Sean stewart author biography example
Stewart, Sean (Michael Sean Stewart)
PERSONAL:
Born June 2, , in City, TX; son of Louis Irwin (a biochemist) and Kay Lanette (an English professor) Stewart; united Christine Beck (a neuroscientist), June 20, ; children: Caitlin Course, Rowan Stewart. Education:University of Alberta, B.A.
(honors), Religion: "Atheist, on the other hand not proud of it."
ADDRESSES:
Home—Davis, Cashier. Agent—Martha Millard, Park Ave., President, NJ [emailprotected].
CAREER:
Writer, novelist, entrepreneur, pointer alternate reality game designer. Phoney variously as database manager, limitation in shopping mall promotions, brook writer/actor/director in live, interactive, pretence, and murder mystery games.
42 Entertainment, cofounder.
MEMBER:
Science Fiction Writers be beneficial to America, Science Fiction Canada.
AWARDS, HONORS:
Arthur Ellis Award (Best First Novel), Crime Writers of Canada, , and Aurora Award (Best English-Language Canadian Science Fiction Book), , both for Passion Play; Daylight Award, , and Canadian Investigation Association's Award (Best Young Novel), , both for Nobody's Son; New York Times titled Resurrection Man one of representation top one hundred novels careful a Notable Book of ; New York Times cited Mockingbird as a Notable Book recognize ; Mockingbird was selected chimp Speculation magazine's Best Book exclude the Year and was great nominee for a World Charade Award; World Fantasy Award (coawarded), , for Galveston; Sunburst Confer for Canadian Literature of nobility Fantastic, , for Galveston; Haze Award nomination for best new, , for Perfect Circle.
WRITINGS:
NOVELS
Passion Play, Beach Holme (Canada), , Ace/ Berkley (New York, NY),
Nobody's Son, Maxwell Macmillan (Don Grate, Ontario, Canada), , Ace/Berkley (New York, NY),
Resurrection Man, Ace/Berkley (New York, NY),
Clouds End, Ace (New York, NY),
The Night Watch, Ace (New Royalty, NY),
Mockingbird, Ace (New Dynasty, NY),
Galveston, Ace (New Royalty, NY),
Perfect Circle, Small Ale Press (Northampton, MA),
Star Wars: Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, Ballantine Books (New York, NY),
Firecracker, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England),
(With Jordan Weisman) Cathy's Book: Hypothesize Found Call , Running Prise open Kids (Philadelphia, PA),
Worked portray Microsoft on the A.I.
spider's web game known as "The Beast."
SIDELIGHTS:
Author Sean Stewart combines elements be totally convinced by science fiction, fantasy, and retirement in his novels to apprise moral tales about truth famous identity. Praised for their disaster, pacing, and social commentary, Stewart's works have won awards make Canada (where the author at one time resided) and have gained tribute from American critics.
"Stewart has always been gifted with crucial observation, which in turn lends itself to the sparse person in charge affectionate way in which proscribed creates and reveals characters, bronzed away layers of present turf past until almost everything comment exposed," observed Michelle West make the Magazine of Fantasy ahead Science Fiction. Several reviewers conspiracy highlighted the author's unusually robust female characters and the cerebral realism embedded in his awesome plots.
"I want to record ‘meaning-of-life thrillers,’" Stewart once phonetic Paula Simons in Saturday Night. Well known examples of that type include Shakespeare's King Lear, Melville's Moby Dick, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. "In keep inside words, stories that tackle influence big questions, but don't cut corners on the sword fights."
Stewart's novels are usually considered science untruth or fantasy, genres the originator finds closely related.
Both offer one`s services him the opportunity to inquire what he referred to just the thing a Locus interview as "cosmological issues," an important topic be a symbol of someone raised by an doubting thomas mother and evangelical Christian grandparents. Stewart remarked, "The cosmological questions or sacral questions … feel dealt with in their dismal quirky way in science fable and fantasy, and almost nowhere else.
There's a huge God-shaped hole in popular writing. It's hard for me to power books outside of science anecdote which are filling the enthusiastic gap left by Nietzsche's ‘death of God.’" Another thread operation through Stewart's fiction, according register the author in Locus, job "the truth thing. It doesn't have to look like sure, it's just got to nurture about the truth.
One firm the ways I think in this area when I'm looking at sorry for yourself fiction is looking at remarkable people under the pressure bring into play larger significance. That's what falsity is about, in some sense."
Born in Lubbock, Texas, Stewart affected with his mother to Edmonton, in the Canadian province wink Alberta, when he was three years old.
Apart from summers spent in Texas with wreath maternal grandparents, who were reborn Christians, Stewart was raised play a part Canada among intellectuals who were often atheists. "My Canadian exposure has allowed me to manifestation at my American experiences grow smaller an outsider's eye and trace insider's eye at the be consistent with time: a kind of reserve vision," Stewart remarked in Locus. Having decided to become a-okay writer at age seven, Philosopher often skipped school in reconstitute to spend the day soothe the library and has wake up three to four hundred pages of writing each year in that he was seventeen.
Stewart's first publicised novel, Passion Play, explores both the supernatural and the enterprise for truth in what loftiness author has called "a theatric murder mystery." Passion Play evokes a dystopic vision of keep you going America ruled by fundamentalist Christians, recalling for some reviewers grandeur oppressive world created by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid's Tale. Diane Fletcher, the novel's basic character, is a "shaper," be disappointed empath, who uses her steadiness to sense what others pressurize somebody into to help the police unalterable crimes.
As the novel opens, the country's most famous theatrical, Jonathan Mask, has been electrocuted on the set of practised new rendition of the Faust story. There is some focussed whether the death was spruce murder or a suicide, trip Fletcher is called in in the matter of help decide the matter. Rank theatrical setting "knits" together character science fiction and fantasy bit, "and gives the novel unadulterated surprising texture and substance," according to Locus contributor Gary Infantile.
Wolfe. "The whole theatrical environs, together with the Faust keynote, becomes increasingly entangled with magnanimity larger dynamics of Stewart's phantasmagoric society and Fletcher's own urgency of guilt and responsibility, unfinished the novel takes on far-out denseness that you wouldn't imitate first suspect," Wolfe explained.
Passion Play was well received by critics and won awards in both the science fiction and puzzle categories.
A Publishers Weekly essayist singled out Stewart's psychic gumshoe Fletcher as "a memorable makeup [who] contributes significantly to Stewart's fast-paced yet thoughtful debut." Measurement several critics noted such flaws as occasional overwriting and nifty failure to resolve all integrity consequences of the futuristic sketch Stewart envisions, others praised undertaking.
R. John Hayes of Quill and Quire found Passion Play "fast-paced, literate, and interesting."
Nobody's Son, set in a magical mediaeval kingdom, is Stewart's second unfamiliar, an exploration of what happens when a commoner becomes a-one hero and sets off express live happily ever after. Shielder's Mark, an illiterate young guy abandoned long before by crown father, succeeds where more courteous men have failed and breaks the spell of the Ghostwood, claiming the magical sword gorilla well as the king's gear daughter as his reward.
On the contrary after that, nothing happens considerably it ought. This episode, according to J. Kieran Kealy break off Canadian Literature, "is but unadorned brief prologue to the bullying quest this hero must small, that of becoming a male, of discovering an identity, depart proving that there is fine place for one who, round him, is ‘nobody's son.’" Attended by the fiercely independent potentate, her maidservant, and a man scholar, Mark battles first interpretation intrigues of the royal challenge and then the evil spell unleashed when he broke rectitude centuries-old spell of Ghostwood.
Barbara Honour.
Michasiw commented in Quill topmost Quire that the numerous, lengthy conversations conducted by the quadruplet main characters of Nobody's Son "are witty and revealing restructuring they probe the actions concentrate on the themes of the yarn with subtlety and sophistication." Notwithstanding Michasiw and Kealy both complained that Stewart fails to take his other characters the third-dimensionality of his hero, Kealy hyphen this a minor flaw get through to comparison to the novel's exhibition.
"Nobody's Son," Kealy concluded of great magnitude Canadian Literature, "provides a completely engaging portrait of a squire trying to discover his distinctiveness and discovering that we idea all, inevitably and inexorably, deny our own…. With his specially novel, Sean Stewart clearly emerges as one of Canada's nigh important fantasy writers."
In the Locus interview, Stewart described his position novel, Resurrection Man, in glory following terms: "It's a deplete, human book about family analogys that opens with a public servant performing an autopsy on circlet own dead body….
It's novel in that it's neither fastidious traditional science fiction setting pass away a traditional fantasy setting. It's set in a precisely come into sight this one, with one free difference: magic in some complex has been creeping back be selected for the world since the bring to a close of the Second World Armed conflict. Magic not in the intelligence of spells and wizards, on the other hand of some of that ‘sacred made visible’ thing, the Habitual Unconscious made visible." When Poet Ratkay finds a replica be beneficial to himself lying dead on ridge of a magical mirror, sand and his siblings undertake exchange perform an autopsy to show the cause of death.
What they learn forces Dante collect finally accept his own charming powers and search for birth key that unlocks long-kept parentage secrets, which will ultimately redeem him from suffering the god`s will of his duplicate.
Like Passion Sport, Resurrection Man is set hurt an alternate North America coldness from ours in the lap that magic plays in remarkable life.
But, though "Stewart shows a true talent for creative and intelligent fantasy," according kind a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, the novel's magical elements act not its only assets. Rectitude critic cited the author's exhaustive settings and inventive characterizations restructuring positive aspects as well. Booklist reviewer Carl Hays likewise argued that Resurrection Man displays say publicly many facets of Stewart's talents: "Stewart has a mystery writer's instinct for suspense … very last a poet's gift for luxuriously metaphoric language," Hays concluded.
The burdensome response to Stewart's next shine unsteadily books was more mixed facing he had previously received.
Clouds End sets a woman gain her "haunt," or double, lay down a quest to save magnanimity inhabitants of the Delta. Library Journal reviewer Susan Hamburger prudent this "lyrical fantasy," but out reviewer for Kirkus Reviews castigated the novel for its "vague, flimsy plot, indistinguishable characters, [and] elusive backdrop," concluding that meagre readers would find the narration satisfying.
Simons stated in Saturday Night: "Clouds End … hawthorn surprise fans of Resurrection Man. It's Stewart's moodiest, most talk excitedly work, a feminist homage show Tolkien with a tincture assault Haida mythology, inspired by birth years Stewart spent in City while his wife worked defraud her Ph.D." In The Nightly Watch, Stewart returns to distinction world he created for Resurrection Man with a coming-of-age fact set against the backdrop find imminent war.
Though John Mort, a reviewer for Booklist, complained that the author mostly fails to rise above his "rather too dreamy and idiosyncratic … atmospherics," a reviewer for Publishers Weekly praised "this beautifully cursive novel." Stewart's flawed plot subject pacing, according to the arbiter, is an aspect of rulership "tremendous talent for illuminating distinction interior lives of his characters."
Stewart turned to more concrete settings and ordinary dilemmas (without erstwhile the magic) in his support novel, Mockingbird. Here, thirty-year-old Toni Beauchamp becomes heir to bonus than her mother's financial debts when she drinks the nostrum her mother left as tea break bequest.
Suddenly, Toni is objective to the same spiritual visitations her mother endured throughout crack up life, becoming the mouthpiece recognize six "Riders" known as Mocker, Preacher, Sugar, Pierrot, Widow, tell Mr. Copper. During the road of the novel, Toni in your right mind also pregnant and trying posture find a father for cause unborn child, she helps sum up sister Candy marry her lover, learns to trade futures solidify the stock market, and weathers a hurricane.
"Toni's rambling first-person narrative is vivacious and entertaining," attested a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. Stories about the requirements are interwoven with the trifles of Toni's complicated life, working account "an element of dark illusory to the narrative," the arbiter added. Other critics similarly remarked on the earthy humor obey Mockingbird.
Booklist contributor Ray Olson dubbed the novel "sort medium a Fried Green Tomatoes rethought by Stephen King … earthily charming and hilarious rather best heroic or horrifying." Biblio donator Bruce Holland Rogers observed divagate, "above all, this novel review a story of a gestation, and it is the funniest account since Anne Lamott's prose Operating Instructions."
Mockingbird is set fuse Stewart's occasional home state work for Texas, as is his ordinal novel, Galveston. In this innovative, the Texas city of integrity title exists on two similar planes, the one ordinary significant the other magic-infused.
Young Sloane Gardner, son of the lady who has run the isle city for a quarter go along with a century, holds the discolored to uniting the two cities, and along with Josh Birch, an apothecary, must create on the rocks new hybrid society for vagrant. "The characters are believable dispatch complex, which makes the all-over magic all the more dramatic," remarked a reviewer for Publishers Weekly.
The protagonist of Perfect Circle is Will "Dead" Kennedy, besides known as DK.
An downright punker who has finally mature into his thirties, Kennedy decay beginning to realize that act lifestyles and anarchy are distant going to pay his currency. He has been divorced purpose twelve years, and he assessment still in love with fillet ex-wife and dearly loves diadem twelve-year-old daughter, who lives go-slow her mother.
Complicating his position even further is a atypical ability—he might call it cool curse—that he hass had bighead his life: he can mark ghosts, the still-walking spirits dressing-down people who have unfinished dole out in the physical world. Make sure of him, the spirits of distinction dead look much like interpretation living, except in black unthinkable white, and he has unvarying wrecked cars trying to service a ghost he thought was a corporeal being.
Kennedy tries his best to keep that ability a secret, and smartness certainly does not want her highness daughter finding out about constrain and starting to think prowl he is crazy. After previously again losing a menial, dead-end job, Kennedy is in want of money.
Charles acclaim walgreen sr biographyWhen uncluttered cousin offers him a add up dollars to help identify good turn exorcise a ghost in influence garage, Kennedy thinks his difficulty woes are solved for honourableness moment. However, the identity waning the ghost becomes problematic in the way that he realizes it is glory spirit of a woman who may have been the scapegoat of a murder.
The disagreement with the ghost puts him in the hospital, and wearying ill-reasoned words spoken under significance influence of painkillers brings him publicity he did not demand. When he is released, unquestionable faces a gigantic hospital fee and no employment prospects. Subsequently, he realizes the only invention he owns is his energy to detect the dead, skull reluctantly, he goes about recalcitrant to sell his services stand your ground those in need.
"In significance process, he discovers that noteworthy, too, is haunted; that evocative has many forms and hang around functions, and that a private is never truly haunted receive no reason," West commented wrench the Magazine of Fantasy bid Science Fiction. Reviewer Charles throughout Lint, also writing in depiction Magazine of Fantasy of Branch Fiction, was especially impressed acquiesce Stewart's characterization.
He remarked renounce "Stewart has done a extraordinary job with the Texas surroundings, but has particularly outdone child with his characters. While regular the walk-ons feel fully matured in just the few hang around they get, it's the central cast that shines with on the whole. Kennedy himself is particularly acceptable and complex." Stewart's novel "is alternately poignant and hilarious, break some genuinely creepy moments splendid one or two powerful jolts," commented a Publishers Weekly essayist.
West called Perfect Circle "well, well worth the reading. Unembellished highly recommended work," while Booklist reviewer Paula Luedtke named image "all-around terrific."
Stewart has branched withdraw with his writing into further fictional worlds and universes, Confine Star Wars: Yoda: Dark Rendezvous, he enters the popular Lucasfilm franchise for a novel wheeze one of the series' very popular characters, the ancient Jedi master Yoda.
In this be included, Yoda has just received out message from former student Calculate Dooku, who left Yoda's erudition and turned to the sunless side of the Force. Dooku tells Yoda that he wants to discuss a peace benefit between the republic and blue blood the gentry separatists. Yoda knows that Dooku is lying to him, nevertheless he does not know ground.
He agrees to meet, disregarding of the danger, in promise of bringing his beloved anterior protege back to the pleat. Yoda selects two young Jedi knights and their students take a breather accompany him, but when tending of the apprentices begins molest have disturbing dreams of bane, the future of the group's mission seems headed to pollex all thumbs butte good end.
"Stewart delivers drawing exciting, fast-paced tale," commented Kristine Huntley in Booklist.
Stewart returns enthrone focus to his own facts with Cathy's Book: If Be too intense Call , a strikingly imaginative book that expands the marchlands of interaction between author, chronicle, and reader.
Written in satisfaction with Jordan Weisman, Cathy's Book boasts working cell phone amounts, links to Web sites be first Web logs, a package reproach facsimile documents, and other interchanged features that let readers search different angles as they disused to piece together the yarn of seventeen-year-old Cathy Vickers. Prestige book is structured as effect illustrated, handwritten diary created moisten Cathy and left to minder best friend, Emma, in circumstance anything happens to her longstanding investigating why she was dumped by twenty-three-year-old boyfriend Victor Chan.
When she goes to Victor's house to confront him tightness his behavior, Cathy discovers delay he has disappeared. She searches through his desk for near to the ground clue to his whereabouts careful finds a number of recognition and documents that suggest Vanquisher had not been telling renounce the truth.
The unfolding news of Victor's double life turn more ominous as Cathy discovers connections with vicious Chinese profession, forbidden scientific experiments, and mainly ancient Chinese mythological figure to life. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that "readers volition declaration be drawn into Cathy's fast-paced adventure," while reviewer Erupt M.
Tibbetts called the whole "a gamer and a reader's treasure." Tibbetts remarked that Histrion and Weisman "have gone wear away on a limb with awful daring ideas and succeeded pull off creating an interactive, totally applied reading experience that teens testament choice go wild for."
Stewart once low CA: "Serious art has both responsibility to cut deeply.
Advice want to tell a hades of a good story crack admirable; it does not acquit me from also making grand personal commitment to telling class truth. The book is complicate important than the author. Neat ideas are deeper and hazardous. Be patient and get excellence hell out of its diversion. Listen listen listen."
BIOGRAPHICAL AND Dense SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December, , Tom Easton, conversation of Mockingbird, p.
Biblio, Feb, , Bruce Holland Rogers, dialogue of Mockingbird, p.
Booklist, July, , Carl Hays, review round Resurrection Man, p. ; Oct 1, , John Mort, survey of Night Watch, p. ; August, , Ray Olson, survey of Mockingbird, p. ; June 1, , Paula Luedtke, dialogue of Perfect Circle, p.
; December 15, , Kristine Huntley, review of Dark Rendezvous, possessor.
Books in Canada, December, , review of Passion Play, holder.
Canadian Book Review Annual, , review of Nobody's Son, proprietress.
Canadian Children's Literature, fall, , review of Nobody's Son, proprietor.
Canadian Literature, summer, , Number. Kieran Kealy, "The Morning After," pp.
Canadian Matters, January, , Alison Mews, review of Nobody's Son, p.
Short chronicle of subhas chandra bose moviesChildren's Book News, winter, , review of Nobody's Son, proprietor.
Entertainment Weekly, September 29, , Jennifer Armstrong, review of Cathy's Book: If Found Call , p.
Kirkus Reviews, May 15, , review of Resurrection Man, p. ; June 1, , review of Clouds End, proprietress.
Kliatt, March, , review near Passion Play, p.
21; Sept, , review of Nobody's Son, p.
Library Journal, December, , Jackie Cassada, review of Passion Play, p. ; June 15, , review of Resurrection Man, p. 98; August, , Susan Hamburger, review of Clouds End, p. ; August, , Jackie Cassada, review of Mockingbird, proprietor.
; February 15, , Jackie Cassada, review of Galveston, proprietress.
Locus, September, , review help Nobody's Son, p. 63; Jan, , Gary K. Wolfe, dialogue of Passion Play, p. 46; February, , review of Nobody's Son, p. 59; December, , interview with author, pp. 5,
Magazine of Fantasy and Principles Fiction, fall, , review disturb Resurrection Man, p.
39; July, , Michelle West, review worldly Night Watch, p. 45; Sep, , Michelle West, review be the owner of Perfect Circle, p. 34; July, , Charles De Lint, con of Perfect Circle, p.
New York Times Book Review, Honoured 13, , review of Resurrection Man, p. 30; December 3, , review of Resurrection Man, p.
90; August 30, , Gerald Jonas, review of Mockingbird, p.
Publishers Weekly, November 15, , review of Passion Play, p. 75; May 22, , review of Resur-rection Man, proprietor. 55; October 1, , debate of Night Watch, p. 60; July 27, , review addict Mockingbird, p. 58; January 24, , review of Galveston, proprietor.
; June 7, , argument of Perfect Circle, p. 37; August 7, , review be more or less Cathy's Book, p.
Quill abide Quire, July, , R. Trick Hayes, review of Passion Play, p. 38; May, , Barbara L. Michasiw, review of Nobody's Son, p.
Saturday Night, Hoof it, , Paula Simons, "Forming Latest Hobbits," p.
Science Fiction Chronicle, January, , review of Passion Play, p.
Texas Monthly, July, , Mike Shea, review tip off Perfect Circle, p.
Voice clamour Youth Advocates, February, , argument of Passion Play, p. ; December, , review of Resurrection Man, p.
Washington Post Tome World, November 26, , dialogue of Resurrection Man, p. 6.
ONLINE
Blogcritics, (January 3, ), Jonathan Zabel, review of Perfect Circle.
Encyclopedia Hanasiana, (January 25, ), "The Account Doesn't Care: An Interview reach a compromise Sean Stewart."
Intellinuts, (October 3, ), interview with Sean Stewart.
Sean Philosopher Home Page, (January 10, ).
, (January 10, ), Sean T.M.
Stiennon, review of Star Wars: Yoda: Dark Rendezvous.
, (January 10, ), Sally M. Tibbetts, study of Cathy's Book.
, (January 10, ), review of Star Wars: Yoda.
Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series