Free Stuff

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 a free 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 free 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:

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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6-alarm fire 1 block from Toronto's Bakka Phoenix bookstore

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news

625 Queen West gutted; Bakka's at 697 QW

Not surprisingly, I can't get through on Bakka's phone line; but I don't think they've been caught up in the disaster. Bakka Phoenix is Toronto's oldest SF bookstore, kind of a Mecca for SF travelers. It's where Cory Doctorow worked before he published his first novel; myself, Peter Watts, and many other Canadian SF writers have held book launches and signings there.

A six-alarm fire is one level below the maximum on Toronto's scale. I'm not sure what seven would look like, but this one involves over 100 firefighters, a dozen fire trucks, and essentially an entire downtown city block on fire.

The big problem is the cold and wind chill; I just saw a picture of a fire ladder completely encased in ice up against the side of a building. Whatever they spray freezes instantly, so the storefronts, streets and sidewalks in the area are quickly turning into a glacial mess. There's also a lot of smoke and transit chaos--just not a good place to be right now.

I wish the best for everybody affected; nobody's died, which is a blessing, but many people are homeless and local businesses may be devastated. It's very sad.