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If you read the book, please, please, please post an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever you like to put your reviews. Even a simple star rating helps.

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Thanks, folks.

Flash Harry’s Confession and Other Stories now available

My debut work of fiction, a collection of 22 short stories and two poems, can now be purchased from Amazon. You may also download it here:

Flash Harry's Confession And Other Stories, by Brok3n Engines

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Flash Harry’s Confession and Other Stories is a collection of 24 short stories and poems. These are some of the people whose stories you will learn. “You may call me ‘Flash Harry.’ It is not my real name. I am a liar and a cheat. I am clever, or at least cunning. Once in my life I was brave and good. The only brave thing I ever did was to flee from a fight. That confession follows.” Rachel Rikardsdottir, the daughter of the Witch-Queen of Konigsrike, thought of herself as a blackbird. Her little sister Fenix was a goldfinch, bright of color and voice. Rache had dark hair and eyes and, she believed, a darker mind and darker thoughts. Molly Johnson would tell you her story began in 1921, when she came to Elmwood. She was born in Virginia in 1907. When she was 14 she escaped her father. She jumped a freight train and made her way north. She washed up at Elmwood. There Elle and Elle’s father Al took her in. Why they did that Molly didn’t know. Barra thought of himself as clever and cold. Clever he was. But he couldn’t help caring for people. He would always take the side of an underdog—the more under they were, the more Barra was on their side. He’d give a loser his last dime. More than likely, he got that last dime by picking the pocket of the previous person he helped. But when you were down on your luck, Barra was there. At first, Spider was nervous. But as he spoke, his enthusiasm buoyed him. He discovered that strange truth, that a large audience is easier to move than a small one. When he explained the Golden Key, students and even Professors who had never before understood were rapt with new comprehension. Professor Pallas herself understood what she had never grasped before. It only made her angrier. John O’Toole was six years old. He would be starting first grade in the fall. He had heard that kids learned to read in first grade. But John could already read. The attic was a perfect place to pretend to be a sailor. It seemed natural to John to bring a notebook up to the attic and to write down some of the voyages he imagined.

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Flash Harry's Confession And Other Stories, by Brok3n Engines

11.9MB ∙ PDF file

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These are essentially identical to the kindle version you can buy from Amazon. If you want ink on paper, you will have to buy the book from Amazon. There are kindle, paperback, and hardcover editions. (No prospects of an audiobook as yet.) The hardcover is expensive because I elected to have it printed in full color, to give to my family as gifts. The eBooks are in full color, if viewed on a color display. (For instance, the kindle app on an iPad works.) The paperback is grayscale except for the cover, and is therefore reasonably priced.

Please feel completely free to download the free versions ePub or PDF versions. I want to get the book in front of eyeballs, and honestly couldn’t care less about sales. (I am quite certain I will not make enough in royalties to notice.) (I wouldn’t mind being proved wrong, though.)

I would be grateful, if you do download the book, if you would let me know whether the download works with your device. Please let me know in a comment.

If you read the book, please, please, please post an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever you like to put your reviews. Even a simple star rating helps.

Review on amazon.com

Review on amazon.ca

Review on Goodreads

Review on The Story Graph

Thanks, folks.

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Error log

If you find any errors, let me know in the comments. I will list them here.

Substack versions

All of these stories and poems were published first here on substack. Links follow. If there is a preferred reading order, this is it. These are not identical to the versions in the book, as I gave them a quick proof and polish for the book, but they are very close.

Standalone

Futures

Up There

Most of my posts, and all my current posts except administrative announcements like this one, will be book reviews. I estimate there will be roughly five of these each week. The more than 900 reviews I imported from my old blog belong in the review section. Unfortunately, I can’t find a way to move posts in bulk, so they’ll continue to pollute the admin channel until I find a way to fix this. (If anyone knows how to do this, message me!)

I anticipate releasing one original story on the first day of each month. These will go in the “Brok3n Engines Creations” section. If you want a low-traffic subscription that includes only the new stuff, this is for you.

Finally, the section Brok3n Engines Notifications is for boring administrative announcements like this one. I anticipate that in the long run this will be a very low traffic section. There may an initial flurry of action in the first few weeks as I figure things out.

This substack is a continuation of a newsletter I have maintained on blogger for years. I imported the posts there into this substack, which is why I already have more than 900 posts here, although I created this substack just hours ago. Most of the posts are reviews of books I have read. I read a lot of books, so if you subscribe to this substack, you can anticipate roughly five new posts a week.

The Patreon page is new. I anticipate posting something new on the first of each month. I anticipate that most will be Fantasy and Science Fiction short stories. That is not a commitment. In fact, the first post I plan is a historical fiction story, and the second a poem. In the long run, only time will tell.

Both this substack and the Patreon are free. I do not anticipate charging for my output in the foreseeable future.

My main book review location is Goodreads. (You can also find me on Amazon.) However, I can't post everything I want to on Goodreads. The event that precipitated the creation of this blog was the discovery that I cannot add Seanan McGuire's latest Patreon reward, In Safety Rest to the Goodreads book database. That means that I won't be able to review it on Goodreads tomorrow, after I read it. 

Thus, I decided I wanted another place to put my reviews.