Here’s what I hope will be a special treat for people: You can now download the full text (as a pdf) of Tree of Bones, my first novel. It’s a fantasy adventure about family, friendship and hideous undead evil. Download it. Read it. Pass it on. No charge (though small donations will be accepted).

I tried a few times to get a traditional publisher interested in publishing it. After a few (maybe more than a few) rejections, I decided to just toss it out on my website and let people read it if they wanted. That website no longer exists, though and, anyway, PDFs are more portable.

In its current form, the book is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

That means, for one thing, that I allow people to reproduce and distribute it, or even change it to suit themselves, as long as the following conditions are met:

• Distribution must be non-commercial in nature.
• I must be credited as the original author (same as on the title page suits me: “Tree of Bones by David Vandervort”).
• The book and any derivative works you make must be distributed under this same license.

None of that means you can’t ask me for more permissions, by the way. Or better yet, pay me for more permissions. But the rights described here are yours without having to ask or pay me.

The official description of this license can be found here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/.

More information about Creative Commons licenses can be found at http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses.

Hope you enjoy the book. If you want to after you’ve read it, come back here and leave a comment. I’d like to know what you think.

Download it here: tree_of_bones

update 12/7/2009: added the link to the specific license.

One of my short stories, a fantasy about a bard who gets in a lot of trouble, is now available for reading in the current issue of  Sorcerous Signals. The story itself is at http://www.sorceroussignals.com/LegendofBats.html and is also included in their first ever print anthology Mystic Signals . You can buy Mystic Signals at https://www.createspace.com/3370204 or from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Mystic-Signals-1-Carol-Hightshoe/dp/1441453474/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232557841&sr=8-18

I sell a lot more poetry than short stories, even though I’ve been writing stories a lot longer, so it’s a big kick for me to actually see a story make it to print. The stories pay a little better too, though I’m not exactly getting rich off of any of them. Incidentally, this story is one of a sort of loose series of them I’ve been writing (and failing to sell), all taking place at around the same time. For some reason, they are all written in the first person, too. Don’t ask me what order they go in. This is the first one to be published, so it must be first! Did I mention it was a loose series?

Anyway, I hope people will read the story, buy the anthology, and leave comments here telling me what they think.

What do you think?