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If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.
— Orson Scott Card, Introduction to Ender's Game
Writing is, to me, a dear and sacred thing. It's hard to overstate its importance in my life... and equally hard to explain to someone who hasn't experienced the same thing. Writing is the conduit through which I can reach characters, worlds, knowledge, emotion, and peace that I cannot find any other way. For me, it is far less about the product than it is about the process; writing has taught me more about the world than I would have thought possible.
In this archive, you can see how I began, with short stories written both on my own and in collaboration with friends, and posted to rec.arts.comics.creative. All of these are set in various shared universes created in that newsgroup.
Not in this archive is what I do with writing now; in fact, you will find that the stories here were almost all written several years ago. In some ways, this is a shame, as I'm now a much better writer than I was when I wrote most of what is here, but over the years my writing has shifted to rawer, more immediate, and more private forms. Perhaps eventually Ti will be willing to have her sense of honor, cold fury, and slashing competence captured here, or Tess will be willing to give me yet another piece of her frightened, damaged, and awesomely courageous soul, a piece suitable for shaping a short story from rather than a conversation.
In the meantime, these stories, however old and less competently executed, remain deeply important to me. Not in small part because many of them feature Windrider, the first character I was able to truly write and the one who has stayed closest to me over the years. Which is fitting, since in many ways he is far more than a character.
The original LNH miniseries by David Anastasion and I, and the first appearance of Drifter and Windrider. Drifter #1, written in a day by Dave and I in the same room and then edited and reworked over the next week or so, was the first story that I had ever written in my life. I was nineteen.
A joint project with Mike Escutia and Jeff Barnes started after the Drifter series had failed to reach a conclusion, this is the story of a world that is missing a person. The premise is old and somewhat cliched, but the execution proved a worthy adventure.
A story of magic of immense power, origins, and the friendship of telepaths, co-written by Jameel al Khafiz and I. This and Perspectives, written at about the same time, were the latest and the best stories to come out of my short-story phase, and Windrider is the clearest in Birds Fly that he ever has been in writing.
A story about individuals and perspectives, about voyages of discovery and what is actually found, about a world almost as unique as the people who live in it.
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