The best story you're not listening to. (And a CONTEST. Or is it a raffle?)

Mur Lafferty's Marco and the Red Granny is an utter delight. Imagine a world where aliens have revolutionized art by combining the senses, such that wearing a certain suit can make you taste strawberries, or sipping a certain drink can put an entire Sherlock Holmes story into your head. Imagine a frustrated writer-artist who finally gets his chance to go to the moon and produce his art under an alien patronage. Imagine that his only friend is a little old lady who is the winner of a deadly reality television show.

Get the free audio podcast through Hub Magazine's iTunes feed (it's 7 episodes, but episode 4 is in there twice due to technical issues), or directly from the Hub website: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7. Read the story for free at Mur's website, or buy the Kindle version, or buy it on Smashwords.

So here's the contest/raffle: the audio version is running on a donation system, and there's also a donations button on Mur's website. If you send me your receipt for a donation IN ANY AMOUNT to Hub Magazine for Mur's story, or to Mur's own website for the story (you may also get free goodies for donating to her directly, depending on the amount), or if you send me a receipt showing you purchased an electronic version of the story, I will enter you in my contest to win a copy of Mur's superhero novel, Playing For Keeps, which is also awesome. I know the holidays are upon us, and y'all are busy, so I'll keep the contest open until Monday, January 3rd, midnight EST. After that, I pick a name at random, and someone gets a book.

I've written before about the Total Awesome that is Mur, especially her I Should Be Writing podcast (for which I am the show notes writer), but I don't know that I've talked about her fiction before. I should have. She has a number of podcast novels, plus at least one of her novels was given away for free as a PDF as part of her podcast feed... she writes great stuff and gives it away for free, y'all.

Go listen to a great story. Then send the author some cash for her talent and hard work, IN ANY AMOUNT, and you might get another great story, for free. You can email those receipts to carriekei [at] gmail [dot] com.