Ice Cold and Other Stories - Expanded Edition

I wondered for a long time what to do with my first self-published work, Ice Cold and Other Stories.  When I was still on Amazon, and reduced the ebook price of all my 100k-word novels to 99₵, there was Ice Cold still sitting there, two short stories and a novelette…for 99₵.  A price I couldn't reduce further.

I wanted to add a bunch of the other short fiction I'd written and do an expanded edition…but would that be fair to the people who'd already bought it?

Well, now that all my ebooks are free, it was a no-brainer.  Add in almost all the short fiction I've published in this blog, plus a number of stories never before published, and there we go.

* * *

Expanded from 3 stories to 65, almost 150k words, ranging from my first real effort at a story, to more recent works of humor, horror, fantasy, parallel worlds, time travel, science fiction on libertarian worlds, a superhero tale, a couple of young adult stories, and holiday tales too.

These stories were written between 1982 and 2020, and in the course of them I wanted to try a lot of different things.  So they range from the very violent You've Seen the Video, Now Read the Story to the spooky Half Seen to the minimalist Princess Katana to the uplifting The Enchanted Treehouse to the bleak Doctor.

Which is to say, I think anyone can find some stories in here they'll love…but maybe no one will love every story.

All my ebooks - free: http://self.gutenberg.org/Authors/KevinWadeJohnson, or see my entry Ebooks Update for a full list.

Table of Contents

Ghost Mode - Free Ebook

I had a tremendous burst of creativity back around 2007, in response to unfortunate events at work.  Unfortunate for me that is, but not for my readers, because I ended up with an overpowering urge to speak up, to assert myself as worth attention.  And so I wrote.

Are those experiences related here?  Of course not, a guy behind a desk is nothing to write about.  Are those experiences reflected here?  Of course, just like with all fiction.

The first seven of these connected stories were written between 2007 and 2011, and the other two in 2011 and 2013, but all were put aside eventually.  I'd come up with the title for this volume in an attempt at a novel all the way back in 1991.  But I wasn't good enough then…and even in 2007 I still wasn't quite there.

Well, I'm not as good as I want to be even now; then again, I never will be.  But I hope I'm good enough, and so I finally got back to these stories, mainly because pandemic stress has kept me from drafting as much new, and instead has me revising what I already wrote.

The stories (chapters) are set between 1934 and the early 2010s, and explore a common idea, with technology and society changing along the way.  But I'll let you discover that for yourself.

Meanwhile, I have a world for you.  Worlds:

"[I]f the scientists are correct, the worlds out there are parallel to ours.  Well, not parallel, but branches from the same tree, from the same history. …

"Worlds where Tesla never heard about Yellowstone while visiting Colorado in 1903, never had his imagination fired by descriptions of 'Coulter's Hell,' never had the fundamental inspiration for the Tesla Field."

The 1991 version of this volume started from the idea of a character with the power of Nikola Tesla's invention arriving in a parallel Earth and running around getting into and out of trouble.  The climax of the story would involve getting out of trouble, finally, and settling down with the girl he met on the way.  I hadn't thought it through, though, and the story predictably went nowhere.

When I got a little more life experience I realized that the power of that invention was the crux.  What did power like that entail?  What are its ramifications?  Where does it lead?

Hence the novella.  See what you think.

All my ebooks free: http://self.gutenberg.org/Authors/KevinWadeJohnson.  You can also see my entry Ebooks Update for a full list.