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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Discovering the Pinnacles

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One of the strangest landscapes on Earth, a short drive from our hotel

Ken MacLeod and I were talking about places to see in Western Australia. There's plenty I haven't seen here; I've never been to the Margaret River caves, for instance. I have seen the Pinnacles, however; and I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in the bizarre and exotic.

The Pinnacles 1

The Dutch sailors who first spotted this area from the ocean thought it must be the ruins of a city. Up close, it's even stranger: miles of sandy desert dotted with grotesque standing stones, like thousands of druidic henges; so many that you can wander out among them and easily become lost.

The Pinnacles average about two meters in height, which adds to the strangeness; you're in a forest of stone statues your own height. They've been worn by the wind and sand, some into almost-human shapes. It must be fantastic to be out here at night, especially during a full moon.

The Pinnacles 2

You can take a tour bus from downtown Perth, visit the Pinnacles, and be back by supper. Very civilized--but luckily Perth itself is remote. What I mean is that I hope the Pinnacles doesn't become too easy to get to. There are many such places in Western Australia that are only now being opened up to tourism. Right now, you can practically have them to yourself. It's sad to think that this might change, because I'd hate to have to experience wondrous regions such as the Pinnacles from behind a fence, as you now have to do at Stonehenge.