Giando Sigurani's Online Empire

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.

The months of silence have come to an end. My classes lay slain before me. I no longer need to cower from the limitless distractions of the internet and hide beneath mountains of schoolbooks. 

I have returned, friends. You are aimless no more.

The eve of Mister Mercury is upon us, and I have something to show for it. I have built a website for it, separate from this one. It is located at http://mistermercurybook.com. I have more information about the impending release, which is on January 15^th, 2014.  To break it down, I have  asked hypothetical questions that you may or may not wish to ask and have immediately answered them, because I am courteous like that. Some of these questions, however, are questions that have actually been asked, so it is not completely facetious. 

Before I say anything, let's get down to business.

BAM. Business concluded. 

This amazing cover was brought to you by the amazing and talented Alex Pelyre. You might recognize him as the one who provided that excellent drawing at the end of my post about how Katniss Everdeen is not nearly as cool as Briar Wilkes. I reached out to him for a cover comission for the re-launch of Mister Mercury, and after much haggling on my end and much patience on his, this excellent piece of art came out. I couldn't be more pleased. 

The Mister Mercury re-release is still going as planned, though you might not have noticed for the completely understandable reason that I haven't said a goddam thing about it. Well that's one of the reasons this website has been so dark lately. Now you know. 

More details soon, but of course, I can't tell you much more. Mitchell Royce, play me out. 

I have long since given up making a serious effort to publish with one of those so-called "real" publishers, which is why I've decided to release my stories on the internet for free so recently. I still query on the weekends, but only half-heartedly, and never so much that it cuts into my writin' time.

One of my greatest friends in all the land mailed me her megaportable-but-still-quite-formidable eeePC netbook computer recently, and I spent all of last weekend installing a new operating system on it and souping it up with updates and word processing software. It had a hard drive that was so small that it could hardly even shelter a virtual church mouse, much less an entire fully-functional operating system, but I bypassed that little nuisance by popping a camera memory card into its slot and installing the new OS on there (Easy Peasy 1.6 for those interested). Now it runs smoother than your mother after a bath.

Earlier when I posted that The Devil Still Has My Lawnmower & Other Tales of the Weird is now free, I wrote a post that did not exactly resemble what you see there today. I won't go into details, but it definitely did not contain the words "thank you" and certainly contained the words "people are jerks."

Upon further reflection-- and input from my special lady and the man who made the cover for it-- I decided to change it to a more light hearted and gracious tone. But the idea was still the same: My short story collection is now free, go get it!

Well, it's Friday the 13th, so obviously I should release a short story compilation about devils, space aliens, magic, and L.Ron Hubbard, right?

YES.

We can dispute a lot of things in this world, but not this: For every word I write, the world improves, just a little. Such is the power of my fiction. I would be more than a bit surprised if, at the end of my 2,500 year career (I plan on achieving immortality at some point), all of life's little ills will not have been solved, global warming hasn't reversed, the world's population doesn't stabilize, and Mars will not have become a teeming beacon of civilization. Oh, and Earth too, I guess.

Okay, so maybe we can dispute that, but one thing we definitely can't deny: My short stories are the most popular things on my site. The Devil Still Has My Lawnmower has raked in close to 5,000 readers and 8 Ball and Ouija Board has brought in close to 700.  People, it seem, like the cut of my jib.