“Packed with action and imagined worlds
and filled to the brim with sparkling detail”
NEWSWEEK
“A potent metaphor for the toleration of diversity”
NEW YORK TIMES
“A feast for those who like their fantasies dark”
LOCUS
Dreamseeker (Dreamwalker Chronicles #2)
When Jessica Drake learned that her DNA didn’t match that of her parents, she had no idea that the search for her heritage would put her family’s lives in danger, or force her to cross into another world. In an alternate Earth dominated by individuals with unnatural mental powers called Gifts, Jessica learned that there was a curse within her blood, one so feared that all who possessed it were destroyed on sight. For she was a Dreamwalker, and the same dark Gift that would allow her to enter the dreams of others would eventually destroy her mind and spread insanity to all those around her. read more…
Dreamseeker
Just turned in the final draft for DREAMSEEKER, volume 2 in the Dreamwalker Trilogy. Yes, it turned out to be a trilogy! Though I considered making it a longer series, I decided my readers deserved an ending in less time than that. Volume 2 ups the ante on darkness, features the young Shadow Isaac as a main character, and should blow away the “second book of a trilogy” curse. Jesse’s dreamwalking powers are front and center, with some wonderful (and disturbing) dream manipulations. Coming in July to a bookstore near you.
Will post excerpts soon.
Dreamwalker News
Dreamwalker is here in paperback. And a beautiful paperback it is, too…get your copy now!
Dreamwalker (Dreamwalker Chronicles #1)
All her life Jessica Drake has dreamed of other worlds, some of them similar to her own, others disturbingly alien. She never shares the details with anyone, save her younger brother Tommy, a compulsive gamer who incorporates some aspects of Jessica’s dreams into his games. But now someone is asking about those dreams…and about her. A strange woman has been watching her house. A visitor to her school attempts to take possession of her dream-inspired artwork. read more…
Perfect Day makes the big time
My story Perfect Day will be included in Hartwell’s Year’s Best Science Fiction for 2012. So for all of you who missed the magazine debut and want a dead tree copy, it’s on its way….
And the blog is launched….
I often tell folks that in order to write you have to be willing to reject your own work. Sometimes what you’ve written just isn’t right for a project, and you have to let it go.
Today I was tested on that point, as I had to throw out two chapters of Dreamseekers. It was really frustrating, since I’m within weeks of needing to finish this thing, but they just weren’t what the book needed. POV was just all wrong. AARRRRGH
It Has a Name! (and a pub date)
My next novel will be called Dreamwalker, and is due out in Febrary 2014. Which means I’ll have to keep feeding y’all excerpts till then, so stay tuned!
Dreamseeker IV: Shadowlords
(Advice from the Green Man:)
“The Shadowlords are insane. Never forget that. Their Gift is handed down from person to person, and it carries with it all the memories of those who possessed it in the past. All their prejudices and obsessions, their hatreds and fears and uncertainties, melded to the brain of one who was born and bred for such a process, and who has been told from childhood that he must submit to it…think what that would do to a man!” He looked up toward the mansion high above us. “I’ve been told that some become lost in the process and that they wander places like this in a haze, unable to fix on a single identity, or even a single time frame. Others appear to be more rational. But even with the latter, there’s still madness at the core of them. Dozens of ancestral voices clamoring inside their heads every waking moment, each one derived from a Shadow who was himself insane. Madness layered upon madness, all of it trapped within a soul that must walk the borderline between life and death, committed to neither…
“Never forget what they are,” he warned us. “Never forget that no matter how human they may appear to be, they ceased to be that long ago.”
Coldfire in the UK!
You asked for it, we listened: Orbit will be producing an e-book version of the Coldfire Trilogy for readers in the UK. No date yet, but I’ll post it when I have it.
Dreamseeker: Excerpt III
There was a pteradactyl sitting on my chest.
Not a big one. Parrot-sized. It had its head turned to one side so that its little black eye could stare at me, and there was no mistaking the profile.
A pteradactyl.
“Ah. You’re awake.” A man’s voice filtered into my awareness. I tried to turn my head toward him, but the motion hurt. Everything hurt.
“Here”, he said, to someone other than me. “I saved one for you.”
A small fish came flying in my direction. The pteradactyl reached up and snapped it out of the air. One gulp later it was gone.
“Harvested from a world where the great asteroid never hit. They were popular pets among the elite for a while. Then the aristos tired of them, like they tire of everything else. Here.” He knelt down by my side. “This will help.”
My chest burned like fire as he helped me to a sitting position. The pteradactyl squawked as it was dislodged, and fluttered off to take up a post on a nearby chair. My left leg, I saw, was swathed in bandages. It smelled of herbs. Every inch of my body was sore.
He lifted a bowl to my lips.
“What is it?” I asked hoarsely.
“Chicken soup. A thousand worlds have failed to come up with anything better. Drink.”
