In the early days of post Lord of the Rings fantasy, there were a lot of quest stories involving ancient foes, magical weapons and lots of unpronounceable names. Heck, there still are! While I'm sure the writers intended all those strange names and tales of earlier battles to give their story a false sense of depth (without going through all the trouble Tolkien went through), they all ended up sounding the same. To slay the dread lord blah, you must first find the lost <item> of blah, which blah used to defeat blah blah in the battle of blah....

How much better I thought, rather than starting after all the big battles are fought and focusing on the tired last gasp of some ancient evil, why not show how it all began? This way, when the dread lord blah rears his ugly head yet again, the reader can say I remember when he was just a snot-nosed kid annoying his cousins. Man I wish they had just thrown him off a cliff when they had the chance, before he caused all this destruction! Like the classic story of the farm boy who becomes a mythic warrior, the saga itself can progress in a similar fashion, acquiring a depth that no mere series of sequels can hope to acquire.

Anyway, that's what I hope to accomplish with the Chronicles stories.

I started a short story dealing with Elgin's escape from prison years ago while waiting to see if I'd get picked for jury duty. Though an interesting scene, I wasn't sure if it would serve as more than a prelude for the novel. The project has been on hold while more urgent projects have pushed themselves again. I expect to come back to it at some point because it serves as the backstory for The Ascent.

When I was just a kid in grade school, I would often find myself with a half-dozen volumes of The World Book encyclopedia spread across the living room floor open to some subject or other. At one point I made it through to the "X"s where I found an entry for Xenophon and this picture—

—entitled: Xenophon Gave Thanks to the Gods as his “Ten Thousand” Finished Their Long Retreat to the Bosporus.”

I can't say precisely what it was about this picture that so capture my imagination, but after reading about Xenophon and the “March of the Ten Thousand” I would—even years later—bore people with a passionate recounting of those historical events. A science fiction version of the Anabasis (Xenophon's autobiographical account of the event) has become a necessity. I've only begun to feel up to telling the story the way I think it should be told and hope to start work on it soon.

This is one of my older stories. After sitting on the back burner for a very long time, I got it out (a couple of years ago) and rewrote it in first person. I don't know whether it was the POV change or whether it was just the long gestation period, but it now reads much better.

Although SF was really my first love, I had spent a lot of time focused on fantasy up until this story. It was in preparing for The Ascent that I asked my good friend Jim Sharkey what developments had been made in the theory of FTL travel in the years where I hadn't been paying much attention. The answer was "not much". So I began doing some readings in physics.

I wanted a mode of FTL travel that didn't involve black holes or hyperspace (of which the former is seeming increasingly unlikely) but which would also allow characters to travel among the stars at a reasonable rate. It was in trying to solve that problem I came up with the Heisenberg Drive or the Quantum Wave Effect Generator. There were, however, some potential complications in using such a device as a means of propulsion. It was one of these potential side effects that inspired this story.

Innocent Blood was really intended to be a key point in the development of the novel A Kingdom of Stone which is intended to be the first book in the Chronicles of the First Age. It is an origin myth that explains how the world of Anghar got it's name, what it means and why it was changed. Even though it's actually an excerpt, I think it plays well as a separate work.

This story is hard to describe as it is rather abstract. It is almost a throwback to the type of stories I would write when I was much younger and much closer to the weird SF stories of the early 1960's. It violates most of the rules they give young writers, but given it's subject matter, I think it works. It may be nearly impossible to find a market for it, but in some ways it is one of my better stories.

Mask came about almost by accident. I was doing some world building on a weekend visit to the in-laws and ended up writing the bulk of this story in the van on the way home. It was one of those rare (for me) stories that just come together and make themselves quick and easy to write.

This is another story that came about as a result of doing some world building. It also was largely written on a weekend visit to the in-laws. Like Mask it progressed rather quickly, though it wasn't until I discovered the theme in a bit of inner dialog that I was able to complete it and give it a title.

You know, buying a laptop was probably the best decision I've made in my writing career. Though I'm sure my wife would say that I spend too much time playing on it. I've made more progress in the year after I got it than I had in several years leading up to it. Of course getting laid off, moving across country and spending ten months looking for work followed by two job changes probably had something to do with my earlier (lack) of productivity as well.

There was a time when humorous stories came naturally to me. I once made my 8th grade english teacher cry as she tried to read to the class a humorous piece I wrote entitled “The Day My Science Project Blew Up”. My dad even once said that he thought my brother and I were of the opinion that life itself was absurd.

For some reason this story has been difficult to write. Even though it's done, it's going to need some more polishing before it is ready to see the light of day. I guess Terry Pratchett has a little more time before I'll be a threat to him.

This story surprised me. It started almost as a lark, a bit of back story for Overdue that had been percolating in the back of my head. But the more I worked on it, the better it got. I managed to finish it rather quickly and it clearly cries out for more. This story leans a little more YA than a lot of my stuff, but if my subconscious continues to throw up more ideas for these characters I may very well do a novel for them.

An overenthusiastic conversation with a few individuals who shall not be named (but collectively may be known as the Carpel Tunnel Martyrs’ Brigade) prompted me to write this novella when someone said, “Hey! Let's do our own little self-published project. Let's call it Zombies In space!” It was probably ill-advised--only one other member besides myself actually followed through on this challenge--but it is still a completed story and now has to go out in public and account for itself. If only I can find a market for it.

Having written several stories about the little green guys, I thought I'd try and put together my own little goblin anthology. This is just one I came up with for that project.