It is Friday!!! I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t excited for every day that celebrates the end of the work week, but something about this one feels extra special, for no apparent reason other than it is time to relax with family and friends. There will be a great deal of reading and gaming taking place as well, no doubt. So pretty much the usual weekend.

This week one of my favorite book companies, Tor Books, is celebrating the 5th birthday of their Tor.com website. If you are a fan of genre fiction, Tor.com is a place that should be on your regular rounds. Not only do they generate engaging geek content, but they also release new original short fiction every week by authors who are well-known as well as newcomers that are starting to make a name for themselves. Tor.com also goes the extra mile to commission artwork from some of today’s best illustrators to accompany each story.

To celebrate their 5th birthday they are giving you a gift. If you register on their site, you can follow the link to download an Ebook with all five years of original fiction, plus illustrations, in whatever format works for your particular reader. This book is priceless in more ways than one. Tor.com is not a site that will bombard you with emails. Once a week you can get a nice email update, and I personally always find something in that email worth wandering over to the site to check out.

To honor their birthday, my Short Fiction Friday post on SF Signal features more recent Tor.com story offerings, and there are a couple of really good ones in the mix this week. I hope you’ll check it out.
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In the interest of full disclosure I wanted to announce the winners of copies of Carrie Cuinn’s collection, Women and Other Constructs. Brigitte won the signed print copy and Deanna and Logan won ebook copies. Congrats to each of you, look forward to hearing your thoughts on the stories when you get a chance to read them.

I’m not sure if it is hot where you are, but it is hot here. The heat makes me want to psychologically escape to a cooler season which of course makes me think of R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril (R.I.P.), the gothic/mystery/horror fiction event I host in the fall. In order to get us in the spirit of the thing, and maybe dispel for a brief time the sweltering heat (and those of you in non-summer climes will feel right at home with this), I will be hosting a spoiler-laden discussion of Carrie Cuinn’s wonderful short story “Mrs. Henderson’s Cemetery Dance” on Sunday here at Stainless Steel Droppings. The story is wonderful and for me it shares a kinship with stories like Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride. I do hope you’ll give it a read and join me on Sunday for a gushing discussion.