There is a man named Tom Litchenberg on the internet, and he is a treasure. He's a writer, a pretty darn good one, often delving into science fiction, fantasy, or whatever tickles his fancy. The best part, however, that he does it all for free. He releases all of his stories for no charge at all on Smashwords. He has fans, and they clamour for him to sell his work, so that they can somehow give him money, however, he does not bow to their demands. He writes for free. He writes for the Common Man. He writes for the sheer love of it.

But friends, it doesn't end there.

Additionally, he reads indie authors in the time he is not writing stories and reviews their work on his website, Pidgeon Weather Productions. He frequently plugs indie authors and will go out of his way to go leave reviews on their Smashwords or Amazon or iBooks pages if he likes their work.

I wish I could say his generosity ends there.

But friends, it does not end there.

Recently, he realized that heartfelt, earnest reviews and free publicity of other people's work was not enough. Now he wishes to hand-pick his favorites and publish their work in anthology that he has called the Free Indie Reader.

It is a collection of his favorite short stories from indie authors published through Smashwords and distributed via a mailing list of subscribers who might be interested in discovering new indie authors.

But does it end there, friends? No, it does not.

Because I am, improbably, one of those favorite indie authors. He reached out to me a few days ago and asked if he could use a few of my stories, namely The Devil Still Has My Lawnmower, and The Chicken Nugget of Peace, two stories that I had compiled in my short story collection, The Devil Still Has My Lawnmower and Other Tales of the Weird, which has since been pulled from Smashwords because I thought I should try to get them published in traditional media, and then never got around to submitting any of them, because school happened and there is a certain book that requires my full attention until it launches again on January 15th. So, gladly, I handed the stories over.

And that collection has now been assembled! Mr. Litchenberg has compiled it and released it on Smashwords. Since Smashwords distributes to every market ever (which is why I use them myself), it will soon be available on your favorite ebook market, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Sony, etc. I will let you know when that happens.

But until then, click the cover for the Free Indie Reader below to be taken to the Smashwords page where you can download it for the low low price of, well, free. You can discover other great indie authors as well!

Thanks again Tom for all you do.