Free Fiction Monday: Heroics
Maxwell Scobel writes about heroes for a living. He studies them, imagines them, imagines being them. But when a routine drive turns into a fight for his life—and the life of his soon-to-be-adopted three-year-
old daughter—he must rise to the occasion. Or lose everything he never knew he held dear. Voted One of the Top Ten stories of the year by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine readers.
“Heroics,” written by Edgar-award nominee Kristine Kathryn Rusch is free on this website for one week only. The story is also available for $2.99 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and in other e-bookstores.
The free story will be available for one week only. If you missed this one, click on the links above. There’s another free story lurking somewhere around the site. Track the story down, read, and enjoy!
Great story. Makes me think of my current pet peeve I keep running into when I read Romances… kids/babies are involved and the heroine wants to assert herself by haring off after the bad guys. Makes me nuts. I have nothing against women taking off after the bad guys… or men taking off after the bad guys… but you only do it when someone has the initial, most important job, of keeping the children safe.
It’s one thing when I’m reading an old Bourne novel and his wife leaves the babies and I think (possibly unfairly) that it’s because a man wrote it, and another when it’s a romance. You’d think that these people never had children and had those nightmares where you head off to battle the alien invasion and get back to the underground bunkers and CAN’T REMEMBER WHERE YOU LEFT YOUR KIDS. Well, okay, the first part of that is probably my unique nightmare, but I’m pretty sure that all parents dream that they’ve lost their children.
I’m the same way, Synova. I yell at the TV screen “What about the kids???” sometimes. I also yell at the screen, “There’s someone behind you!!!” so maybe the yelling isn’t indicative of anything except my own insanity. 🙂
Thank you for the nice comment.
One word: riveting. I realized I wasn’t even breathing for a good portion of the story. I see how you got voted one of the top 10 stories.
Thank you for sharing, that is one hell of a good tale. Now I gotta go tell people to come read.
Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it, Edmund.
I’m glad it’s a short story, I would have stayed up half the night to see how it ended.
And a little strange to read it on the same day that there was a story in the paper about a Burger King employee who drove off with a pair of robber’s car while they were in the restaurant.
Thanks, Tony. I’m glad you enjoyed it. 🙂 I hadn’t seen that news story. How bizarre.