Free Sortmind Press Titles March 3-March 9

The eBook versions of my literary novels Akard Drearstone, Sortmind, and The Soul Institute, as well as my science fiction novella The First Twenty Steps, can be obtained for free from Smashwords from March 3-March 9 during the 10th Annual Smashwords Read an Ebook Week Sale.

Akard Drearstone

A cinder block falls on Akard Drearstone’s head and he trades his print shop job for lead guitar. Months later, as the four members of the Akard Drearstone Group face the onslaught of national fame at their rural Texas commune, twelve-year-old Jan Pace nurses her crush for the narcissistic, paranoid bassist Jim Piston, growing up way too fast in a surreal summer between seventh and eighth grade.

Sortmind

A startup company’s telepathic Sortmind app Mindwipes ten thousand users in the city of Canterra, and political factions battle in the streets over whether telepathy should be free to all or outlawed. Oliver and Sam, two high school art students whose fathers head the fascist Citizens Against Telepathy, struggle with art, friendship, love, and family–as well as urban warfare, secret societies, hysterical rumors of alien invasion, and the malfunctioning, reality-altering Sortmind.

The Soul Institute

Himal Steina realizes his dream of a mythic return to the sanctuary of a vast foggy university of Soul when he’s appointed writer in residence at the Soul Institute and falls in love with one of its numerous faculty goddesses. But the Soul Institute is splintering under its unhinged Director Alfred Moid Burlcron and his secret society of Overcrons, and as his teenage son consolidates command of the Paint Sniffing Gang, panic and violence build in the small coastal Texas college town.

The First Twenty Steps

Just released from six years in prison, unsure how to meet basic needs, Harry finds a kindred spirit in Roberta, in thrall to a depraved motorcycle gang. But the passive-aggressive leader of the Cerberean Knights leads them into a major crime this evening as he seeks to pay back favors from the corrupt city council of One-West. As the motorcycle attack on the Dataflux computer building turns terrifying and surreal, Harry and Roberta find themselves outgunned by another biker gang belonging to a mysterious billionaire who intervenes to protect his secret hyperspatial supercomputer.