Free fiction - "One Little Room an Everywhere" by K.J. Parker

At the beginning of October Night Shade Books announced that Eclipse, the series of anthologies edited by Jonathan Strahan, will become from an in print publication to an electronic one, available free of charge on the Night Shade Books’ website. Here is their official announcement:

Night Shade Books is delighted to announce that from October 8, 2012, all new installments of the award-winning Eclipse series will be available to readers online and free of charge at Nightshadebooks.com. Following the lead and success of other short fiction publications, Eclipse will continue its fifth and subsequent volumes as a primarily electronic publication.

Born out of a love for the short story form and a deep appreciation for the work of anthologists such as Terry Carr and Damon Knight, the Eclipse series was launched by Editor Jonathan Strahan and Night Shade Books in 2006. A varietal collection of both science fiction and fantasy, Eclipse has delivered original fiction by some of the genre’s most celebrated authors such as Peter S. Beagle, Maureen McHugh, Andy Duncan, Garth Nix, Ellen Klages, Gwyneth Jones, Ted Chaing, Jeffrey Ford, Deryl Gregory, Caitlín R. Kiernan and others.

Hugo award-nominated editor Jonathan Strahan says, “We’ve taken the dream of Eclipse – that idea of the rare and unusual, the strange and eldritch – and we’ve stripped it down and rebuilt it for a new decade. Now we’re taking it out for a spin. There may be things added to it in the coming months, and things removed, but at its core there will be at least two new stories every month, the best I can find by the most exciting writers in the field.”

Eclipse Online will be a free, online publication and does not require a subscription, sign-up or payment with a story released by Editor Jonathan Strahan every first and fourth Monday of the month.

The first stories are already released, “The Contrary Gardener” by Christopher Rowe on 8^th October and “One Little Room an Everywhere” by K.J. Parker on 22^nd October. I love K.J. Parker’s works and I am huge admirer of this very talented writer. “One Little Room an Everywhere” is a wonderful story and yet another perfect example of the skill possessed by this wonderful author. And together with “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong” and “Let Maps to Others”, available also for free on Subterranean Online, three of the best short stories I read this year.