My Novels

Many of you know that I write science fiction. I've been writing science fiction since the summer of 2006, when I wrote my first novel - it was designed to be the first in a series of three. I subsequently wrote the second (which is mostly complete) and started the third about a year and a half ago. Over the entire time I've been writing, it has been a struggle to figure out what to do with it. On one hand, it would be nice to have the recognition that published authors get. And it also would be nice to have been through that vetting process - people know that what's on the other end is more likely to be good than bad. On the other hand, I'm not looking to make any money off of my writing, I just want people to hear the stories. And as a long time advocate of open content, the idea of moving down the standard publishing route seemed hypocritical - I just couldn't stomach the idea of standard copyright for my work. The idea of telling agents and publishers, at the same time as I was looking to be published as a new, unproven author, that "oh, and by the way, I will demand that all of my work be Creative Commons licensed" seemed a recipe for failure. I know Cory Doctorow did it, but he seems a hard act to follow. Also at the same time, there is a sea change happening in the way that creative work gets distributed - there's disintermediation happening all around - artists sharing and selling their work directly to their audiences, instead of through the standard mediators that used to control distribution. So since I'm pretty much on the technical cutting edge in everything I do, it seemed pretty natural to me to be the same way in this realm as well. And I've also gotten really enamored of the idea of podcasting the novel in episodes. So that is what I am going to do. The episodes will run about every two weeks, starting sometime in late September (once I get a new microphone, and iron out all the kinks.) All episodes will be licensed with a Creative Commons license (I haven't chosen one yet.) I'll also include small amounts of CC-licensed music in the podcast. At some point, if there seems to be interest, I'll put the text up as well in varied formats (probably text, pdf and .mobi,) also CC-licensed. I hope all five of you who listen like it.