NEWSLETTER 34: 22 August 2006
Dear People,
My wife Jo and I are back from a wonderful and exhilarating week in England with our friends, the Lambsheads. It was an experience. I gathered an enormous amount of information (I took 378 photos with my camera and a few with Jo's when I was between sets of batteries) which will color everything I write henceforth, and I also had a tremendous amount of fun. We were on pretty much constantly so I'm exhausted and a little flaky. Actually, it feels a lot like finishing a novel.
Incidentally, we ate quite well, mostly in pubs we chanced across. As a typical example, the lamb's liver and bacon on a bed of mashed potatoes I had at the Globe and Rainbow on the way from Scotney Castle to Bateman's (Kipling's house) was delicious and so tender that I didn't need my knife. English food has an undeservedly bad reputation.
Our return coincided with the terror alert in which the British banned books and newspapers from trans-Atlantic flights. As best I can tell, they were attempting to prove they could be just as stupid as American authorities. Note that the ban on reading material wasn't an over-reaction: it had no bearing whatever on the problem and was therefore simply hysterical. (Preventing anyone with an Islamic name from flying would've been an over-reaction.)
I hope to put a few of the photos on my website and to work up my notes into a proper travelogue, but my first priority is to finish The Mirror of Worlds , the second book of the Crown of the Isles trilogy. The rough draft's 80% complete, but life has been interfering rather badly with my writing this summer.
Other Times Than Peace , my collection of Military SF stories (broadly interpreted) is out as a Baen hc. The cover's by Kurt Miller whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Deep South Con in Raleigh last month. http://david-drake.com/news.html ]
I just received copies of Some Golden Harbor , the fifth RCN novel. It's a September, 2006, Baen hc so it ought to be in stores realsoonnow. Steve Hickman did the cover. http://david-drake.com/news.html ] It's a fun series. And on that subject:
ANOTHER EXCITING POSTCARD OFFER!
I have postcards with the cover of Some Golden Harbor . These can be mailed on an ordinary 24-cent postcard stamp. I will send you a signed postcard if you send a 24-cent stamp and an address sticker to me at:
David Drake
PO Box 904
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Incidentally, Harbor got a very positive Publisher's Weekly review, which I appreciate; but the reviewer referred to the RCN as the Royal Cinnabar Navy instead of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy. Given that the internal politics of the oligarchy running Cinnabar is a major aspect of the series, this isn't just me being pedantic... but I don't suppose it really matters.
I deeply believe that I should use all my care and intelligence to structure the backgrounds and plots of my stories--but readers aren't required to notice this. It's my job to give them stories which they appreciate, not their job to appreciate my care. I keep reminding myself of this; and I keep wincing nonetheless when they (for example) say Royal in place of Republic.
The first volume of Night Shade's Complete Hammer's Slammers has been selling very nicely. (Thank you all.) The second volume (which will collect the four short novels, with an excellent introduction by David Hartwell and a new story and afterword by me) is due out in November, 2006. I haven't seen either proof pages or the cover painting, so I suspect publication may slip a month or two as the first volume did; but HS1 was worth the wait, and I expect this will be also.
Speaking of Night Shade, they'll be publishing Balefires , my fantasy/horror collection, in March, 2007. This is an expanded version of the volume that was planned for Fedogan and Bremer in 1998. After talking to the folks at F&B during World Fantasy Con in 2005, I agree to leave the book with them on their assurance that it'd be out at WFC 2006. Further catastrophes ensued. They weren't anybody's fault, but--it's been eight years. I transferred the rights to Night Shade.
The Night Shade version has 24 stories and a total of 12,000 new words of introductions. All my old fantasy/horror pieces are included, along with two very recent ones. Eight stories have never been reprinted.
Going over the contents was an interesting experience. These stories and a moderate additional number of similar ones could've been my entire writing career; indeed, they would've been my career if Hammer's Slammers hadn't taken off so unexpectedly. Oddly enough, I might've won a few awards along the way in that alternate reality.
I'm glad to have the life and success that I do, but I probably wouldn't have thought of myself as a failure if Balefires were the capstone of my career instead of a sidelight to it. The older I get, the more convinced I've become that we don't really pick our futures: we just live them.
Tor informed me (when I asked) that they intend to reprint The Forlorn Hope in September, 2006, and Bridgehead in December, 2006. They'll continue to be pbs (they were paperback originals) with the original cover paintings (according to what I'm told). Those of you who've been looking for an opportunity to replace the copy of The Forlorn Hope that you've worn to death (and a number of folks over the years have said as much), your chance is coming.
I did a podcast for Stephen Euin Cobb, operating as The Future and You [http://www.thefutureandyou.libsyn.com/] . He broke the discussion into a number of segments and is mixing it on his show (June through August thus far) with other interviews (some with Baen authors).
Podcasts aren't my preferred method of listening to things (I keep forgetting to turn the sound on, for example). If you're less computer-challenged than I am, you might find this interesting.
My friend Jim Baen died in June, as most of you will already know. We had his funeral, so to speak, in the middle of July. He and his mom (whose cremains had been in a bag on Jim's TV set) are now sprinkled around the base of a huge oak in the grove beside my house. [http://david-drake.com/baen.html]
Jim and I were friends for a very long time; I'm glad to have him as a closer neighbor. I wouldn't say it makes me think of him more often than I otherwise would, though, because I'm not sure that's possible.
You know, this would've been (for me) an overscheduled summer even if things had gone well in general. Jim's death and the associated business were about as bad as it gets for me mentally, and coming back from England in the midst of a terrorist threat wasn't a good experience either.
But I'm back. I'm in good health, I have my work; and while no one and nothing will ever replace Jim, I have other close friends.
Life is good despite the glitches. I hope all of you can say the same when you really sit down and look at things.
All best,
Dave Drake david-drake.com
******************
To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your e-mail address, e-mail webmaster@david-drake.com
******************