Novels available for FREE online reading.
I’m in the process of releasing my serialized novels on this site so you can read them for free! Not everyone can afford an eReader or the books to go on it. I’ve been blessed with a few patrons who have paid to have them put online for people who cannot read in either paperback or on a device. I’ve taken care to make the novels released easy to read and navigate. As always, please feel free to contact me if you see problems or corrections, but most of all, enjoy reading on your computer!
Short Stories available for FREE online reading.
What the Sergeant Didn’t See
This short, humorous story in the Steven George & The Dragon universe was originally released as a promo and deluxe bonus for the original novel. It was featured at readings and on the original deluxe CD version in 2010. ©2010 Elder Road Books.
A Dangerous Woman
I wrote For Blood or Money in November 2006 as a new challenge for NaNoWriMo. I prepared and planned for two months with dozens of index cards about people, places, and actions that would occur in the story. I was still a little worried about getting my noir voice down, so I wrote a couple of short stories featuring computer forensics detective Dag Hamar. They were just warm-ups but I found that they strongly influenced me regarding Dag’s friends and family, and his current physical condition. During that time, I also traveled to Finland to attend a conference and met two delightful young women who informed me that they wanted to be ‘in the book.’ Peg said she wanted to be a hero. Teresia informed me that she wanted to be a dangerous woman. Peg is in the book but Teresia’s story is here. ©2009 Elder Road Books.
The First Clue is You Can't Find Your Coffee Cup
Back in the early 1980s, I was working at various jobs while trying to get a writing and publishing career going. I’d completed a couple of novel length manuscripts, but was publishing a lot of training and marketing materials. On one job, I had a boss who feigned a street-tough Jersey way of talking because it made him ‘sound more real.’ During a break in my schedule, I jotted down a humorous little story about whether this guy would even know if he died. That combined with my obsession with coffee was all it took. Like so many other stories, it got lost in the boxes and papers that get moved from place to place until I heard about a new literary magazine that was soliciting submissions in 2008. On a lark, I dug up this story, edited it, and submitted. I was surprised to find it had been selected for publication in Line Zero’s premier issue as ‘a new, fresh, and mildly disturbing voice.’ If it was new and fresh in 2008, what was it in 1983? Yes, this story has been edited. Please don’t confuse the narrator’s voice with the author’s grammar. ©2017 Elder Road Books.
Mixed Media by Devon Layne
In 2016, I was traveling around the world with a backpack and my computer. I read a request for submissions to an anthology of erotica titled Lustily Ever After. Submissions were to be retelling of fairy tales, myths, or legends with an erotic twist. I’d been working on a series of stories that each looked at the myth of Pygmalion, the artist who fell in love with his sculpture for eventual publication under my pen name, Devon Layne. I sat on the balcony of my hotel room in Southern Thailand, looking out at the beach and began typing a story that considered the myth from the opposite direction. What would happen if it was the artwork that fell in love with the artist? The story was published in the anthology Lustily Ever After later that year and in the 2017 release of Devon Layne’s Pygmalion Revisited, a series of six stories that look at the myth from different directions. I include this story even though it was published under the name Devon Layne because it is only gently erotic and very romantic. ©2016 Elder Road Books.
