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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First review of Pirate Sun

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reviews

Locus magazine calls my world Virga "one of the most intriguing and enjoyable story-spaces of recent devising."

I always eagerly await my reviews in Locus, but luckily they've been reviewing my Virga series well in advance of the books' arrival. Pirate Sun will be published in August, but in the June, 2008 issue of Locus Russell Letson reveals all. Though there's no easy pull-quotes from his review, it's clear that he really enjoyed the book.

Actually, reading this review made me realize just how byzantine a storyline I've crafted:

Chaison wants to get back to Slipstream, but first he has to hide out in Falcon Formation, which turns out to be threatened with invasion by the neighboring nation of Gretels and to be harboring a resistance movement against its own authoritarian government. Elsewhere, the defeated nation of Aerie... has developed another underground... if that weren't complicated enough, Chaison is being hunted by agents of his own government... an action that has caused turmoil in Slipstream and a crisis in the rule of the Pilot. Oh, and...

Well, it goes on. All I can say is, it seemed pretty simple to me as I was writing it.

As Letson points out (with some glee), Pirate Sun wraps up the main plotlines introduced in Sun of Suns, but doesn't answer all questions. As he puts it, "even three volumes seems much too short a ride for the possibilities offered by Virga"--and I agree. I'm currently putting the finishing touches on The Sunless Countries and (bonus!) I'm writing some Virga short stories and novellas, the first of which should be finished in about a week.

Meanwhile, I'm buoyed up by this first review. It's an auspicious start.

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Any more with Hayden Griffen?

Posted by Jon Rosebaugh at Jun 04, 2008 11:06 PM

Like it says on the tin, I'm interested in reading more about Hayden. While I'm guessing he'll be in Pirate Sun, I'm also wondering if he will perhaps feature in Sunless Countries?

Incidentally, your openID login seems to be broken; it kept inviting me to log in after I had attempted to do so.

Hayden's return

Posted by Karl Schroeder at Jun 05, 2008 09:27 AM

You will be seeing Hayden again, but not (directly) in Pirate Sun.

Sorry about the openID thing, I can't seem to get it fixed, but I'm highly motivated to find some sort of solution that makes it easier for people to post comments here; the problem is that the previous iteration of this site was pretty well drowned by spambot postings, so I'm more than a bit paranoid about logins now.

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