Fiction

Fiona. A few years back, my best friend and I decided to try something that we'd never done before. Although Jeff and I had played role-playing games before, we'd never really had a campaign that emphasized "realism" and character development. Soon, Jeff had talked my then-wife Vi and a friend of ours named Avik to join in the game, and I had a vast, detailed campaign world created for the game. Jeff played both Fiona (a mage) and Idgie (a thief), Avik played Karna (an Elven fighter/mage), and Vi played Xenia (a ranger -- long before 'Xena' ever appeared on the airwaves). We had the time of our lives. We kept detailed records of everything we did, and since the whole game played out as a wonderful novel, I decided to novelize it. The above link takes you to a collection of links to chapters of the story. [Note: there are some names clearly taken from external sources not owned by me; no breach of copyright is intended.]

The Omega Man, chapter two. [Updated 25 June 1999] This was really my first bit of experimentation with a female lead character. I’ve recently done some re-editing of this piece, and some of the older rough spots have been smoothed over, and the correct attributions are in place. I should tell you that The Omega man was a story I'd been working on a few years back (now long abandoned) wherein I wanted to explore what might happen to real people if they were suddenly given superhuman powers. The lead (and title) character was introduced in the first chapter, which I am not overly fond of. This chapter introduces the female lead. I'd started a third chapter before abandoning the concept.

 Autumn's Tale (version 1) (version 2). This was an 'adult' (read: sophisticated, not graphic) fairy tale I wrote in mid-1996. Jeff felt the first version was too 'talky', and I wrote the second with this in mind. Each is about 10,000 words long, and you're welcome to read either one -- or both! I personally recommend version 2.

Sleight of Hand. I wrote this story in late 1996, based on an idea I had for developing the lead character, Gracq, for another context. The story reads quite well, and is only about 3,000 words. Read it! :)

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