The term writing, as the name of this webpage implies, is pretty general. My writing spans genres as diverse as poetry, novels, unpublished opinion essays, technical book chapters, invited and op-ed magazine articles, and of course, peer-reviewed academic research papers. As such, the locations to find my writing on this website are not very centralized. The sections-list at the top should provide a helpful index however.
I don't have much of my poetry on my website I'm afraid. I haven't written much poetry since high school actually. The poem shown below was written much later, in graduate school.
I Watch as You Sleep, 2000 — I composed most of this poem in my head while sitting in class one day and quickly wrote it down when I got home that evening. It was inspired by the fact that women always wonder why men like to watch them sleep. Go figure.
I like to write fiction; I wish I had more time for it. I have been known to dabble in poetry, but most of my writing consists of sci-fi and fantasy full-length novels (and numerous false starts of course).
Untitled, 1989-1990 — A fantasy novel (you know, wizards, dragons, knights, the lot), written when I was fourteen and fifteen. It was, admittedly, heavily influenced by The Lord of the Rings.
Untitled, 1990? — Half of a sequel to the first novel with the same characters. Eventually abandoned.
Misc, 1990-1991 — A period marked by several incomplete writing projects. Some of the attempted novels were still the same setting as my first two stories (side stories about the pasts of the particular characters). Some were completely different ideas. One was about the first manned trip to Mars, one was about the theft of the fastest space ship ever built, just various writing, nothing noteworthy.
White Sand, 1991 — Written and completed, only my second completed novel at the time. A small group of kids get stranded on a desert island. I know, I know, Lord of the Flies. I don't want to hear it.
All of the writing listed so far happened while I was still in high school and I went all the way through college without writing another word outside college work.
The Transference, 1998 — Written and completed in the early months of 1998. The writing was better than any of my past endeavours in my opinion. The central theme of this story was mind-uploading. Namely, it was about the garage hacker who finally figures out how to successfully perform mind-uploading and the complicated events going on in his life at the time. The world I created portrayed a twenty-first century take on mind-altering drugs, i.e., the idea that instead of using chemicals to induce neurological effects, neuro-electronic computational devices are used to directly stimulate, alter, and control the neural firing patterns of the brain. There was also a thick side plot concerning sentient artificial life living in the internet. I sent this one to a few literary agents and even got a few bites back, but ultimately nothing ever came of it.
The Migrators, 2009 — Written and completed in the early months of 2009. This story grew from an idea I have had for a long time: That vampires should migrate between the deep northern and southern hemispheres twice a year so as to live in perpetual darkness. I introduced a few other elements that are uncommon in other vampire mythoi, such as: Only a very small fraction of people are actually capable of turning into vampires. This alleviates — if not fully obviates — the mathematical paradox posed by exponentially asexual reproducing immortals. In addition, my mythos and associated story has very little supernaturalism. Vampires are immortal, but in a biologically rational way. They are stronger and faster, but not unbelievably so. They drink blood, but more from a desperate addiction than as a magical source of power. This story is also a heavy romance and a murder mystery...all wrapped up into one!
Here's the cover I designed for The Transference:
