Newsletter #32 mailed out March 8, 2006
Dear People,
Time appears to fly whether or not you're having fun. Since the most recent newsletter (31) I've been working on the plot for The New Land, the second book of the Crown of the Isles trilogy. That isn't a problem in itself--I've done a lot of plots by now--but during the initial process of gathering material I don't appear to be going anywhere.
I have a long track record to prove that my system works, but my intellectual side (which controls most of my writing and my life more generally) keeps pointing out that from the outside I look like I'm sitting on my butt, reading books and jotting down notes without any particular bearing on the job at hand. And believe me, my intellect is completely separate from the subconscious which runs this stage of writing.
By the time you read this I'll have completed my rough plot (since I assume Karen, my webmaster, won't send out the newsletter if I suddenly die instead of finishing. Hey, there's a lot of asteroids up there and one might have my name on it). I'm feeling much perkier. This state of mind will last a matter of days or weeks till I'm far enough into the novel to realize that I've lost any talent I ever had and that this novel will be a disaster. Living in my head is a constant barrel of laughs.
Incidentally because The New Land was planned as part of a trilogy, I knew where it was going--had to go--before I started the plot. This turns out to make the task significantly harder. Normally I have nothing more detailed than, 'and the good guys win' as a goal, which gives me a welcome degree of flexibility.
There's been a major Good Thing (besides the outline) since Newsletter 31: Volume 1 of The Collected Hammer's Slammers is out from Night Shade. It contains all the short fiction in the series, in order of original publication. (This arrangement makes as much sense as any would.) It's a beautiful book [see http://david-drake.com/news.html ].
Now--I've had lots of books over the years, many of them from major publishers with large print runs and significant advances. This is a big book for Night Shade, but they're a small press; and while I think I did get an advance, I'm sure it wasn't a large one. HS1 is a much bigger thing in my mind, I find to my surprise, than it has any right to be.
As best I can tell (yes, it's my own head; that doesn't mean I fully understand what's going on in it), my enthusiastic reaction stems from the fact that the Hammer stories and I (because I wrote them) have been vilified for more than 30 years. Seeing the series in a nice package with a quite wonderful introduction by Gene Wolfe, one of the most rightly respected literary figures in the field, is a kind of validation I never dreamed I'd get.
Indeed, I'd have said I didn't need validation. That's true in the technical sense: being abused by reviewers who've never been at the sharp end has never changed what I write or how I write it. But even if I didn't need to be told I wasn't a moral leper after all, it feels awfully good.
The book tour on The Fortress of Glass is well into the planning stage. Check http://david-drake.com/news.html which will be updated as information comes in. If any of you want to drop in and get stuff signed, I'd be delighted to see you. (Hmm; and I need to decide which bit of Fortress to read at the places which want a reading.)
Speaking of Fortress, there's a SciFi Wire interview at http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=5&id=34321 Well, there was: I'm not sure how long they stay up.
Also from Tor is the pb of The Master of the Cauldron with its wonderful Donato cover. I've got my copies, so it should be in stores realsoonnow.
All my Tor titles with electronic versions are going to appear as Baen Webscriptions [http://www.webscription.net/]. This is due in no small measure to Geoffrey Kidd, who did the scanning and proofing on a couple and was the conduit to Baen Books on all. Thank you, Geoffrey.
Jim Baen puts books up without encryption (which I've been told to call DRM, a stupid acronym for a stupid concept). Baen Webscriptions can be read on any browser than can get you to the site. It apparently doesn't compute in an accountant's mind that ease of using Jim's system might have something to do with Jim's electronic income being well into six figures and everybody else's electronic income being squat.
Given that we live in a world where people blow up places of worship in the name of religion, I guess this degree of narrowness shouldn't surprise me. I think it's all right for me to be sad, though.
Tor doesn’t have its own Webscriptions program. My books are going up on Baen because I asked Tom Doherty. Tom is a very smart man.
On my website proper, there's an additional Ovid translation (Amores II-5). I expect my next translation project to be the Echo and Narcissus section from the Metamorphoses, but I've only given the text a quick read-through thus far.
There was almost a new home page picture. I was a little doubtful about this. I've seen too many author photos from the '30s and '40s, in which the subject has posed in a tweed suit with a pipe or in a checked flannel shirt with an axe, to be really comfortable with the use of props in pictures. (Yes, among others I'm talking about my friend Manly Wade Wellman and about my benefactor August Derleth, who bought my first stories.) But--
A bookseller asked if I'd sign bookplates for her; sure, I said. (I always say that.) But this time instead of using a commercial product, she wanted to create personalized bookplates with Photoshop. She asked if I still had the pictures I took of my Damascus-steel dagger for Gary Ruddell when he painted the cover of Dagger.
I didn't, but I had the dagger and a camera with a timer. It was cold and windy, so I put on my motorcycle jacket (normally I'd have been wearing a ratty nylon bomber jacket under a photographer's vest; but then, normally I wouldn't have been holding a long custom dagger).
The result was an interesting picture. It won't, on reflection, be on the home page but you can find it in the gallery [http://david-drake.com/album.html]. I'm still the same saintly, even-tempered person that I've always been, however.
On what is non-news rather than news, I've told people that Tor would be reprinting The Forlorn Hope after many years out of print. It turns out that nowadays Tor can't just do this just because I tell them they have my permission to do so: they need a formal amendment to the original agreement (which of course lapsed long since). Given that agreement was made about 25 years ago, I'm not surprised that they can't find a copy. Nobody who knows me would be surprised that I can't find a copy. (I have other virtues, but most days I can't find my ass with both hands.)
So nothing has happened on the reprint for a very long time. I'm probably going to ask Tom if he'll let Baen Books have Hope and other OP titles. That will require a phone call to Jim--period.
I remember when things were as easy with Tor. (Yes, I'm old. But some changes aren't for the better.)
And finally, a note on Jim Baen's Universe, the new on-line magazine. The system is ready to take your subscription now [http://www.baens-universe.com/ ], though for present subscribers will get an electronic ARC rather than the finished product."
JBU provides a fat volume of extremely good original SF and fantasy stories. I think it's worthy of support by everybody who likes short form fiction in our genre. Take a look at the writers involved and make your own decision.
Now, back to that plot....
All best,
Dave Drake
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