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

Personal tools

Okay, THIS is bragging

Filed Under:

shameless bragging

Locus has listed every one of my books in the top two-dozen for its publication year; so why am I still struggling to establish myself?

I just received the February edition of Locus magazine, and lo and behold Queen of Candesce has made their Recommended Reading list for 2007. It's one of 28, as usual--a little over two dozen science fiction books that this industry mag recommends, out of approximately 250 published last year.

Of course this is great--but here's the thing: every one of my novels has made this list.

My books regularly make various top-ten lists, but this list is important because it's some of the genre's chief reviewers and critics weighing in. I believe, since we're up to five in a row, that I can sense a trend here. And you'd think it would be a good sign--but nothing in publishing is easy to interpret. I still feel like the best-kept secret in SF; I mean, if I'm so shit-hot, why is it that not a single one of my books has gone into a second printing? If every one of my novels since the year 2000 has hit the top-ten recommendation lists, why do I still get invited to participate in convention panels for new and first-time authors? Why am I not on the top-ten sales lists?

It could be I have a face only a reviewer could love. --And mind you, I'm not complaining because, after all, I am being regularly published. My fantasies of being a science fiction writer are getting indulged by the real world.

Maybe, in the end, that's as good as it needs to get.

. . .Naaaaaaw. I still want that bestseller.