Today I updated the D.B. Jackson website to include a free download of “The Tavern Fire,” the first story (the first fiction, for that matter) I published as D.B. Jackson. The story first appeared in a terrific anthology called After Hours: Tales from the Ur-Bar, which was edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray. Under the terms of my contract with Daw, the publisher of the anthology, I am allowed to make the story available on my site now that a year has passed since the anthology’s publication.
I should note here that mine was just one of fifteen stories in the antho, and you should still go out and buy After Hours to read those other stories. But in the meantime, you can visit the “Free Samples” page on my site and read a .pdf version of my story.
Told from the point of view of Tiller, a mentally-challenged young man, “The Tavern Fire” offers one possible explanation for a devastating fire that swept through the Cornhill section of Boston early in the morning on March 20, 1760. I hope you enjoy it!