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Novels of Speculation, Suspense, Intrigue and Enlightenment |
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Science FictionFuture.Con: A Novel of Alternate Reality |
In this psychological thriller of the near future, a virtual reality virus gives Joe Norton the ride of his life. Future.Con is every programmer's nightmare: the bug that shows up on the user side of the interface. With instructions to kill and a baffling menu of choices, Norton's all-too-ordinary life in Philadelphia is coming apart at the seams. Is the only way out, to go further in? Never mind that one shaky relationship gives way to another, or that his job is jeopardized by a corporate buyout. Norton has another mission to take care of, as he discovers that virtual reality is not confined to hardware. >> more >> | |
MysteryThe Hunter's Daughter: A Novel of the Far North |
Set in northern Quebec in 1964, this unusual mystery is the story of Mountie Jack McLain's search for a serial killer--and for a sense of love and belonging--among a people in transition. Pressured by southern headquarters to move on the case, he's hampered by formidable terrain and the misdirections of native culture. In counterpoint the story follows the flight of an oppressed young Inuit woman named Nilliq, with a headstrong shaman, Wallin, who is Jack's chief suspect. | |
Speculative FictionThe Last Book: A Continuation of Thomas Mann's Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man |
The Last Book is an ambitious continuation of Thomas Mann's last, unfinished novel, Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man. Opening in the arch and unabashed literary style of its classic ancestor, The Last Book departs with its mercurial protagonist for the New World, and displays an irreverent mobility across not only social strata, time and geography, but a wide range of genres as well. Felix is pulled toward a spiritual apprenticeship, romantic union, and eventual post as advisor to Sophie Vaughan, the first woman President. Along the way he must endure a humbling apprenticeship in the limbo of America of the 1970s. Felix's ultimate success with Sophie in the twenty-first century is undercut by political crisis, but the narrator slips through the cracks of time once more to tell the tale from the leisurely perspective of old age. | |
Interactive FictionRendezvous: A Hypertext Adventure |
Rendezvous begins as a tale of romantic adventure in the rugged wilderness of B.C.'s Purcell Mountains. The protagonist will find, however, that the way down has more routes than he remembered on the way up. Wracked by eerily repetitive dreams in a cabin on a stormy night, Will is caught in a recurrent dance with life and death. | |
Travel MetafictionRed Rock Road, Light Blue Sea:A Journey of Discovery |
Red Rock Road incorporates the genres of fiction, travel literature, literary criticism, and personal growth. At its core is the story of two Canadians of the back-to-the-land generation, J. F. Now and his partner Oiseau, as they embark on a hybrid mid-life journey of creative and romantic rediscovery. Their destination is the idyllic island of Formentera, off the coast of Spain. Enroute, they backpack for two months around the remoter coasts and mountains of Spain and Portugal. Paring away everything but the most essential elements of nature and culture, the travelers seek to discover what might sustain them and give lasting impetus to their art and love. Both characters face a final crisis of love and freedom before the honeymoon is over, with deeper spiritual resolution as their reward. | view sample chapters: |
Essays Celebrating Nature, Culture and Spirit |
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The History of the World: A Critique of Future Alternatives |
This essay began as a review of Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, then expanded to include a critique of some key alternative strategies (notably Marshall Savage's Millennial Project) for a positive human future. Fukuyama's is a convincing overview of global trends and historical philosophy showing that human society is funneling--for better or worse--into a single strategy, the mode of liberal democracy. Savage advocates a practical program of accelerated space colonization to relieve the pressures of overpopulation. These approaches are contrasted with other alternatives such as the experiement of Maoism and the more contemporary Green politics. | |
Coming Home: Nature and Me and Other Essays |
A lifetime of study and writing and practical experience culminates here in a collection of essays around the central topic, Nature--which as Emerson's famous essay of the same name made clear, includes the fullness of the human spirit. Included are walking meditations in British Columbia forests; stories and essays of political and environmental issues and personal growth; and travel writing from Hawaii and Spain. | |
Transitions: A Book About Love |
Eight essays sketch and paint and sing and play on the theme of love, in all its wild gifts and surprising embraces. In wilderness or bed, heart or soul, nature or transparent self, love takes on dimensions that move us from one state of being to another; from who we were to who we are. | |
Short Stories |
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Strange Love / Romance Not for Sale |
This collection includes 18 short stories and a
longer piece of metafiction, "Rendezvous,"
which comprises a number of stories-within-a-story. The first section,
"Strange Love," includes narratives with offbeat structure
or voice, twisted characters and morals, and quirks of discovery.
When love plays games with reality, the next move can be dangerous.
"Romance Not For Sale" features stories
about love that never quite lives up to the romantic promise our culture
leads us to expect. These stories resolve instead with a philosophic
perspective, a touch of irony, a way to carry on.
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Creative Nonfiction |
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Life: A Semi-Fictional Novel of the Baby Boom |
"But I am not out to prove this or that theory: only to show such a life as I have lived, striving toward utopia. It promised to be a long, questing journey, given the 1950 hospital America I chose to be born to... "I had to go farther--whether faster or slower I didn't yet know. To find roots deeper than 1950, deeper than the twentieth century, deeper even than civilization. To taste fresh animal flesh and blood; to sink fingers and toes into the soil." |
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here to begin |
Beginning Again: Meditations Between Relationships |
. . . life itself takes on the flavor of chocolate, and nourishment is found in the very air. Is there any other way than to describe my own predicaments, daily details, dreams and disappointments, energetic spins of fancy and philosophy? Talking about other people is gossip, or fiction. I can do both of those elsewhere. This is a time and place for describing truth as only I know it, in its most personal form. Yet this is not intended only for me, but as a recorded journey to share, a model for some (a peccadillo for others), a validation for what we must go through, for what we choose to celebrate and what it falls to us to mourn. |
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Prefaces and Introductions without End: Improvisations |
...part of life, apart from Life, wordjazz in that moment which becomes this moment, always on the lookout for next, and now, and still dreams of awakening; even onto the present rock of creation, on the cliff in Varkala, or downtown Argenta; it's the beat and the welling wave... |
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here to begin |
Life Stories: Creative Nonfiction |
The
Baby Boom
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view online: click
here to begin |
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