I've been writing fiction since approximately
the age of eight, when my mother asked me where all those candy
wrappers hidden in my lampstand came from. Professionally, the
first fiction that I sold came in the Dark Tyrants
anthology for White Wolf, a continuation of the introductory
fiction I'd written for the original Vampire: The Dark
Ages core rulebook. Since that time, I've written four
novels for White Wolf. I've also done a scattering of short
fiction for them and others, and even written some material
that's not tied to a role-playing game property. These days,
I'm concentrating on my own material, which means I can finally
stop procrastinating on that horror novel I first thought of
when I was a graduate student back in Boston. On this page you'll
find links to fiction I've published, with a few words about
the choicer bits, as well as bits and pieces of things I'm working
on.
Published and Upcoming Fiction:
Firefly
Rain
from Wizards of the Coast Discoveries
"Connecting Door" at Pseudopod
"Killer App"in Man Vs. Machine
"Missing Pages" in Astounding Hero
Tales
"Jeremy's Castle" in Flush Fiction
Suburban Sprawl"
at Amazon.com
"Fat Man on an Airplane" in Sinisteria:
Horror for the Hellbound
"The Road Best Not Taken" at Amazon.com
Shadows
in Green from Yard
Dog Press
"Good Advice" at Pseudopod
"Le Bubba Grande" in International
House of Bubbas
"Bearer of Ill News" in Dark
Tyrants
"A Friendly Neighborhood Place to Drink" in
Clan
Novel: Anthology
"Let the River of Death Wash Over Me"
in A
Fistful O' Dead Guys
"Long Evening Out" and
"The Wisdom of Nightingales" at
Stillwaters Journal
"Come Quietly" in Quietus
"Professor Fetherington's Lament"
in Amazing
Heroes II
"Zap 'Em Good", "Tastes Like Brains" and
"She Has Come To The Woods" in
Small
Bites
Clan
Novel: Lasombra
The Trilogy of the Second
Age:
Chosen
of the Sun
Beloved
of the Dead
Children
of the Dragon
The material from
Clan Novel: Lasombra and Clan
Novel: Anthology has been collected
and reprinted in The
Eye of Gehenna, End
Games, and Bloody
September.
"Connecting Door"
This one was derived from a sleepless
night in a hotel on Ocean Boulevard. I was out in LA for a
voice shoot for the game Blazing Angels 2, and there was indeed
a raucous, profane party going on next door that the front
desk swore wasn't happening. Hotels are inherently strange
places, as far as I'm concerned - impersonal attempts at being
"homey" that really just reinforce the anonymity and isolation
of being on the road. No wonder so many people think that
various hotels are haunted; if nothing else, they're haunted
by the things you bring with you. And oddly enough, I've had
"Connecting Door"-like experiences at every hotel I've been
to since the story appeared online...
"Killer App"
I work in video games, so it makes sense to use that knowledge
to produce a story or two on occasion. This one was for an anthology called Man Vs. Machine -
human against machine conflict, from Daw, and considering all the wrestling we do with the games
in development, it wasn't a big jump to make that conflict a little more...personal. On the other hand, there
have been way too many "machine becomes aware and takes over the military" stories over the years - Terminator, anyone? -
so the idea was to give it a bit of an original twist while still striving to keep it authentic. The fact that it's also
a bit of a shaggy dog story for anyone who knows what the letters "TRC" or "TCR" mean in context is just a bonus.
"Good Advice"
Blame Mort Castle, blame Gary Braunbeck.
This story came out of Mort's writing workshop at WHC in Chicago,
at which Gary was Guest Writer. The first words he said to
me were "You got beaten up a lot as a kid, didn't you?" and
from there the story was off and running. There's an essay
on the genesis of the piece over at Storytellers Unplugged;
the link is here.
"The Road Best Not Taken"
This one was originally written for an
anthology called Crypto-Critters, which unfortunately
never saw the light of day. I've had a long-standing interest
in cryptozoology from a more-or-less-scientific angle - there
are some interesting stories out there, at least - so this
ended up being a fun one to write. And along the way, I did
a little bit of research and discovered all sorts of interesting
things about Sasquatch sightings. For one thing, how many
there had been in North Carolina. For another, how many people
I knew claimed to have seen, well, something. With luck, the
story manages to convey a little of what they experienced
- but just a little.
Shadows in Green
This is the first long fiction I published
that wasn't tied into a property of some sort. The cover is
by an old friend, Angeline Shearstone, who's currently also
working on a comics adaptation of "Come Quietly."
Current Projects:
Firefly Rain will be published
by Wizards of the Coast's new Discoveries imprint. Read all
about it here!
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