Whale Meat

jeff_duntemann has been very interested in ebooks and a "short story jukebox" where authors could sell their stuff to people directly. Friday, he took another step towards implementing this by releasing his short story Whale Meat in e-book format on Lulu.com. It's Jeff's only fantasy story (or so I recall from his email to me) and a very good read. (Full disclosure - Jeff reviewed and liked my novel The Mars Run)

First, a word about formats. Jeff is selling Whale Meat for $1. He gets 80 cents, and Lulu gets twenty. For your money, you get a zip file with the story in several formats (PDF, RTF, and a couple of others) as well as a license to store, use, read etc. the story on any electronic device "based in your household." There's no Digital Rights Management (DRM) crap, just plain files. I read the RTF version, simply because I printed it out to take downstate.

The story itself is a fantasy, set in present-day Chicago, and stars Yonnie and Mara, a pair of witches. Witches are very long-lived, and economic outcasts, relying on charity and their wits. Mara is also pregnant with Yonnie's child James, and will be for several more years. This requires a furtive livestyle. To make matters worse, she needs whale meat, which is damned hard to find in Chicago in a cold March. As I said, it's an interesting story, in which both witchcraft and calculus, the "mathematics of change" have critical roles to play.

Jeff tells me that the initial impetus for the story was his struggles with calculus as an undergraduate, a problem I share with the author. At any rate, I highly recommend Whale Meat and wish Jeff the best with his experiments in digital jukeboxes.