Kaz Morran is a Canadian who's floated untethered in Sendai, Japan since '05. His novel 550AU Buried in Stone and his other sci-fi thrillers draw on his Earth-spanning calamities and adventures: the 2011 quake-tsunami-meltdown, getting kidnapped, working for bikers, teaching aerospace engineers and anti-Yakuza cops, and more. He's never been homeless or locked up for long.
Kaz prefers being intrigued to being happy and therefore settles most contently on tumultuous ground.
