Heroes and Civilians

Heroes and Civilians is a collection of short stories and very short stories written between 2005 and 2010.

It’s got a story about a rabbit, and one about a robot, one about a magician, and one about giant monsters, a few about superheroes, and one about bears on bicycles. There’s also a subject index.

These stories have all been published elsewhere, but they’ve never been collected into one volume before. So there’s that.

A couple of people have said nice things about Heroes and Civilians, like:

• Simon from Happiness is a Warm Simon Gray, who said, “I loved reading the content of ‘Heroes & Civilians’” while also musing wisely on the merit of electronic-only publications
• Thomas DeMary from PANK, who said: “Adam Ford exudes a control of the flash form, as well as an adherence to the principles of fiction, in a way not seen before by this reviewer.”

Heroes and Civilians is available to download for free from the folks at Smashwords in a range of ebook and other-sundry-electronic-file formats, including Epub, .mobi, .pdf  and many more, so you can read it on your iPhone, iPad, Kindle or whatever. Just head over to Heroes and Civilians on Smashwords and download your file of choice.

In the meantime here’s a quick sample:

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Rabbit.

Yeah, we were close once. Back before I cleaned up. Thing is, he didn’t leave immediately. I was sober for years before the last time I saw him. Over time we bumped into each other less and less frequently. Initially it would just be that he would be waiting for me in the kitchen at breakfast instead of standing at the foot of my bed. After a while I’d only see him outside the house – at the coffee shop or the library, and occasionally on my lunch break. It was always good to see him, but our conversations were becoming stilted. Awkward. Forced. In time the awkwardness became embarrassing. The last time I saw him he was drunk. Really drunk. I’d seen him tipsy before, seen him trip giggling over cracks in the sidewalk, pulling me down with him as he collapsed in a huge furry mess, but I’d never seen him angry drunk like this. I was standing in line at the bank and he stormed up to me out of nowhere. I turned to face him and he dug a finger into my chest so hard that I could feel his claw through my jacket. I looked into his pink, bloodshot eyes. His breath stank of bourbon. I managed a smile and asked him how he’d been these last few months. He hawked and spat a wad of orange saliva into my face. I stumbled back, reaching for my handkerchief. “I got somethin’ to say to you, pal,” he said, his Irish brogue slurring with the booze. “I don’t believe in you either.” I closed my eyes and wiped my face clean. When I looked up he was gone. That was eighteen years ago.

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(and if you like this free stuff, I have other stuff for actual sale, like a poetry book and zines and comics, over in the shop)