A little late this month, but Phoenix Pick's free offering for February is Michael Flynn's
Captive Dreams:
"This is a collection that has a bit of history with the author. Michael had discussed a "pet" project with another publisher, where he would write six stories about residents of six houses on a street. Each story would then tangentially touch each other by characters from one story making a brief appearance in another (although they may be much older, or younger...the stories were set in different time periods).
However, the other publisher pulled out of the project after the first three stories were written and these stories were then published elsewhere.
One of these stories, "Melodies of the Heart," is one of my all time favorite novellas in science fiction and I've always been a big fan of Michael Flynn. If you like strong character development and a suberb use of the language to convey complex ideas I highly recommend his novels,
The Wreck of the River of Stars and
Eifelheim amongst others (this is not a plug for our products, both these books were published by TOR).
When Michael told me about the project as it was meant to have been, I immediately jumped at the opportunity and asked him to write the additional three stories to complete the six stories he had envisioned. This collection then became
Captive Dreams (also the title of one of the stories in the book).
Publisher's Weekly gave it a starred review with the following quote:
"Great writing, vivid scenarios, and thoughtful commentary...the stories will linger after the last page is turned"
www.PhoenixPick.com/botm/Captive.htm
