Downloads

Ventus - Complete novel

I've made my first novel, Ventus, available as a free download, as well as excerpts from two of the Virga books. I am looking forward to putting up a number of short stories in the near future.

Complete novel: Ventus

To celebrate the August, 2007 publication of Queen of Candesce, I decided to re-release my first novel as an eBook. You can download it from this page. Ventus was first published by Tor Books in 2000, and and you can still buy it; to everyone who would just like to sample my work, I hope you enjoy this version.

I've released this book under a Creative Commons license, which means you can read it and distribute it freely, but not make derivative works or sell it.

Book Excerpts: Sun of Suns and Pirate Sun

I've made large tracts of these two Virga books available. If you want to find out what the Virga universe is all about, you can check it out here:

Major Foresight Project: Crisis in Zefra

In spring 2005, the Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts of National Defense Canada (that is to say, the army) hired me to write a dramatized future military scenario. The book-length work, Crisis in Zefra, was set in a mythical African city-state, about 20 years in the future, and concerned a group of Canadian peacekeepers who are trying to ready the city for its first democratic vote while fighting an insurgency. The project ran to 27,000 words and was published by the army as a bound paperback book.

If you'd like to read Crisis in Zefra, you can download it in PDF form.

Short Stories

I'll be adding new stories here periodically. First of all, you can try my Aurora-award nominated short story "Hopscotch." The year this was nominated, another of my stories was also nominated: "The Toy Mill," which I wrote with David Nickle. "The Toy Mill" won the award; but I've always been fond of "Hopscotch." Here it is, in its entirety excerpted from my collection The Engine of Recall.

Hopscotch

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...And now it can be told

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I'll be writer in residence at the Merril Collection next spring

Merril Collection banner

The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculation is one of the most prestigious science fiction research collections in the world. As part of the Toronto Public Library system, it's open to the public and is housed in a modern building in downtown Toronto (in between the University of Toronto campus and Chinatown). I'm delighted to be able to say that I'll be Writer in Residence at the Merril between January and March of 2010.

This is a position of service to the public. I'll be given time to work on my own material every day, but I'll also be making myself available to library visitors to discuss writing, review manuscripts, facilitate networking between prospective writers, and so on.

I'm very excited and honoured to be doing this, because twenty-three years ago, I arrived in Toronto by myself; didn't know anybody; and by chance heard about a local TPL branch called (then) the Spaced Out Library. I showed up to discover that Judith Merril was currently writer in residence, and through her I was introduced to some of the best friends I've made in this lifetime. The writer's workshop that Judy started at that time--I was there at the inaugural meeting--has been meeting once a week since 1987. It's with great pride that I find myself coming full circle to become writer in residence at the very library that made my writing career possible.