Joke Covers at Dave’s Roast

At Trinoc-con on Sunday, October 6, 2002, my friend Mark Van Name presided over what was billed as a David Drake Roast but was really a tribute. I was very embarrassed at the idea beforehand, but it turned out to be one of the funniest hours of my existence. Besides the usual sorts of comments from Mark, Jim Baen, and Dan Breen on the panel (and offerings from more distant friends), Mark and our friend Jennie Faries (who does real cover design for Baen Books) mocked up the covers for David Drake volumes kicking off new lines for Baen Books. I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard since the first time I watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

There are jokes in the copy that very few people are going to get, but the whole room found them side-splittingly funny. People may have different favorites–mine was probably the western, Jim especially liked the children’s book, and my son thought the parenting book was a scream–but ‘favorite’ in this company is a matter of first among equals.

Oh, and I should probably mention that all the author photos are real. The one on the thriller is me smiling at my birthday cake, I swear to goodness….

These are not real Baen books; but you know, I’ll bet if I wrote Maddy and the M-1 Amphibious Assault Vehicle, Jim would publish it….

Click on the images below to see the larger covers