Just as a note, I know my stuff is generally not what you read, but if you're ever interested, let me know and I'll send you one of your choice (in ebook or physical format).

I put absolutely no requirement on you that you read it in any given time. Just that you attempt it "someday", and understanding that "someday" could be months or years.

So which one do you want? Here's the summary:

Paradigms Lost: Urban fantasy set in a very large universe (same universe as the Balanced Sword trilogy, below), featuring Jason Wood, a completely normal human who keeps getting involved in supernatural problems. A vastly rewritten, updated version of my first novel Digital Knight.

Grand Central Arena: Grand-scale space opera, a modernized salute to the Golden Age and Doc Smith in particular (although the references are vastly more diverse). The testing of the supposed first FTL ship strands the crew in a universe that is apparently where anyone using the FTL drive goes, and to get out you need to participate in competitions -- Challenges -- that could cost you everything. One sequel already out (Spheres of Influence) and I'm working on Challenges of the Deeps, the third entry.

The Balanced Sword: An epic-fantasy trilogy set in the same universe as Paradigms Lost, on a different world (but there are connections between Paradigms Lost that those who read that book will get). The first book is _Phoenix Rising_, the second _Phoenix in Shadow_, the third _Phoenix Ascendant_ (forthcoming in March). Kyri Vantage discovers that the deaths of her family were due to the actions of some of the people she most trusted, and becomes the last emissary of a dying god, while Tobimar Silverun is set in exile to quest for his lost homeland, and Poplock Duckweed, an intelligent toad, is searching for someone to deal with a potential demonic invasion in his homeland. The three problems are, of course, connected...


The Boundary series: This is a co-written venture with Eric Flint, a hard-SF near-future adventure with minimal violence, most of the challenge to our characters being the fact that space travel is challenging and dangerous. Helen Sutter discovers a strange fossil like nothing else on Earth; A.J. Baker discovers an alien installation on Phobos. The two are very much connected... Includes the books Boundary, Threshold, and Portal, with Castaway Planet a book in the same universe but 150-200 years farther on.

Polychrome: My only self-published novel, though several publishers spent a lot of time deciding whether or not to take it, this is an Oz-based (as in The Wizard of Oz) novel that attempts to tell an adult-level story set in a version of Oz that is as respectful of the original as I could make it and still tell a coherent adult-protagonist story in it. Two of the greatest villains of Oz return, with a plan that succeeds completely, and only Polychrome, Daughter of the Rainbow, escapes to deliver the slender thread of hope: a prophecy that says that the villains *can* be defeated -- though success is not in any way certain. She must first travel to the mortal world and find someone who fits the prophecy, and then return him to learn what he must before confronting the power that now holds all Oz in its grip.



Let me know which one you want!

What did you think of Les Misérables? I think it's probably the most skilfully written piece of melodrama I've read, with some exquisite moments of dramatic irony (a typical example: the episode in which Marius, due to a complex series of innocent misunderstandings, believes that he owes his father's life to Thénardier and must help him in his scheme against Valjean).