Storm Thief

Storm Thief (2006)

Orokos is a city of chaos. For as long as anyone can remember, the city has been lashed by probability storms, that change anything they touch. Streets are rearranged, children turned to glass, rivers break their banks. Nothing is stable. Everyone is vulnerable.

Rail and Moa: two thieves from the ghettoes. Rail’s been bitter at life ever since the Storm Thief stole his breath. Moa just wants to get away, to a land where things are better. But there is nowhere else other than Orokos, and the city won’t let them leave anyway.

Then they find an artifact: a device that opens doors. Something that anyone in the city would kill for. And it will lead them to the dark secret at the heart of Orokos…

Storm Thief is another light romp through daisy-filled pastures with… wait, wait, no it’s not. It’s a grim dystopia where our heroes cling to life by their fingernails. It’s about order versus chaos, about the storms of adolescence, about hope and hopelessness. And it’s also about love and dreams and hope and sacrifice, and how even in the darkest places you can find a light.

Storm Thief wasn’t an easy one to write because the enclosed world of Orokos was quite a task to build in my head. Everything had to make sense: the history, the economy, even how they managed to feed themselves. As usual, while writing it I got to a point where I wished I’d never started, and I wanted to run my hard drive over an electromagnet and never think of Orokos or Rail or Moa again because they had given me so much grief. And also as usual, I got through it, and when it was finally done and I got the bound copies I decided that I loved it again. Getting through that bit in a book, that’s the part that separates the men from the boys.*

Since I finished Storm Thief in February of ’05, my book output slowed a little as I’ve been working more in other fields: screenwriting and comic-book writing, mainly. I like to try new things and different formats of writing. Keeps me fresh.

* Insert similar, non-gender-specific analogy as preferred.