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I'm happy to report that I've finished uploading all the short stories I care to share to danielverastiqui.com/short-stories. These include selections from The Sum of Memory, Destination Okinawa, and later stories that never made it into a collection. While I'm happy to
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House of Nepenthe (2025)When Kenneth Barnes takes a business trip to his old hometown, he finds himself on the wrong end of a gun. Now in the hospital in a coma, Kenneth’s life begins to flash before his eyes in the form of the House of Nepenthe, an
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The year was 2004, and the book was Xronixle. Fresh out of the gate as a hopeful cyberpunk novelist, I reached out to Dalton Publishing, a local Austin publisher, with a query for my cyberpunk thriller about a boy who copies his girlfriend's mind in virtual reality. To
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In no particular order except for Replay, which is my favorite all-time. * Replay, Ken Grimwood * Neuromancer, William Gibson * Altered Carbon, Richard K. Morgan * House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski * The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger * A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick * Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov * The Martian Chronicles, Ray
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I never joined a hacker collective when I was younger, mostly because I wasn't a hacker. But I did have a dope-ass handle... XRISIS. Unpronounceable like my last name, Xrisis became my mask of anonymity on the World Wide Web. And then social media came along and destroyed
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I first had this conversation about superpowers in the Dominican Republic at an awesome destination wedding in 2015, and when it came time to bring all the guests together for dinner in VISE MANOR years later, I knew exactly what they would talk about. Hopefully, it added some depth to
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Brigham Plaza was so much fun to write because not only did it bring together so many fun storylines, I got to draw on my memories of FETCH BBS, which is what we Gen X'ers had before the Internet. My friends Tanzy, Cleo, Whisper, Strider, and I would
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Although I've never really dreamed of being a full-time author, I can't deny it would be nice to sit around every day and do the thing I love the most: eat French bread pizzas. Then, after the pizzas were gone, I would spend the rest of
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As I'm finishing up House of Nepenthe and looking to the next project, I'm curious to know which Vinestead Anthology novel has been your favorite so far. Is it the cyberpunk murder mystery Vise Manor? Or the twisty thriller Por Vida? Or the OG hacker against
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Sunrise on the outskirts of Pickaxe, Montana. Rajink sat on a small outcropping of rocks examining his hand. All night, it had bothered him, throbbing hard enough to rouse him from his sleep. Now, under the soft glare of sunrise, he tried to find some outward problem with it. It
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What a busy month! We're doing all sorts of things to move some books in July, so hopefully, one resonates with you. Whether you're struggling to be more productive, need help losing weight, or are gripped by a general malaise, these books will absolutely cure every
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Having a character speak Spanish is always a dicey situation for me. On one hand, I'd love for Hispanic characters to speak their native languages when appropriate or necessary. On the other hand, I don't speak Spanish, and when I try to, people laugh at me.