationship.
We’ll call the banshee Karen, because that’s her name.
Her head bobbed out of the livingroom window. “The beauty of this is you’ll get a nice taste of sleeping around too – in your fucking car! Shitwit!” That Karen. A real way with words.
That bright Friday morning began with me capering around like the fifth Wiggle, scraping semi-soiled sporting gear into a bag.
My name is Ashley Lawrence Gibson, but everybody calls me Curly, given that I’ve been semi-bald since my mid-twenties. As nicknames go, it’s a million miles from hilarious, but you don’t get a choice in these things, it seems.
At 35, I still call myself a professional cricketer, although, if asked the same question three weeks ago, the phrase “trainee hobo” may have figured in my reply.
My career had been reduced to club cricket on the weekends interspersed by serious sessions of thumbing through the Saturday job ads and wondering why I’d used my high school careers guidebook as kindling on camping trips.
Financially, things were looking dire. My saving were just about kaput, with the few hundred my club slung me every week hardly enough to finance the lifestyle I was after, like one that included living in a room. And eating.

To read more, head over to www.curlygibson.com