And look what's coming soon.... <VBG>...

08 June 2009Jenny Fallon dropped by for a flying visit last week, and we plotted out a new series. No sooner had I dropped Jenny off at the airport than, in the interests of research (of course!) I took off for a hike up to Temple Basin near Arthur's Pass. I abandoned my 13yr old son up there for a week in snowboard heaven. Now, I did not take the vertical photo at left; I nabbed it from here.However, Porter's really does look exactly like this. And I did take the following two shots during my trek back down (click to enlarge). The weather was less than ideal but eerily spectacular. This place is beyond stunning and I can't wait to get back up there.

23 May 2009

I'm Twittering under the user name 'ecomigrant'.

What with the scenery and all I've been somewhat distracted since arriving in New Zealand. I took this shot a couple of days ago not far from our house.

We've just finished bulldozing the feral plants that had been stranging the stream, reformed the stream and lake banks, planted natives and enticed Paradise ducks and pukekos to join the dozens of other ducks living on our 5-acre property. The oaks and maples have changed colour, there's snow on the mountains, and if all goes to plan by the end of next month I should start writing again as it will be too cold to work outside.

11 October Vortex Events is just  four weeks away and what a fabulous weekend it’s going to be! Not only is David Hewlett - Dr Rodney McKay from Stargate Atlantis – coming along, he’s bringing with him a copy of A Dog’s Breakfast, which will be screened Sunday afternoon.

Check with the organisers for details on this, as I believe seating for the screening is very limited and may only be available on a first come first serve basis.

Additionally, Katy Manning is coming along. Those of you whom came to the 2001: A Space Odyssey convention, will never forget Katy’s egging me to create an impromptu skit for Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood. Thanks to Katy’s direction and Keir and Gary’s immersing themselves into the roles, the audience was left howling with laugher and the words “Open the pod bay doors, Hal,” will be forever have new meaning!

Having Katy (Jo Grant from Dr Who) on stage with David is bound to be an absolute hoot. This is one convention that you cannot afford to miss!

It’s going to be a little bizarre around my house on the Friday prior to the event. On Thursday, everything other than the Stargate novels I'll have for sale (limited number I'm afraid) will be packed into a container for shipment to NZ!

Looking forward to seeing you all there - the convention, I mean, not NZ!

01 October The Rhesus Factor is now available as an audio book online. Download it to you iPod and enjoy it free of charge! This thanks to the outstanding production team over at Broken Sea Audio.

It's been a busy couple of months...okay, that's a profound understatement. I've finally finished the first draft of an urban fantasy that Jennifer Fallon and I are working on, and am currently immersed in researching a non-fiction work. I'm also packing because I've sold my house in Brisbane and have purchased a delightful 4 acre property not far from Christchurch, New Zealand. It comes complete with its own brook - natural springwater from the Alps of the South Island -a small lake, and view through every one of the very large windows that a friend and fellow author, Louis Cusack, described thus: 'It looks like someone's stuck a mural on every window!' An ex-nursery, it's situation in the midst of LOTR country and we can't wait to move across next month.

In other news, I'm receiving an increasing number of calls and emails from those of you who have read The Rhesus Factor. This has come about because of the apparent 'sudden' realisation that Bisphenol A in plastic water bottles is a very large problem, and American international Group (AIG) and, well, Wall Street, are imploding. My fictional collapse of 'American Insurance' and citing of Bisphenol A in water bottles were two of many issues raised in The Rhesus Factor that are now coming to pass.

I must stress here that this is merely because The Rhesus Factor was a fictional thought experiment; a series of logical 'what if's' taken to the next level. This is the nature of fiction, particularly science fiction. We take current science and ethics, add human nature, and explore the consequences in a (less-confrontational) fictional setting. What followed these events as described in The Rhesus Factor is *not* a prediction for what will happen in the real world. For that, you are better off reading the Garnaut Review.

Have a stiff drink before you do, however, because it's far more chilling than fiction:

We know that the possibilities from climate change include shocks far more severe than others in the past that have exceeded society's capacity to cope, and moved societies to the point of fracture.

Here we are talking about global fracture. (p592)

In fact, bring the entire bottle. You're going to need it.

07 May Jennifer Fallon and I had a fantastic turnout, at our first Supanova convention World Building Worshop. We're looking forward to offering the same workshop in Sydney June 22 and Perth June 27, in 2008. Don't forget, if you sign up for the workshop you are entitled to a FREE WEEKEND pass to Supanova!

As a special bonus, we're also appraising a  strictly limited number of manuscripts that can be submitted up to 30 days after the workshop.

You can also book directly through:

I look forward to seeing you all there!

05 March  Generally fact is always more bizarre than fiction, and I freely admit to undertaking a few bizarre expeditions in my life. One of them has just made it into  Best Travel Writing's annual compendium, having been selected from thousands  of submissions from around the globe. Copies of The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008 are available from Traveler's Tales and Amazon. My favourite story? Tsunami, a first person tale from Kira Coonley that captures the disbelief and dread of the Boxing Day Tsunami in Thailand. From Niger to Nepal, Mexico to Madagascar, and Iraq to India, these tales are an amazing, insightful travellers' look at our world - enjoy!

04 December I hope those of you hanging out Stargate Atlantis Blood Ties will feel it's been worth the wait, particularly the Australians. Yes guys, part of this story set Downunder.

While this is very much an Atlantis story, now that SG-1 has ended, I wanted to tie the broader Stargate universe together in the one story. Since Stargate's roots lay  in mythology, we needed an archaeologist, so we brought along Daniel Jackson for the ride. You can read the prologue and chapter one here.

G'day to all the guides down in the Mole Creek and Hastings Caves in Tasmania and the very helpful staff from the Australian Antarctic Division who kindly answered my many questions. Many of the events that took place while I was in Hobart last year make an appearance in Blood Ties, including...well, you'll just have to read about it!

Once again, a huge thank you to my partner in crime, Elizabeth Christensen, who, with the help USAF friends, added the realism of contemporary Iraq. We hope you enjoy reading Blood Ties as much as we enjoyed writing it.

10 October Okay, it's true, I really don't generally write short fiction but Jennifer Fallon and I had so much fun writing Roswell, that we teamed up and wrote a short story for Titan's official Stargate magazine #18, titled, K-T.

Jen and I are about to fly down to Sydney for Supanova this weekend, so if you can grab a copy of the magazine off the stands, bring it in and we'll happily sign it for you - not often we're together in the same city!

01 October Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine issue #31 has just been published.

What's the significance of this, you ask? I don't generally write a short fiction, however I was inspired to write this piece because of events taking place in my own back yard.  This is one of the many roles of science fiction, of course, to examine moral quamires from unexpected viewpoints. Click on the link to visit the publishers web site. PDF copies of the magazine are also available as well as hard copies.

02 August Just had word that my article, Rivers of Ice has been published in the US. This is a great magazine, available online as well as in print, for senior high school and university students, as well as educators.

What's an SF writer doing producing articles on Te Wahipounamu’s Rivers of Ice? Guess you'll just have to read it and find out!

I'm currently 55,000 words into the next novel, which is shaping up nicely. Set on Earth some 50,000 years ago, it's an SF-fantasy story that takes its premise from a presentation I'm about to go and give at a high school, on Australia's extinct megafauna - inlcuding the most highly specialised killing machine that ever walked the planet, Thylacoleo carnifex, the marsupial lion.

And you thought we were the home of cuddly koalas and gentle kangaroos, this is one story that'll make you think again...

23 June As many of you know, I’ve been concerned about the social as well as environmental consequences of climate change since my postgraduate studies in the subject in 1980. In 2005, I explored the wide-ranging outfall of climate change in my novel, The Rhesus Factor. The novel won an award, briefly visited a few bestseller lists, and inspired a politician to urge every member of the Queensland State Parliament to read a copy (speech available here). For reasons that I’ve explained in the inside cover, my publisher and I have just released The Rhesus Factor as a freely available ebook.1.7Mb

By free, we mean that you can download and share it at no charge, no cost, gratis. There are no strings to this, no forms to fill in, no obligations or competitions to enter, and no requests for your personal details or for financial contributions or remunerations.

If you'd like information on the background to Rhesus, click here, or the jacket cover above. You can also navigate around the pages dedicated to this novel via the nav menu at left.

Please feel free to distribute copies or link to this site to download. If you would like an e-reader version of The Rhesus Factor other than PDF (a wide variety of e-reader formats are available) see the publisher's web site Double Dragon Books.com (Canada) If you would like a paperback copy of The Rhesus Factor, you can purchase the original edition from Amazon. B&N, Books-a-million and all of the usual outlets. If you would like this second edition as a paperback, click here.