FREE Today: Anything—A Short Story
I sat down to write this post and thought I might as well be professional and well-put-together.
I pulled up the SAW Publishing welcome page. I clicked on the blog tab. Yes, I have been writing for SAW Publishing for just under a decade. No, I have never saved the direct link to the blog in my browser. No, I do not have anything beyond my own laziness to blame for the amount of time I waste clicking twice and waiting for two pages to load when I could cut the journey in half.
However, having eventually arrived at my own blog, I scrolled back and made a point of copying the formatting from the last SAW Publishing short story. Turns out our last freebie post read “FREE Today: One Size Too Big.”
I returned to my Word doc and began typing.
“FREE Today: Anything.”
I stopped, suddenly conscious of the unintended implication.
Anything by Courtenay Burden.
Yeah, sorry—not quite.
Because as much as I love you guys—I totally don’t have the financial resources to offer you my whole catalogue for free. Even if it IS only for “today!”
The Story Behind “Anything”
As some of you already know, I’ve been first a camper and then a councillor or “auntie” at the King’s Daughters’ Writing Camp since KDWC’s inauguration in 2020. If you aren’t familiar with this amazing organization, you can check it out right here. Registration for July camp opens June 18.
Some time during the early days of KDWC one of the campers asked for some book recommendations. (Book recs at a writing camp! Who knew?) In a lengthy list of replies, someone recommended “Anything by—” several authors involved in the camp.
Appearing in a list of titles and authors, it faked out various readers—including some of the authors themselves—who did a momentary double-take trying to remember having published a book called “Anything.”
None of them had.
But then somebody said, “What a great idea . . .”
The first King’s Daughters’ Writing Camp short story collection appeared a few months later, titled—you guessed it—Anything! Today’s short story freebie, Anything by Courtenay Burden, is a reprint of my original contribution to that collection. If you like it, you might want to grab the whole book: Anything (King’s Daughters’ Story Collection Book 1). It’s available in both paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.
Anything by Courtenay Burden
“Just sing! I can fix anything but silence.”
Ashlyn is a self-conscious teenager who’s firmly convinced that music is not her gift. The chance to attend a week-long singing camp sounds more like a nightmare than a dream-come-true.
But when your sister’s fiancé is on the camp board, apparently staying at home isn’t an option.
Lacking the resolution to tell Lil what she’s actually afraid of, Ashlyn finds herself filling out the paperwork for what she’s sure is going to be the most harrowing week of her life—a week that will be painfully embarrassing to herself and massively discouraging to everyone she interacts with.
But when Lil adds an extra condition to Ashley’s registration form, shrinking into the shadows disappears from Ashley’s list of options.
Has she actually promised to embrace anything God sends her way at camp? And is there even a chance that her horrible singing could end in anything but disaster?
Originally published in the King’s Daughters’ Writing Camp collection of the same title, Anything will challenge you to take a new look at your perspective on being an instrument in the hands of God.
Grab Your FREE Copy Today!
Now that you know what I mean by the term, I’m excited to be offering you Anything—available free June 3-5.
It’s the second in SAW Publishing’s ongoing series of short stories, so if you like fiction and you like freebies, stay tuned for more to come! If you aren’t already a Sheep Among Wolves newsletter subscriber, you can sign up through the banner at the top of this page. (Or the one in the sidebar, but between ourselves, I think the one at the top is cooler!) Either way, make sure you’re not missing out on all the freebies, book news, and fun tidbits that go out regularly to our email group.
You can grab your copy of Anything right here:
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Aw, thank you so much, Courtenay!
My pleasure!