The most exciting news this time has very little to do with me. I am therefore turning the stage over to my webmaster, Karen Zimmerman:

The new web site is up at http://david-drake.com.  Our very simple original web site went live April 2000 and since then outgrew its ability to handle Dave’s very extensive, rich content.  I hope the new site helps users find things more easily—there are a lot of cross references and access points.  Please be aware that I’m still tweaking things, so you might see changes in appearance once in a while, and I’m still uploading some of the old archival content, including past newsletters and photos.

I’d greatly appreciate it if you would let me know if you see any glitches.  Tell me what error you see and what operating system and browser you’re using.

For those among you who care, this web site is built with WordPress, most commonly known as blogging software.  I found the post function and various plug-ins extremely adaptable for our content.  Thanks to my daughter, Ali Zimmerman, for helping me adapt the design and function the way I wanted it, especially the Ovid section.  I think we might be pushing WordPress to its limits in some cases.  I suppose we could say that Dave’s entire site is one big blog, eh?

Because we moved to a new web host, I have not yet set up new mailing list software, so this newsletter is going out from a third party which may or may not prove satisfactory.  That will explain some of the automatic footer and other oddities you might notice.  I apologize for the formatting on this one. On the other hand, there seem to be some interesting options I might try the next time.  Watch this space!

Anyway, enjoy the site!

–Karen

As I implied above, I was mostly a spectator. My primary function was lowest-common-denominator testing. “I can’t find that.” ‘But it’s right there, at the top of the page!’ “That says Internet Explorer.” ‘No, the top of the web page!’ “Oh, there it is.”

Yes, that’s a real exchange. One of quite a number of similar exchanges. I have my virtues; but believe me, skill in the design and construction of websites is not among them. I am in awe of my site.

Oh–I did add a little essay about the way the final Isles trilogy (The Crown of the Isles) was structured. That’s up as a note to The Fortress of Glass, the first of the three volumes.

And since I’m speaking of essays, I did one on motorcycling for the Tor/Forge blog, which led to me doing a pair of essays on the classics as an aid to writing for Tor.com, which is a wholly separate entity.

Essays of this sort are hard work to write correctly. I gave myself (the blog didn’t set a limit) 750 words for each of the classics pieces. They came in at 749 and 743 words respectively, after very darned careful changing and tightening. By the end I was pleased at the results, but the work took a lot out of me.

Whether or not the work was worthwhile depends on one’s definition of worth. I doubt that I’ll sell one additional book because I wrote them, so commercial considerations certainly didn’t apply. On the other hand, I really love the classics. Like the Blackhorse, classical literature has had a big, positive impact on my life. (Wholly positive in the case of the classics. That wouldn’t be true for the Blackhorse.) I’m proud to be able to say so in public.

I don’t expect I’ll do it again, though. The psychic cost was pretty high.

Speaking of Tor–in the most recent newsletter, I mentioned that Tom Doherty, Tor’s publisher, and I had wanted Tor to reprint Fortress, my 1987 Tor thriller, but that his bureaucracy wouldn’t permit that to happen. Toni, publisher of Baen Books and apparently a newsletter subscriber (hi, Toni) told me that she would be pleased to reprint both Fortress and the first book in the (kinda) series, Skyripper, as an omnitrade.

So I called Tom to make sure it was all right with him–and learned that nobody had told him what had happened about the (non) reprint of Fortress. He was okay with Baen doing it, though. It just seemed simpler to both of us.

THE LEGIONS OF FIRE, the Tor fantasy whose publication led to the three essays I mentioned above, has appeared and is beautiful, just beautiful. Donato did two versions of the cover: the book as printed, in which the painting is shown as a banner from Trajan’s Column (which he repainted with additions from the novel, you’ll notice if you look carefully), but also as a full-bleed cover with lots of fire demons. (Donato is not only good, he’s amazingly hard working.) Both versions are on the website. I guess I agree with the designer’s choice, but jeepers! what an embarrassment of riches!

Next up will be the two latest RCN space operas from Baen. The pb of IN THE STORMY RED SKY is due in August, with the hc of WHAT DISTANT DEEPS following in September. These, like all books of the series save for the first, have Steve Hickman covers–wonderful Steve Hickman covers.

I’ve been thinking about those covers a lot recently, because Steve has asked me to write an introduction to a (second) volume of his art which he’s putting together now. That’s a problem for me, because I can’t even draw a straight line with a ruler. (The ruler always slips.)

The thing that really struck me when I looked hard at the covers Steve did for the RCN series is this: they’re perfect for the works, but they aren’t what I would have picked if somebody had forced me to choose a subject. I couldn’t ask for a better illustration of why I generally refuse to comment on cover art.

Okay, there are a few things I’ve said. A fantasy with strong female characters in the text should have at least one woman in the cover image. (My Military SF generally has strong female characters also, but there putting a tank on the cover with only a teensy helmeted figure visible at the TC’s hatch isn’t going to mislead anybody about the contents.) And it’s generally good to have a strong central image, particularly on a paperback cover, though I generally bite my tongue rather than saying that.

But if someone insisted I pick a scene for the cover of (say) What Distant Deeps, I’d probably have put a giant Plesiosaur charging down the slope at a small human figure with her pistol raised. Which would have been completely _wrong_ or at least wrong for Steve to paint. He correctly focused on the fact that the series is about the two central characters, not about shooting monsters or blowing up spaceships or subverting governments (granted, that would be a hard one to illustrate) or any other of the many aspects of the plot.

But I wouldn’t suggest that another artist paint the central characters even though that was the right choice for Steve, because not every artist is as comfortable painting human figures as he is. (Paul Alexander’s covers had a great deal to do with the success of the Hammer series, but I wouldn’t have wanted him to do the cover of What Distant Deeps in the fashion Steve did it.)

I do my best work when somebody tells me the desired result and gets out of my way while I execute it in the fashion I’m most comfortable doing. I think most artists–the best ones, anyway–are similar to me.

I see that I’ve mentioned a lot of items peripheral to my main work, but I haven’t commented on how MONSTERS FROM THE DEEP, the second book in the new Tor fantasy series, is coming. It’s chugging along; I’m at just under 90K and rising. That’s still mid-book (I’m near the end of chapter 11 of 19), so I’m convinced that it’s crap and that I’ve lost all the skill I may once have had and a lot of other depressing things; but that’s a problem in my head, not with the book.

I sometimes wonder if I would get this depressed about the quality of my works in progress if it weren’t for Nam. I think I probably would. Even before I was drafted, I was in the habit of stopping in the middle of a story because I was sure the idea was crap. When I look back over those scraps, I find a number of them which were perfectly workable. I guess it’s just the (sad, miserable) way I’m constructed.

What follows can be construed as a political comment, at least if one lives in Connecticut. I don’t ordinarily do this (I vote every time, a right I’ve paid for; but I don’t tell other people how to vote), and anybody who wants to skip the rest of this newsletter will not offend me in any way.

First: a year ago, I could not imagine circumstances in which I would hope that Linda McMahon would become a US Senator.  However….

The Army and Marine Reserves were a significant factor in the First Gulf War and are even more important in the present quagmire. (Quagmires.) Reservists are being treated shabbily and put into extreme danger for uncertain periods of time with inferior equipment. Nothing I say below should be taken as an attack on present-day reservists.

Something similar was true during WW II–though since what was then the Department of War was run better than Mr Rumsfeld ran Defense, the Reserves weren’t as badly treated relative to regular troops. Reserve troops fought in many of the critical battles both in Europe and the Pacific.

1970, when Mr Blumenthal served in Washington, DC, and I served in Cambodia and Viet Nam, was different. The Army and Marine Reserves both had “Six and Six Programs” in which the recruit served six months active duty in the US, then spent the rest of his six-year term in the Reserves. Theoretically, the Reserves could have been called up. In reality they never were, and the Reserve recruiters used this fact quite openly to boost their numbers.

When I got back to the World, I immediately reentered Duke Law School. As I sat in the lounge, I heard two of my new classmates talking about the relative virtues of the ways they were staying out of Nam. One had gotten into the National Guard; the other had been accepted into the Six and Six Reserve Program.

I wanted to kill them both. They were unquestionably right–why should they have been screwed up just because I had been?–and intellectually I knew that, but for an instant I was furious.

It isn’t that Mr Blumenthal didn’t serve in Nam or that he got into the Six and Six Program that bothers me. Both those things showed better luck and perhaps better judgment than I showed. If that were the whole story I would happily vote for him under many circumstances, just as I voted for Bill Clinton the first time around even though he lied to stay out of Nam.

Clinton and I both made decisions and didn’t pretend otherwise. He has no reason to regret his choice any more than have to I regret mine.

What Mr Blumenthal did, however, was to claim something that he worked _very_ hard to avoid in 1970. He stole something that he could have had as a gift in 1970; hell, he could have had my seat on the back deck of an M48 tank, holding a bloop tube and wearing a bandolier of grenades, if he’d even hinted that he wanted it.

Mr Blumenthal might make a very good Senator. But he’s no kind of man.

Sorry for the rant. I hope I never feel compelled to do it again.

–Dave Drake

***
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I’m in the middle of the third chapter of MONSTERS OF THE SEAS, the second (of four) novels in my new fantasy series for Tor. It’s moving along at the usual comfortable rate… which as usual isn’t nearly as fast as I wish were the case.

The problem that’s particularly concerning me at the moment is that I’m writing the second book in a new series. I want to open with sufficient background for a reader who hasn’t read the first novel (THE LEGIONS OF FIRE) but without boring the reader who _has_ read LEGIONS.

Now, I’ve faced this general problem many times in the past–since July, 1971, in fact, when I started writing a second Roman-period fantasy story involving Vettius and Dama, the heroes of the final story I sold to August Derleth. This is the first time I’ve had to address the situation with _this_ series, however. I’m still getting a feel for how much to tell and what to pass over.

If I get the pacing wrong, well, I’ll be repeatedly editing my text. Eventually I’ll come to what I think is the correct balance.

I’ve learned to live with the fact that the writing never goes as quickly as I’d like it to. I just keep plodding forward. Plodding forward isn’t a bad philosophy of life; for me, at any rate.

I mentioned THE LEGIONS OF FIRE, due out from Tor in May. As I write this I haven’t even seen dust jackets, but the cover treatment (with art by Donato) is stunning. I don’t view these newsletters as sell-copy, but I do suggest that in a month or so you go down to your local bookstore and look at a copy. If it’s as pretty as the jpg leads me to expect, you’ll get a visual treat.

I’m worried that nobody will like LEGIONS because it’s genuinely different. I’m using a setting very like that of Early Imperial Rome, and the characters behave like men and women of their time and place. That means they–my heroes–don’t always behave in fashions that modern Americans would approve.

I’m an American and proud of it… but I’m not telling any secrets if I say that we Americans tend to be parochial. It often crosses my mind that I’d sell more books if my characters had the attitudes and sensibilities of the largest possible number of potential readers.

The thing is, I couldn’t write that sort of thing if I tried, and there’s no reason I _should_ try. If money were my primary goal, I’d still be a practicing attorney. LEGIONS is the book that appealed to me to write, and I’m hoping it will appeal to a considerable number of readers. That’s what I’ve done ever since I started writing for publication. Sometimes things work out better commercially than they do on other times.

If a writer isn’t willing to take a chance, he’ll never grow, never improve. The downside of taking chances is that sometimes you fall on your face; I’ve certainly fallen on my face in the past. Wish me luck, people.

The paperback of IN THE STORMY RED SKY, an RCN (Leary/Mundy) space opera, is due out from Baen in August, with the hardcover of its sequel, WHAT DISTANT DEEPS, to follow in September. The lovely Steve Hickman covers for both are up on the news page.

I’ve had questions about availability on SERVANT OF THE DRAGON, the third volume in the Isles fantasy series which I did for Tor (recently completed with THE GODS RETURN, the ninth book in the series). You should be able to read any of my books without even knowing that it’s part of a series, but general readers may not expect that to be true. Furthermore, SERVANT appeared to be out of print, not just out of stock. I therefore checked with Tor as to whether it would be reprinted.

After discussion with Tom Doherty, the Publisher, a reprint of SERVANT has been slotted for December, 2010. This is good, but it sort of bemuses me.

You see, I’m old enough to remember the days before Corporate Publishing, when a publisher would reprint 5K copies of a successful book for stock without thinking anything about it. That’s no longer the case at any house I know of, except for Baen Books.

A couple years ago, Tom and I were chatting. He asked if he should reprint my Tom Kelly thrillers (which he really likes). I told him SKYRIPPER was pretty dated, but that FORTRESS had technically been an alternate universe novel and had some good stuff in it. He said he’d reprint FORTRESS.

The Tor legal department got in a tizzy: they couldn’t find the contracts from 1983 and were sure they didn’t have the rights after 25 years. Well, I couldn’t either–they’re with some very old tax records, I suspect–but I told them just to go ahead and pay me on the standard royalty schedule. They weren’t willing to do anything so simple, and the business obviously wasn’t worth the rigmarole of a complete new contract.

So despite both the author and the publisher wanting the book to be reprinted, the corporate bureaucracy was unwilling to do so–and the book wasn’t reprinted. I understand this–I’m an attorney, after all–but I miss the old days when Tom and I would verbally shake hands and the thing would happen.

And as I said, Baen Books is still that way. I’m sure this makes lots of bookkeeping problems, but you know–the business of a publishing house is to publish books. Everything else should be subordinate to that purpose.

I believe I said in a previous newsletter that the third volume of THE COMPLETE HAMMER’S SLAMMERS would come out from Baen as an omnitrade pb in July, 2010. It’s really going to be November, 2010. The fine Kurt Miller art is up on the news page, and copies of the Night Shade hardcover are still available.

Speaking of me being wrong, I had told people I expected to be at NASFiC. It now looks as though I will be in England on or about that time, so I will _not_ be at NASFiC. I’m not at my best at large, general cons, so I don’t regard missing this one as much of a burden.

We’re approaching ten years since my website went live. My webmaster, Karen Zimmerman (who has hired her daughter Ali for some specialized matters) is at work on a complete rebuild using modern software. We aren’t sure of the timing, but it ought to happen within the next two months.

The main purpose of the changes is to make site navigation easier. The sheer bulk–I’ve really got a lot of content–means that’s still going to be a challenge, but by now we have a better idea of what people will want to learn from the site.

And possibly within the next two months, I’ll finish my translation of the Hercules Cycle of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It’s a long section, and I’m doing it in chunks of twenty or so lines at a time.

I find translating settles me usefully on mornings when I just don’t feel like working because I think what I’ve been doing is crap. The Roman(ish) setting of the book I’m working on (and indeed, the fact that the action opens with scenes from the life of Hercules) make these passages particularly appropriate, but there’s more to it than that.

Ovid raised craftsmanship to the level of art. His work is a constant reminder of how good somebody can be if he simply buckles down and does his job to the best of his ability.

I recently attended CoastCon in Biloxi. People couldn’t have been nicer, and I had a pleasant time. (There are a couple pictures up, though none of the con itself.)

Perhaps because of the large gaming presence, there was a lot of emphasis on my Military SF. The subject of one panel was “Why is Military SF So Popular Today?”

The truth is, Military SF isn’t and never has been terribly popular. In a place like Biloxi, with many military bases in the immediate vicinity, one can imagine that it is, but in truth my fantasies and my space operas outsell my Military SF by a considerable margin.

Now–there are battles of various sorts in my RCN space operas, just as there are in Dave Weber’s Honor Harrington space operas, Eric Flint’s 1632 Alternate Universe novels, and John Ringo’s near-future techno-thrillers. None of these series are Military SF in my opinion.

John’s Posleen series _is_ Military SF and sells very well, but that’s the exception in the Baen list. My Hammer’s Slammers series is Military SF and has a consistent, respectable sale for over 30 years, but not an enormous sale in any single year.

I have just listed the major players in the Baen list, a group that Lois Bujold will (re)join when her new Miles Vorkosigan space opera is published. Baen is the house most identified with Military SF–and even at Baen, it isn’t a critical factor.

But it’s instructive to note the consistency of sales of the modern Military SF category (starting basically in the mid-’70s with Jerry Pournelle’s Falkenberg series, Joe Haldeman’s Forever War series, and my Hammer’s Slammers). While I was writing the early Hammer stories, I also wrote quite a lot of horror. I stopped writing horror in about 1980, shortly before Category Horror took off.

My agent quite reasonably pushed me to write horror novels in the ’80s. I refused because I didn’t want to put my head back into that place, but I assumed I was giving up a chance to write more commercially successful books.

In the ’90s Category Horror crashed, taking with it some careers. Military SF continued to trundle along, and I patted myself on the back for my decision.

But recently I’ve come to realize that I couldn’t possibly have written a commercially successful horror novel even if I’d been willing to try. My mindset–the mindset I brought back from Nam–was far too harsh for a genre intended to sell to an educated but not literary female readership.

The problem isn’t that I wasn’t good at writing horror, it was that my version of real horror simply horrified people. (_Smokie Joe_ is capable of doing that still today.) I pushed the wrong buttons, and I pushed them very hard.

My mindset was commercially acceptable in Military SF, however, which sold largely to soldiers and veterans. These were people who’d been the places I had been, many of them. Some, like me, were still there. They understood and accepted the truth of a story like _The Interrogation Team_, whereas even my agent admits that he’d been unwilling to publish _Smokie Joe_ when he was editing what he claimed was a no-holds-barred horror anthology.

I’m a nicer, better balanced person now than I was 40 years ago. I write novels that relatively larger numbers of people can appreciate.

But I owe a lot to Military SF. It was, and I think it remains, the only genre which allows a writer to explore the truly darkest corners of his heart without a serious commercial penalty.

Now back to my current life as a happy-go-lucky Pollyanna, as all my friends will testify.

–Dave Drake

***
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Cover art: Steve Hickman

I’ll start out with what in my days as a lawyer we would call boilerplate: I use both English and Metric weights and measures in the RCN series to suggest the range of diversity which I believe would exist in a galaxy-spanning civilization. I do not, however, expect either actual system to be in use in three thousand years. Kilogram and inch (etcetera) should be taken as translations of future measurement systems, just as I’ve translated the spoken language.

I really wish I didn’t have to say that. I’ve learned that I do.

The situation on which I based the plot of What Distant Deeps is the crisis that overtook but did not–quite–overwhelm the Roman Empire in the 3d century AD. The extremities of the empire went through striking (and strikingly different) convulsions. For the action of this novel I’m particularly indebted to what happened in the East, but there is by no means a direct correspondence between this fiction and historical reality (even to the extent that we know the reality).

I write fiction to entertain, not to educate; but Aristophanes proved it was possible to do both, and on a good day a reader might learn something from me as well. Empires have generally used proxies to fight wars on their borders. The problem–as Rome learned with the Oasis of Palmyra–is that the proxies have policies of their own. Not infrequently, things go wrong for the principal when the proxy decides to implement its separate policies.

For a recent example, in the 1970s the US hired a battalion of troops from Argentina, called them “the Contras” and employed them to fight the socialist government of Nicaragua. The military dictatorship running Argentina at the time was more than happy to support the US effort.

Unfortunately for everybody (except ultimately the Argentine people), General Galtieri and his cronies (some of whom, amazingly, were even stupider and more brutal than he was) decided that their secret help to the US meant that the US would protect them from Britain when they invaded the Falklands and subjected the islands’ English-speaking residents to what passed for government in Argentina. Galtieri was wrong–the tail didn’t wag the dog during the Falklands War–and Argentina ousted the military junta as a result of its humiliation by Britain; but there might not have been a Falklands War if the US had not used Argentina as a military proxy in Nicaragua.

I could mention cases where US proxy involvements have led to even worse results. If the shoe fits, wear it.

Finally, a word about the dedication (“To Jason Williams and Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade Books”). I could simply let it stand (I’ve many times dedicated a book to an editor or publisher), but there’s an aspect to this one that won’t be obvious to anyone outside my head (including Jason and Jeremy).

I came back to the World in 1971 and began writing the Hammer stories as a way of dealing with my experiences in Viet Nam and Cambodia. The stories were successful, but they made me a pariah to a number of very vocal people.

Jason took me aback when he approached me about putting the series in limited-edition hardcovers. Nobody had ever suggested the stories were worthy of that before. Indeed, the people who said anything were likely to be protesting them being in print at all, even in mass market editions.

When I opened the box that contained the beautifully produced Complete Hammer’s Slammers, Volume 1, I had an unexpected emotional reaction: I’d finally come home to the America which sent me to Nam in 1970. It was something that I didn’t know I’d been missing until Night Shade Books gave it to me.

–Dave Drake

What Distant Deeps. RCN Series. 2010, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 370 p. 1439133662. $25.00.
———Paperback June 2011, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 514 p. 9781439134

I intended to start this newsletter by saying that I’d completed the plot of the next RCN space opera and am at work on it. Those things are true (we’ll get back to them), but in my mind the big news is that I’ve returned from BookExpo America (BEA) in the Javits Center on Manhattan. 

Because gosh! I’m glad to be back. I thought of myself as an ambassador for Baen, but I was also becoming a face rather than just a name to people on the sales end from the distributor right down through individual bookstore personnel. This is clearly good stuff for a professional writer to be doing, and Toni (Weisskopf; Baen publisher) wasn’t asking me to be anything but myself. (Cheerful, friendly, but not even close to being politically correct.)

I had time to myself. The hotel was only 30 blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, allowing me to walk through Central Park (lovely in itself) and spend an afternoon there. (To my amazement, they have a sirrush–a dragon–from the Ishtar Gate of Babylon. I’d seen a considerable portion of the gate in the Museum of Oriental Antiquities in Istanbul, but those tiles included only lions and bulls.)

So there was lots of neat stuff, both professionally and personally; I don’t regret doing it. But.

To start out with, travel is irrationally tough on me. (Arriving at the airport and learning that I didn’t have a ticket after all–travel agent screw-up–would’ve stressed even a normal person, I suspect.) The Iowa cities where I was born and raised weren’t much bigger than even this ‘small’ BEA–not to mention the population of NYC itself. And though the socializing wasn’t unpleasant in itself, there was a lot of it, including at meals. I never lost sight of the fact that this was business.

So I’m sitting on my lower deck now. The birds are singing up a storm, especially the wren on the clothesline beside me. My dogs are sleeping to right and left. The meadow beyond the Rose-of-Sharon and the mimosa is lush and green, and very shortly I will get back to writing a novel.

This is where _I_ belong.

And speaking of that novel: WHAT DISTANT DEEPS, the next RCN (Leary/Mundy) space opera. (I took the title from William Blake’s poem The Tiger.) I have a plot of 9,500 words, which allows me to be very steady in the actual process of writing; and as of this moment, I have 851 words of actual rough draft. When I get going I average a solid thousand words a day, but believe me, BEA was a disruption.

The process of plotting this one differed from any of my previous books–and each of them differed as well. You wouldn’t think there were that many ways to come up with a plot and complications, but it turns out there are. I don’t consciously do things differently; it just happens. I have a very skilled subconscious, and I’ve learned not to get in its way; but doggone, I wonder at myself a lot of the time.

In the April newsletter I said that the hardcover of IN THE STORMY RED SKY, the next RCN (Leary/Mundy) space opera, would be out from Baen realsoonnow. In fact it’s now out from both Baen (in hc) and Audible (downloadable audio). I’m extremely pleased by both versions.

The reaction of the cover designer (AKA my friend Jennie) to the cover of SKY was “Ack!” or words to that effect. The printer used the wrong metallic foil. All I can say is that it looks really spiffy to me.

The mass market of BALEFIRES, my collection of fantasy/horror stories from Night Shade, is supposed to be out on June 30. You’ve heard that before? Yes, but that was in 2008… or maybe 2007. This time the book is really at the printers.

One good thing about the delay is that the mass market cover has had time to grow on me. I kinda like it now. The stories are very close to my heart–this really is where I started out–and the background notes I’ve attached to each story provide a good deal of autobiography and history.

The third Belisarius omnibus, FLAMES OF TWILIGHT, is scheduled from Baen in hc and trade paper in August. This volume combines The Tide of Victory and The Dance of Time and wraps up the saga. (The epic? Well, the series anyway.) I wrote the plots and Eric Flint expanded them into very good novels.

Eric was supposed to do the intro for this volume (I did Bel 1 and Bel 2). Things happened. He’s out of the hospital now and is doing fine (proceeding in the direction of fine, anyway), but I wound up writing the third intro also.

The Baen mass market reissue of PATRIOTS is due out from Baen in September. I don’t ordinarily reread my own stuff, but when I went over the proofs for the new edition I was pleased. It’s a YA, so I needed to keep the length down. There are more ellipses than there normally would be in a book of mine, but I think it’s easy to follow the action.

Let me repeat: Patriots is a Young Adult novel. When it was first published, an online reviewer said that if the book were twice as long and had more sex and violence, he might find it worth reading. I don’t think it’s _necessary_ to be a moron with a tin ear in order to put book reviews online.

Gordon R Dickson really liked Patriots. Gordy and I weren’t close, but we were on friendly terms and I greatly respect some of his work. I thought of him as I read the proofs.

I mentioned the Mongoose Hammer’s Slammers RPG book in Newsletter 50; it’s coming off the presses even as I type. To repeat what I said before, I’m struck by how well the author understood both my work and the reality of the military. I’m not a gamer myself, but if you are you might take a look at it.

There’s another Ovid lyric up on the website. It’s not a terribly interesting one in my opinion, but I did it. I’m feeling in the mood for more translation, but if I get properly going on the new novel, I probably won’t have the mental headroom to polish my Ovid well enough to put it out in front of other people. We’ll see.

The website hasn’t changed much, but there’s a picture of me with my agent Kay McCauley in Central Park after we had lunch.  That was another plus for the BEA trip, come to think. I’ve been represented by Kay (and her brother Kirby) since 1972. My business relationships are friendships also, which makes life less difficult.

Though sometimes it seems difficult enough. This Memorial Day was hard on me, though not for any particular reason I’m conscious of. I’m not religious, and I came to terms with the certainty of non-existence back in 1970. (I’m not trying to convince anybody else of this; I’m just explaining where I stand.) But then I came to a realization:

I exercise daily. I used to listen to BBC News while I exercised, but knowing a great deal about the world made me (even) more depressed, not a direction in which I need to go. Jo (my wife) got me some tapes of old radio programs (I listened to radio drama from a very early age), and for some decades I’ve exercised to them.

The other day I was listening to a 1950 episode of a CBS mystery: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. Hero enters club before opening hours; somebody’s playing jazz on a piano in the background. Hero interacts with villain’s henchman, then knocks him down. Piano stops. Hero asks where the boss’s office is, then says thanks. Piano resumes.

This was a perfect bit of business for radio, using silence as effectively as words. I like the show generally, but this was really exceptional.

In the credits, I learned the episode had been written by Blake Edwards, who of course has gone from strength to strength in the years since. (I think SOB was even better than “10″ or The Pink Panther, but whatever your tastes, nobody can doubt Edwards’ ability today.)

Craftsmanship is real. It’s real to me, at any rate: it flashed from the middle of that 1950 radio show, as obvious as it was unexpected. So while I may not believe in a Supreme Being or the Rights of Man or the Republican Party (let the parts stand for the whole), I do believe in craft.

I can say honestly that I will dedicate myself to improving my craftsmanship as a writer… and indeed, I did so dedicate myself when I began writing for publication. Maybe sixty years from now somebody will say, “Wow! That was nicely done,” as I just did with Blake Edwards.

Yours optimistically–

–Dave Drake

***
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Cover art: Steve Hickman

I learned with the first book of the RCN series, With the Lightnings, that I have to explain that I use English and Metric weights and measures as a convenience to readers, not because I think the same systems will be in use three millennia hence. To me, that went without saying. Here as often, I was wrong.

There are many snatches of song in this novel, as generally in my work. They’re all my paraphrases of real music ranging from The Handsome Cabin Boy to the Carmen Saeculare of Horace. I do this for my own amusement–but people do sing, and I think it gives the work resonance to use pieces that people have sung instead of pieces that I’ve invented.

My fantasies are generally based on folk tales. My science fiction (and this is true of both Military SF and Space Opera) almost always grows from historical events, more often than not from ancient history.

That’s certainly true of In the Stormy Red Sky, where I weave together three separate incidents which took place in the Mediterranean Basin during a five-year period (216 bc to 211 bc):

1) The death of Dionysius II, whose grandson Hieronymos succeeded to the throne of Syracuse.

2) The successful revolt (or coup, if you prefer) of a group of young aristocrats in Tarentum, aided by Hannibal.

3) The successful assault by Scipio (later Scipio Africanus) on the fortress city of Cartagena.

On the face of it these events had nothing in common, but in another sense they’re woven about one another like strands in a sweater. They were aspects of the war which decided who would rule the Mediterranean Basin for the next thousand years.

The unseen impetus of all three situations was the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal’s crushing defeat of a large Roman army in 216 bc. Cannae was the epitome of the decisive battle except in one crucial aspect: it decided nothing, beyond the fact that certain individuals would die that day instead of dying later.

Cannae affected the attitude of the teenaged boy who suddenly became the Tyrant of Syracuse. It affected political calculations within the Greek cities of Southern Italy. It affected the choice of an initial field of operations made by perhaps the best Roman strategist of all time.

What Cannae didn’t do was determine the outcome of the Second Punic War, any more than the Battle of Chancellorsville determined the outcome of the American Civil War.

In history as in life, big events aren’t as important as the way people react to those events. Rome couldn’t go back and undo the mistakes that led to the disaster at Cannae, but the Republic could and did buckle down and deal with the consequences, both good and bad.

I write about people who deal with consequences. I try to be one of those people as well. I don’t hold myself out as a role model generally, but I think the world might be better off if more people accepted responsibility and dealt with consequences.

–Dave Drake

In the Stormy Red Sky. RCN Series. 2009, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 378p. 9781416591597. $25.00 [added 1 June 2009]
————– 2009, Newark, NJ: Audible Frontiers [Audiobook]. 14 hours 29 mins.[Available for download from Audible.com]
————– 2010, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 480 p. 1439133646 (pb). $7.99

Moses Siregar III posted a YouTube video in four chunks of the panel “The Continued Viability of Epic Fantasy” recorded at the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus OH October 30, 2010. Dave is on the panel with John R. Fultz, Blake Charlton, David B. Coe, and Freda Warrington.

—– 

In 2008  Blackfive TV did a six-part series of video interviews, sponsored by Baen Books. They are all posted on the Baen Webscription site, and at the Blackfive TV blog site.  You can also find them on YouTube.

Dave talks about his background, writers who influenced him including early SF writers, his military service in the Blackhorse in Vietnam and Cambodia, how he started writing military SF, working with Jim Baen, and generally about his writing career.  He ends with a message for the troops.

Cover art: Steve Hickman

The genesis of my RCN novels was Patrick O’Brian’s wonderful Aubrey/Maturin series, set during and after the Napoleonic Wars. It therefore won’t surprise many of you to find a number of plot points common to O’Brian’s last novels and When the Tide Rises. This is a case of convergent evolution, however, rather than direct borrowing on my part: we’re both working from Lord Cochrane’s memoirs of service under the revolutionary governments of Chili (sic) and Brazil.

Jack Aubrey and Daniel Leary are supporting independence movements as agents of their governments. In reality, the British government threatened Cochrane with prosecution if he accepted the Chilean offer, and the British warships which Cochrane encountered during his operations against the Spanish empire baulked him at every possible opportunity.

Mr O’Brian isn’t around to ask, but I suspect we diverge from Cochrane’s reality for the same reason. If you’re writing a series, you create an enormous problem for yourself if your hero is seen as a traitor by his government. Cochrane himself returned to favor, but it took more than thirty years for that to happen.

Lord Cochrane was skilled, intelligent, and personally brave. Having said that, his memoirs often make uncomfortable reading. It’s not that he was too stupid to see the political ramifications of his actions; rather, he looked on such considerations as unworthy of a superior being like himself. The political disasters which follow military victories throughout Cochrane’s career, with the Royal Navy and then with foreign governments, seem to the reader as inevitable as night following day.

Cochrane frequently says about the people with whom he dealt, “He swore to do something, but he didn’t carry through on his promises.” After a while, I became exasperated with this nonsense. Cochrane was an extremely intelligent and experienced man who must have expected the bad result. As with a woman who’s married three abusive drunks in a row, there’s more involved than bad luck or even bad judgment.

But what that means is that Cochrane was unwilling to work within the system when his undoubted brilliance made it possible for him to have done so. It is equally true that the systems he was involved with were deeply flawed–the Royal Navy in the early 19^th century, and the South American revolutionary governments.

What comes through powerfully in every English memoir I’ve read involving Latin America at that time is that almost none of the players (Bolivar may have been a exception) had a concept of a nation that was greater than the individual’s own clan/family/tribe ruling as many of its neighbors as possible. Consistently when a region revolted from the colonial power (Spain or Portugal), the districts revolted from the capital and then the wealthy magnates revolted from the district government (which was generally run by one of the several powerful families in that district). The magnates than spent their time in burning out rival magnates.

If you’ve been following Latin American politics for the past fifty years or so (I suspect the problems go much farther back, but I personally don’t), you might reasonably come to the conclusion that nothing much has changed. For even more vivid modern examples of clan-based politics, consider Iraq and Afghanistan.

The business of When the Tide Rises is taken largely from real events in Chile, Peru, and Brazil. The major naval action, however, is based on the 1811 Battle of Lissa. (The 1866 Battle of Lissa is fascinating, but in fiction you couldn’t make one side as incompetent as the historical losing side was. As one example, the gun crews of the defeated flagship forgot to load shells and therefore fought the battle firing blank charges.)

I write to entertain readers, not to advance a personal or political philosophy (I don’t have a political philosophy); nonetheless, my fiction is almost always based on historical models. When you read When the Tide Rises, you might occasionally think about today’s news and remember that it’ll be tomorrow’s history.

Heaven knows, I thought about the news while I was writing.

–Dave Drake

When the Tide Rises. RCN Series. 2008, Norwalk, Conn.: Easton Press, signed first edition, bound in leather. 356 p.
————– 2008, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 416 p. 14165-55277 (hc). $25.00.
————– 2008, Newark, NJ: Audible Frontiers [Audiobook]. 13 hours 35 mins.[Available for download from Audible.com]
————– 2009, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 486 p. 14165-91567 (pb). $7.99.

Cover art: Steve Hickman

I’ve based the setting of Some Golden Harbor on political and military events taking place during the early 5^th century BC in Southern Italy (Aricia, Cumae, and the Etruscan federation). All right, that’s a little obscure even for me, but I found the discussion of Aristodemus of Cumae in an aside by Dionysius of Halicarnassus to be an extremely clear account of the rise and eventual fall of an ancient tyrant.

There’s more real information here than in the lengthy, tendentious, and generally rhetorical disquisitions on Coriolanus (a near contemporary, by the way). I suspect that’s because Aristodemus is unimportant except as a footnote to Roman history, whereas Gaius Marcius Coriolanus provided one of the basic myths of Rome. The real Coriolanus and the real events involving him are buried under a structure of invention, but nobody had a reason to do that in regard to Aristodemus.

While the basic politico-military situation comes from ancient history, I took most of the business on Dunbar’s World from the South during the American Civil War and the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. I’ve enormously simplified what went on in both cases.

Every time I really dig into a period I learn that what a secondary history gave two lines to was an incredibly complex business that could’ve as easily gone the other way. I’m pleased when I meet people who know any history at all, but I do wish that people who’ve read only secondary sources (or worse, have watched a TV show on the subject) would keep in mind that there’s a lot beneath the surface of any major historical event. I want to scream every time I hear someone say something along the lines of, “What really caused the Roman Civil War was–”

No, it didn’t. Nothing that complicated has a single, simple causation. When somebody frames his statement in those terms (those doing so have invariably been male in my experience), he proves that he doesn’t know enough to discuss the subject.

The scattered human societies I postulate for this series would have many systems of weights and measures. Rather than try to duplicate that reality and thereby confuse readers without advancing my story, I’ve simply put Cinnabar on the English system while the Alliance is Metric. I don’t believe either system will be in use two millennia from now, but regardless: my business is storytelling, not prediction.

–Dave Drake

Some Golden Harbor. RCN Series. 2006, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 373 p. 1416520805. $25.00.
————– 2006, SFBC ed. Riverdale, NY: Baen. 373 p. 13:9781416520801.
————– 2008, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 532p. 13:9781416555247.
————– 2008, Newark, NJ: Audible Frontiers [Audiobook]. 14 hours 09 mins.[Available for download from Audible.com]

Cover art: Steve Hickman

The general political background of the RCN series is that of Europe in the mid-18^th century, with admixtures of late-Republican Rome. (There’s a surprising degree of congruence between British and Roman society in those periods.)

Major plot elements in The Way to Glory, however, come from the 19^th century. Those of you who know some American history may note echoes of the Somers Mutiny, and if you’re really well-versed you’ll understand how greatly I simplified the details of political factions both in Washington (Whigs, Democrats, and the intimates of President Tyler whose own party had repudiated him) and in the US Navy. Real history is a great deal more complex than anything I could make up.

The situation of the British North America and West Indies Squadron, based in Bermuda, would’ve been much as described during the 18^th and even 17^th centuries, with one important difference: Haiti didn’t gain its independence till 1804. From that point through the 1880s (from which I’ve drawn several plot incidents) much of the squadron’s work involved interceding in Haiti on behalf of British citizens (many of whom brought no credit upon their status) and refugees in general. One could scarcely ask for a better description of the term ‘thankless task’. This one came with cockroaches.

In more recent times, the US has taken over the former British role in Haiti. I suspect the roaches are still there; certainly nothing else has changed.

I’ll note again that I don’t invent systems of weights and measures for the background of the RCN series: the practice would neither advance my plot nor make the world a better place. I don’t assume that people thousands of years in the future will still be using the systems in use today. Those who would quarrel with my choice here might usefully ask themselves, however, how long feet and inches have been in use thus far.

–Dave Drake

The Way to Glory. 1st ed. RCN Series. 2005, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 402 p. 0743498828 (hc). $25.00.
————– 2005, New York, NY: SFBC. 402 p. SFBC 1185629. $12.49
————– 2005, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 511 p. 1416521062 (pb). $7.99.
————– 2008, Newark, NJ: Audible Frontiers [Audiobook]. 14 hours 20 mins.[Available for download from Audible.com]