It would appear from the sidebar that this space is close to having 1000 followers, so I wanted to remind all of you lovely readers that I made a promise back in September that if A Beautiful Fiction reached the 1000 follower mark by the end of the year, I would make all of my short stories free for one day (January 2nd, my gift to you on my birthday). As of the writing of this post, we’re 37 followers away from that goal.

First, thank you for reading and for sharing articles with your friends through email, on Facebook, and on Twitter. I hope that you continue to find these posts informative and encouraging.

Second, I do have to apologize and tell you that one story (“This Elegant Ruin”) will not be available as part of this giveaway because it is officially a runner up in the Saturday Evening Post 2014 Great American Fiction Contest and I’m awaiting a contract that will outline which rights I maintain to it. Suffice to say, it will be free online anyway as it will be on the Saturday Evening Post‘s website in January or February. It will also appear in their 2014 fiction anthology. And I believe I will still be able to include it in my short story collection next year (both ebook and printed book).

So, once more…

How can you help make this great giveaway happen?

1.) One easy way is to click the Follow button on the righthand side of the screen if you are not already an official follower of this blog. You’ll get new posts emailed to you automatically–and nothing else. No spam. No ads. Just blog posts. That’s it. When I blog you’ll know about it and you’ll be among the first to know about future giveaways and promos!

2.) When you read a blog post that speaks to you, please share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter or email it to someone you think would enjoy and benefit from what I write about here.

Here’s the other big announcement: Once the January 2, 2014 date passes, the stories will not only no longer be free, they will no longer be available on Kindle. I’ll be taking them all out of circulation as I work on the collection. So get them while they’re hot.

Thanks again for reading.