Yes! It’s that day! It’s International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!

(Yes, I know, technically that was yesterday, it’s 1:00 AM on the 24th now, whatever, I’m backdating this post, so sue me.)

As promised, Jo Walton has posted the official IPSTPD Post to her LiveJournal. It features a growing list of links to Free Content Posted By Nasty Nasty Webscabs like… Jo Walton herself, James D. Macdonald and Debra Doyle, Diane Duane, Sherwood Smith, Charles Stross, Beth Meacham… and those are just the names on her list that I recognize off the bat. There’s more. There’s much more.

There’s more elsewhere. Scalzi gets into the act over at the Whatever, presenting us with a decade-old YA gem called The Durant Chronicles: Crisis at Tlada. He reiterates that this novel fragment is free, free of charge, free forever, but….

[I]f you find yourself enjoying it so much that you feel the need to show your appreciation in the form of cash, allow me to suggest that rather than sending the cash to me, you instead send it to Reading is Fundamental, which is an organization that supports literacy in children and adults, and that’s something I can really get behind. Indeed, I would ask all participants in International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day to list a charity and ask their readers to support it, in lieu of paying for all the delicious free reading they’re getting today.

He also offers a yummy recording of himself, Charles Stross, and Tobias Buckell at Penguicon conversing about doing this fiendish and dastardly webscabbie deed of posting free fiction online to promote yourself. And then there’s David Moles at Chrononaut Log offering us his short story “On The Night,” which he says is the first real story he ever finished. And then… well, Google the festival’s name yourself and just see who turns up.

Though I’m not even hardly in their league, I’ve contributed a little, too, and will contribute more over the following week. There’s a shiny new “Recent Publications” list on my home page with links to online publications where available. Of those, my very short story “Narcissus Pastorale” is probably most in keeping with the spirit of the day; I submitted it to a contest held in-game on Second Life, for crying out loud. I won first place, yes, but the prize was in Linden Dollars (L$). In US dollars that probably comes to about four cents. So it’s as free as darn near nevermind. Over the next couple days I’ll reprint that (so that you won’t need a Second Life account to read it in all its purple glory) along with a slew of embarrassments from my college days (they got published, yes, but… I hope I’ve improved since!). When they’re up I’ll post a comment to Jo Walton’s LJ post as well as link ‘em from my front page too.

And ditto what Scalzi said about donating to charities.

So did any of y’all participate? Got links to free fiction? Post ‘em in the comments here! I wanna see!