#thought provoking

Let the bells ring out and the banners fly!

My novel comes out today!

To some, the return of magic is a miracle; to others, a catastrophe. For physicist Julia Chen, it’s all a colossal headache. Now, she’s setting out across the wintry, post-apocalyptic landscape of Fairy-occupied Canada in search of answers. The subject of her inquiries: an enigmatic Fae known only as Mr. Elsevier, who seems to have power over matter and energy at the most fundamental level and who is willing to share this knowledge—for a price. But Julia’s quest does not take place in a political vacuum. In Ottawa, the new Fairy Viceroy draws up her plans for the country, even as her puppet Prime Minister, Chuck Oakes, struggles desperately to protect his people. But rebellion is brewing, and Mr. Elsevier may just be the key to human victory. Now, with the murderous politics of the Fae heating up, Julia will soon learn that, in sorcery as in science, simple questions can sometimes have very dangerous answers. She is on the cusp of ultimate knowledge: a theory of magic that would explain what has become of the world and how it can be reversed. But asking the wrong question may well unravel reality itself...

Filled with, magic, dark humour and memorable characters, Reality's End is the first part of an epic science fantasy trilogy that you will not want to miss! Order your copy today!

(Amazon link for ebook & paperback) (Other platforms for ebook; or support me on Patreon)

(Read it serially on Royal Road or AO3)

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For most of human history, measuring time meant watching the sky.

Shadows moved across sundials. Water flowed through carefully shaped vessels. Pendulums swung back and forth.

Each generation created more precise clocks, but the basic assumption remained the same: clocks measure time.

Modern physics has complicated that idea.

Atomic clocks don’t measure something flowing past us. They measure extremely stable repeating patterns inside matter itself. Optical lattice clocks push that idea even further, counting oscillations of light and atoms with astonishing precision.

In other words, every clock is really measuring change.

A pendulum changes position. A crystal vibrates. An atom shifts between energy states.

If that’s true, then a deeper question emerges:

Is time something that exists independently…

Or is it something that emerges from patterns of change in the universe?

Humanity’s race to build ever more precise clocks may ultimately reveal something unexpected — that time is not simply a backdrop to reality, but a structure that arises from the relationships between events.

So here’s a thought worth sitting with:

If nothing in the universe changed — no motion, no interaction, no transformation — would time still exist?