Having just posted my column from the February/March 2017 issue of Freelance, the magazine of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild (see previous post), it behooves me to be more timely and post the most recent column, from the April/May issue. And here it is! I remember being confused, as a kid, the first time I encountered the …
Tag: science fiction
Read a sample of my new science-fiction novel, THE CITYBORN
Just two months until the July 4 release of The Cityborn, my eighth novel for DAW Books. Review copies have been sent out, and I’m on pins and needles wondering what the reaction will be. On the plus side, both the copy editors and my publicist told me the book was a lot of fun …
Cover art reveal! My eighth DAW novel, The Cityborn
A drumroll, please: I’m pleased to reveal the cover art, by Stephan Martiniere, for The Cityborn, my eighth novel for DAW Books, releasing July 4. It’s a stand-alone science fiction novel, and I’m very pleased that it’s under my real name. Here’s the cover blurb to go with the art: The metal City towers at …
The Space-Time Continuum: Maxims and proverbs and saws, oh my!
Here’s my latest Space-Time Continuum column for Freelance, the magazine of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild: Writers love to write about writing, probably because writing about writing is a great way to avoid actually, you know, writing. Sometimes writing about writing takes the form of a long essay or (ahem) column; sometimes it takes the form …
The Space-Time Continuum: Frankenstein, the first science fiction novel
This is my Space-Time Continuum column for the latest issue of Freelance, the magazine of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. It’s a modified version of a column I wrote ages ago as one of my newspaper science columns. It seemed appropriate to bring that old column back to life…bwah-ha-ha! As I write this, it’s about three …
The Space-Time Continuum: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
My “Space-Time Continuum” column for the August/September 2016 issue of Freelance, the newsletter of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. When I was growing up, in pre-Google days, my go-to book for anything I had a question about was the 1958 edition of Collier’s Encyclopedia, which my parents had bought before I was born. One thing I …
First description of The Cityborn
I was asked today to write a brief description of The Cityborn for DAW Books. Here’s what I came up with: it’s your first peek at my next science fiction novel, my eighth (!) novel for DAW, coming out in about a year’s time. The metal City towers at the center of the mountain-ringed Heartland, squatting like …
The Space-Time Continuum: Women of Futures Past
My latest column for the Saskatchewan Writers Guild’s newsletter, Freelance. Whenever I lead a workshop about writing science fiction, I say it’s important to read widely and deeply in the field: that science fiction is like a long ongoing argumentative conversation, and jumping into it without being aware of what has already been said will …
Two recent audio interviews
While I was Guest of Honour at Can-Con in Ottawa in late October, I had two great audio interviews, one with Kevin Johns of Write-Along Radio, and one with Derek Newman-Stille of the great Speculating Canada website. And here are handy links to each! Here’s the one from Write-Along Radio… …
The Space-Time Continuum: Where do you get your ideas?
This is my latest column on writing science fiction and fantasy for the Saskatchewan Writers Guild newsletter Freelance… One of the challenges of writing a regular column (as I know from long experience, since I wrote a weekly newspaper column for many years) is coming up with ideas. Oddly enough, that’s also one of the …
The Space-Time Continuum: The Aurora Awards
Here’s my Space-Time Continuum column from the December-January issue of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild‘s newsletter Freelance… Literary awards are nice to get. They may or may not help book sales, and they may or may not come with a cash prize, but at the very least, they’re a form of validation for authors. (As Sally …












