Free Stories! Happy Halloween!

I know it's not Halloween yet, but I get up really early in the morning for work and so I figured I'd put this out there now, lest I forget. As a Halloween gift for all my fans out there, I am setting TWO of my Kindle stories FREE on Amazon.com for that day only.

The first one is "I am the Wendigo," my first professionally-published story. I sold it in 2006 to a webzine called Chimaera Serials that no longer exists. Like many authors whose work has gone out of print, I found it quite nice to have an easy republishing route and I've made about as much if not more as an indie that I was paid for the first rights.

The second one is "Melon Heads." I wrote that one when I was in college after reading about the Melon Heads, an urban legend centered in rural Ohio, on the Internet. I tinkered with it over the years and ultimately revised the story to be a dark comedy based on suggestions from Katherine Mankiller.

Both of these stories bear the Sean C.W. Korsgaard stamp of approval.

An Addendum To My "Other Authors' Sandboxes" Post...

The other day, I posted about how cool it is to let other writers write material set in your world and how this is ultimately enriching toward your own projects.

Well, longtime blogger buddy Sean C.W. Korsgaard was so kind as to post this video in the Comments section.



This is video he recorded himself at RavenCon, a big sci-fi/fantasy convention in Richmond named for Edgar Allen Poe, and posted on his YouTube channel. The authors present are Rich Groller, John Betancourt, Philippa Ballantine and Robert Waters. All of them have written tie-in fiction set in worlds originally created by others.

Topics discussed include Kindle Worlds, why established authors (typically) avoid reading fan-fic like the plague, etc.

So if you liked my recent blog post about playing in other people's sandboxes and if you're interested in writing using someone else's intellectual property, this is a video you might like to watch...

If You Like What You're Getting, Buy Amazon Products Through Me

The World According to Quinn has been active since early 2010. So far I have blogged on many topics including science, politics, books, movies, and my personal writing ambitions. I have gotten more than 150,000 hits and hosted guest blog posts by interesting people like James R. Tuck, Delilah S. Dawson, Christopher Nuttall, and Sean C.W. Korsgaard. Thank you all for your patronage over the years.

However, so far I haven't made any money on the blog. On paper I've made some money via Google AdSense, but I won't get paid until I hit $100 and at the current rate, it will be years before that happens. I'm not asking you to go clicking on ads if you're not interested in at least finding out more about the product that appears--that's called click fraud and that's a crime.

However, I am suggesting you take a look at my Amazon links. If you see any links to books, movies, etc. on my blog and there's an odd space after the end of each link, those links will take you to the product's Amazon page that has my Amazon Associates' ID in the URL. If you buy the product, I'll get a percentage. Not only that--and this is the important part--if you go from that page to other Amazon products and buy those, I'll still get paid a commission. Apparently I've sold three Finish Powerball Tabs Dishwasher Detergent Tablets, Fresh Scent, 60 Count and one third party copy of Adrift on the Sea of Rains despite never actually linking to either them in addition to the one copy of Lines of Departure that I definitely did. I won't actually get paid for those until I clear a $10 threshold, but clearing that is much easier than clearing $100 one.

Thanks to this awesome YouTube video, I've learned how to install Amazon-generated widgets on Blogger. I've installed a link to my short story collection Flashing Steel Flashing Fire as well as a carousel of products you can see on the upper right. I'll regularly swap out that one with carousels of other products, depending on what's hot right now and what I'm reading or watching. Since I've gotten plenty of clicks and some sales over the years due to links-in-text and a new Chrome gadget that makes creating these links easier, those aren't not going anywhere.

Thank you for your help and readership over the years.