My dark fantasy/urban fantasy short story Something You Should Know” is now available for free from Smashwords. It’s a stand-alone tale set in the world of Brutal Light, taking place a few months before the ‘present day’ action in that book:

A homeless woman, Rennie Kalick, has been given the ability to turn the painful memories of others into weapons, and has used this power to seek revenge for wrongs done to herself and those like her. But Kagami Takeda, whose connection to the merciless, godlike sea of light known as the Radiance was responsible for this gift, wants to take it back. A short story set in the Brutal Light universe.

Though technically it’s a prequel, in that it takes place before Brutal Light, it’s written as a stand-alone story that can be enjoyed without having read my book, with very little in the way of spoilers. (Of course, my hope is to attract more readers for that book, which is my ulterior motive for this whole deal…)

Formats available are .mobi (Kindle-compatible), .epub (Nook-and-many-other-ereader-compatible), .pdf (Adobe), and .pdb (Palm). There should soon be a version that can be directly downloaded from BarnesAndNoble.com for the Nook, and eventually one that can be directly downloaded from Amazon.com for the Kindle. All DRM-free, so you can freely share it, so long as the file is unaltered and remains free.

Thanks again for reading, and I hope you enjoy it!

***Gary W. Olson is the author of the dark fantasy novel Brutal Light and several previously published and forthcoming short stories. He can be found via his website, his blog A Taste of Strange, as @gwox on Twitter, and in many other far-flung places on the Internet.