Douglas Smith | Writer of Fantasy & Science Fiction

For a limited time, up until voting closes on July 15, I am making the full version of my short story "Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, by Van Gogh" available online. "Bouquet..." is the lead story in my collection Impossibilia and is a finalist in Best Short Form Work in the 2009 Aurora Awards. Impossibilia is also an Aurora finalist, for Best Long Form Work. To add to your reading pleasure, I've included illustrations of all the van Gogh paintings that play such a key role in the story. Just click on the thumbnail of any painting for a larger view.

If you enjoy the story, please consider voting for it and for Impossibilia in the Auroras. Complete information on the 2009 Auroras, along with voting instructions, more story excerpts, and reviews, is available here. Any consideration would be greatly appreciated.

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"Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, by van Gogh" is the lead story in my collection, Impossibilia, and like Impossibilia, is also nominated for the 2009 Aurora Awards. Here are some new reviews of "Bouquet":

"the pièce de résistance of the collection and one of the best and most moving novellas I have read in a while. Haunting and evocative... Just astounding. ..."

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I just came across a couple more great reviews for my Aurora-nominated collection Impossibilia:

"Rarely have I seen such an apt title to any book! Douglas Smith has given us three amazing stories that are so unusual and beautiful that no other name than Impossibilia could possibly describe this collection. Each tale was rapture and ecstasy, magical and mysterious, perfect and implausible. In short, I loved them all from the first word to the last. ... I don’t know what else to say without spoiling things for you so I won’t say anything else, except READ THIS BOOK!!!"

— Jim Dodge Jr., Mass Movement Magazine, May 2009

"Impossibilia is a treasure to be savoured, like gourmet chocolates and fine wine. It includes three superb stories…each beautifully written and wondrously imagined. It took me several days to get through this book. Not because it is in any way difficult to read--far from it and quite the opposite: the stories in this collection are so wonderful, I wanted to take time to digest and enjoy each and every one."

— Rainbow Dragon Recommends, May 2009

You can read all the reviews for Impossibilia along with excerpts of all the stories via the links below:

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On Saturday, April 25, I was a guest author and panelist at GenreCon, the annual one-day literary genre convention in Sarnia, hosted by the Sarnia Library and organized by Jeff Beeler and Ellen Dark. This year, Jeff arranged to have some of the GenreCon authors appear on Friday, the night before the con, at Spoken Word, an open microphone event held monthly at the Lawrence House Centre for the Arts in downtown Sarnia. I was joined by mystery writers Vicki Delany (left) and Jean Rae Baxter (pictured here with Jeff and myself).

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I'm posting periodic updates on Twitter at twitter.com/dougsmithwriter. I'm using the ping.fm service, which allows me to post an update once and have it automatically posted to multiple social media sites, including FB, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, and ident.ca. So if you're already following me on one of those, no need to add another. It's an experiment, but it does make it easier to get quick updates out regarding appearances, cool links, marketing updates.

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What can I say? They really seem to like it. Writer Erik Buchanan adds his thoughts about my collection, Impossibilia in his blog. You can find links to all the reviews for Impossibilia and to excerpts from the stories here.

Liviu Suciu at Fantasy Book Critic has added a review of Impossibilia, my 2009 Aurora-nominated short fiction collection. Liviu uses Impossibilia to kick off a new series of mini-reviews "in the spirit of showcasing less well known recent sff works that truly impressed me."

Here's what he had to say about the collection:

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I finally came across a review of my story "Doorways," which first appeared in Postscripts 17 in December and is currently nominated for the 2009 Aurora Awards. Here's what Kelly Jensen had to say in her review on SF Crowsnest:

"A couple months ago I was introduced to Douglas Smith by way of his collected short stories (also by PS Publishing), 'PS Showcase #5: Impossibilia'. So I was looking forward to his story 'Doorways' and was not disappointed.

The highly recommended annual Toronto genre convention Ad Astra will be held this upcoming weekend Mar 27-29 at the Crowne Plaza Toronto Don Valley Hotel, 1250 Eglinton Avenue East in Toronto.

Ad Astra is one of the more literary-focused of the genre cons, with an excellent programming stream for readers and writers. My panels and events at the con are as follows:

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