This work contains several bad words not suitable for people who don't like bad words. If you're one of those people, you can't say you weren't warned.

A shareware novel is like any other novel you might read, except that instead of buying the novel first, and deciding after reading it whether it's worth what you paid for it, you read this novel first, and then decide if you want to pay me for having had the (let's hope) pleasure of reading it. It's that simple.

The existence of the World Wide Web and the ability to download make this method possible — neither I nor a publisher had to spend thousands of dollars printing up paper version in the hopes of getting you to buy it. My costs (minus the time and effort spent writing the novel, of course) is minimal: Simply the time I spent formatting this novel, and the other essays/intros/etc. that go with it. My reasons for going this route are explained in depth in "Dr. Impatient, or, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Publishing My Novel Online," at the back of the book. For now, let's just say the benefit for you is that I don't start in a financial hole — and this allows me to let you pay what you think this novel is worth.

You might decide, for whatever reason, that there's no need to pay me anything for it. That's your decision to make — you might not like it, or you might decide the entertainment value was too low, or you might just be one of those folks who believe you shouldn't pay for anything that you don't absolutely have to pay for. Well, fair enough; by putting this novel out there in this form, that's the risk I take.