I'm making Twisted Mindflow, a collection of 17 short stories, flash, and oddballs, available for free download. Whether you're a fan and interested in the evolution of my writing mind, or you're new to my work and want to get a sense of just how odd my stories are, this is my gift to you. There are three file types, pdf, mobi, and epub, for all your reading devices and apps.
Edited to add: you do not need to create an account. You will still have to fill out the billing address, that helps me keep the 'bots at bay. It's fairly straightforward. If you want mobi or epub leave me a note in the ordering window, and you will receive it in your email within 24 hours. Wordpress won't allow me to offer those files for download. Annoying, but needs must.
Each story has an author's note about it, and the whole collection boasts a foreword by my beloved First Reader.
This is what he had to say:
When Cedar Sanderson asked me to do the foreword to her latest book I was stunned. Who am I to write a foreword to anything? She pointed out that I am her First Reader and this is in many ways a book of firsts. I couldn’t deny her logic, but I still tried to wriggle off the hook. “Foreword is four words, right?” She didn’t buy it, so I guess you have to listen to me panic as I do something I have no idea how to do. There is a first time for everything.
This collection is called Twisted Mindflow from the titles of a couple of short stories in it. Those shorts are firsts. Mindflow was her first story sold, Twisted Breath Of God was the first story she published. She has a little author's note on most of the stories in here so I won’t give you much setup on them. Why make you wade through it twice?
I will be honest, some of these stories are quite good and leave you wanting more, some leave me scratching my head because I really don’t understand them. I’ll leave you to guess which are which. You’ll probably be wrong because she speaks to readers in many different ways. I have noticed that good authors tend to do that. Bad authors don’t make that much of an impression on the reader.
I have a favorite among these, those who have been following her will probably know which one it is because they will know my oddball sense of humor. Humor - it is one of the hardest things to write according to most people, Cedar handles it quite well. Some of these stories will make you chortle.
Warning for the squeamish, while Cedar writes a lot of sweet stories, and a lot of funny cute stories, that isn’t all she does. Nothing she writes is outright horror, but some of these stories are insidious. You’ll wake up in the middle of the night realizing just what a horrible thing has happened to a good person. Not monsters or evil men, just the damage done to people by the universe. You can’t even be angry at someone, you just know that life isn’t all sweetness and light. Do not take it to mean she does grim or “life is horrible” there is hope and love and a future here too. It is just that life is not all rainbows and sunshine and her work reflects that.
The most important thing about this collection is something I have spoken about obliquely so far. It shows her growth, in this collection you will see her early fumblings as she learned her craft. You will also see the sparks of genius which make her future in the craft assured, even in her rawest stage she has something. I see it clearly, I hope you do too.