I hope this finds you comfortable, healthy and safe, wherever in the world you might be right now. The times, they are a tryin', but I'm convinced with a little effort, and a lot of good books, we will all get there.

Here in Vienna, we went from partial to full lockdown last week. This means of course: no bars, no restaurants, no stores--grocery stores, pharmacies and a few others excluded--no work and no school. Yay!

Wait. That's no PHYSICAL work and no PHYSICAL school. Our house is completely online now. It's like the Matrix over here.

So it's me, my wife, Barbara, and three kids, all locked up at home. We are all usually partially dressed. I spent last weekend making a desk whose design I copied from IKEA, and put a surface on top of a wiggly-but-stable thing I hacked together with my son out of old shelving. So now each of us has our own workstation. Each of us has something to do online. There really is no reason to leave the house, except for fresh air and green stuff.

And, of course, like probably all of you, we are tired of the situation. We keep ourselves sane by drinking lots of coffee and using nicotine pills as breath freshener, taking the occasional walk, and reminding ourselves that we are saving up mucho vacation days for whenever all of this fog lifts away and we have the opportunity to travel again.

We are loved, we have people around us, and we are employed. These are things enough people do not have, and so we count our blessings.

At any rate, I believe in my subject heading I promised you some things. Owing to the COVID-19 situation, many of us writers are trying to do our best to help readers get access to free books, and I'm not going to disappoint you today. I'm involved in a few loose-knit writer groups who pool our resources to offer these free book deals, as many of you I'm sure are familiar with.

One of these places is Book Funnel - and I will warn you in advance, a lot of them are coming over the next few weeks. Do you know what else is coming? Thanksgiving. Forget politics with the family. Eat the turkey and then curl up with a good book.

The first of these is Book Funnel's Black Friday Promotion. If you still haven't read New Blood, you can get it there for free, but more importantly, you might meet your next great author. As a reader myself, I spend lots of time on Book Funnel. There's a lot out there, and I will be honest: some of it is good. Some of it is not so good.

But when you find that new author, it's like meeting a new friend. At least it is for me. I just have one favor to ask of you: if you DO find that new author, please come back and tell me. I need new stuff to read, too.