Newsletter #17 mailed out 3 July 2003
Dear People,
One of the interesting things about a publisher like Jim Baen--and thinking about it, since Don Wollheim died I don't believe there's anybody else who is like Jim--is that whimsical notions can very easily become concrete. Indeed, they may even make money--not by Tom Clancy standards, but enough that nobody's out of pocket for having fun and doing a Good Thing.
The most recent started when Eric Flint called to bounce some potential reprint projects off me before he took them to Jim: what did I know about this author, what did I think of this notion--that sort of thing. As often in the past, I was simply an information resource on what would be Eric's projects. He then went to Jim with his refined list.
Jim accepted one idea, shot down the rest for perfectly valid reasons ranging from, "I can't sell that," to "I can't stand the guy's prose," (hey--it's Baen Books, not Conglomerate Corporation). And then Jim proposed one of his own: Eric and I together would edit a collection of the stories that made a difference in our young lives when we first read them. The working title is THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN (and no, the sub-title isn't Great Tales of Failure and Defeat). Eric and I jumped at it.
So... it's early days yet, but we've roughed out something over a quarter million words. Eric's convinced a big book is a real benefit for reprint collections, and it was similar big volumes of the 1950s that were my introduction to Golden Age SF.
Jim is not only Founder of the Feast but has made a couple excellent suggestions already. We've incorporated them and I personally expect more to come. (If we can get Jim to agree, he'll be listed as co-editor with us.) We won't be able to get all the things we want, of course, but it'll still be an impressive volume.
The whole advance is going into permissions, though of course that doesn't mean we're paying a heck of a lot for any of the 25 (plus or minus) stories. This may turn out to be a problem with Heinlein; but as I say, it's early days.
The main difficulty is finding some of the authors, their heirs or assigns, to get permissions. Which is where y'all come in: I'm looking for family of Robert Ernest Gilbert, an occasional SF writer of the 1950s. Mr Gilbert lived in East Tennessee, and I believe I read a belated death notice for him in Locus in the 1990s.
Anyway, that's the fun part of a writer's life. This writer's life, anyway.
Well, that's unfair, because I have a good time writing also. Master of the Cauldron, the sixth Isles fantasy, is up to 55K in draft at the point I stopped to do this newsletter. It's going well, and I'm feeling reasonably perky about it too.
And that's not a small thing, because for the past three weeks our architect/builder and his wife have been repainting the interior of our house. Nothing major, just a decade of wear and tear, but the degree of disruption to me working at home is considerable. Not infrequently I've gone to get the reference book I need for the next scene (I normally work with a picture in front of me. Hmm; it just occurred to me that most people may not be aware of that) and find that I can't get under that tarp just now.
Nam vets are used to finding field expedients, however. For example, I used one of Gurney's Dinotopia paintings (which I could find) as a reference rather than Gurney's own inspiration, Spring by Alma-Tadema.
Goddess of the Ice Realm, fifth of the Isles fantasies and due out from Tor in September, 2003, exists in the form of bound galleys. I've gushed about Donato's wonderful cover repeatedly. Go look at the image [http://www.donatoart.com/monthlyframeset.html] and gush for yourselves.
Tom Doherty doesn't want me to post entire books on line, so I'll just put three chapters up on the website [http://david-drake.com/goddess1-3.pdf]. (If any fans are really, really, desperate, drop me a line via the FAQ form.)
And over at Baen the third RCN (Leary/Mundy) space opera, The Far Side of the Stars, is due in October with an excellent Steve Hickman cover [http://david-drake.com/news.html]. Steve has few peers as an SF artist: his one problem in cover work has been using a palette too subtle to give eye-catching contrasts at a distance. This one is great art and a great cover; I couldn't be happier with it.
The Far Side of the Stars will have a CD-ROM bound in containing an audio version of the novel read by Jim's sales manager, but I can't give you a better guess at the contents than what I listed in Newletter #16 [http://david-drake.com/news16.html]. The audiobook takes a lot of room and it still hasn't been completed. Some of the collaborative items may get squeezed out.
Jim is perfectly happy for me to post my books on line (it's about the best advertising there is, he and I think), so my webmaster will begin doing that in chunks at http://david-drake.com/farside1-3.pdf (linked from the news page.) Feel free to pass it on to anybody you think might like to try my fiction before they plunk down their twenty-five bucks.
In January, 2004, Baen Books is reissuing Igniting the Reaches, Through the Breach, and Fireships in one hardcover volume as The Reaches Trilogy. These are space operas based on the life of Francis, later Sir Francis, Drake. I'm proud of these and they're artistically of a very high level, but I'd like to add a few provisos:
1) I postulated a future in which war had brought Mankind to the brink of extinction. The civilization that returns is based on individual craftsmanship, not mass production (although that's clearly returning by the end of the series). Some readers, faced with stories in which the characters fly starships but fight (some of them) with single-shot rifles, were not only baffled but infuriated.
2) I got very much into the mindsets of the latter 16th century, a very ideological period. None of viewpoint characters are ideologues, but the books are deeply steeped in ideology that modern readers may find not only foreign but distasteful.
3) Finally, I'd intended the series to be light space opera, the sort of thing I later did in the RCN series. Space opera they are, but they're very hard, harsh books. Through the Breach in particular is a more realistic view of what war does to a citizen/soldier than Redliners was.
I'm more self-aware now than I was when I wrote the series, but I'm honestly not sure whether more than chance was involved in my choosing to write Through the Breach in first person, which is nearly unique in my fiction. (The only other example I can think of is The Tank Lords.)
So.... The Reaches Trilogy contains good writing and is an intelligent exegesis on The Age of Exploration; but it's not everybody's book.
The paperback of Paying the Piper is due out from Baen in December, 2003. People who followed Gulf War II will, I think, agree that I got the mobility and firepower of an armored task force right. The VC who survived when the Blackhorse swept down on Bien Hoa Airfield and cleared it during the Tet Offensive already knew that; but very few VC did survive that experience.
February brings the Baen mass market of The Warmasters, novellas by Dave Weber, Eric Flint and me with a strikingly bad cover misattributed to Gary Ruddell on the hardcover. The painting was done by David Mattingly, and I hope they correct the credit this time. (They didn't when I told them before.)
Then in March there'll be the Baen mass market of Seas of Venus, my two shortish novels set on the Kuttners' pulp Venus: Surface Action and The Jungle. It also has a printed version of my account of my vacation in Belize, available electronically at http://david-drake.com/belize.pdf.
The website has a few changes. There are a couple more of Ovid's lyrics up, and a picture of me as Ovid declaiming (my translation of) Amores I:6 at Jennie Faries' birthday party [http://david-drake.com/ovid.html]. As well as being a graphic designer working for Jim, Jennie has a degree in costume design and likes to give theme parties. I want everybody to know that I wove my ivy chaplet with my own hands, and that the strands are now rooting in water. (No ivy died in the making of this costume....)
We've got (meaning Karen has put up) snapshots of the wargame miniatures (see earlier newsletters) at http://david-drake.com/hswargame.html. These are unpainted and the vehicles don't have their metal parts, but it'll give you a notion of what they look like.
And there've been a few housekeeping changes on the FAQ page, nothing major.
Now it's time for me to get back to what is major: writing the final three-quarters of a Big Fat Fantasy. Best to all of you!
Dave Drake
david-drake.com
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