David Drake

I’ve been composing on a computer since 1986, when IBM came out with its first laptop. From 1981 I was using a dedicated word-processor for second and third drafts, but I was composing with a pencil on legal pad. (Many legal pads.) As soon as there was a computer I could take out in the yard and work as I had with pencil and paper, I switched to computer first drafts.

I’m obviously not a technophobe, let alone a Luddite; but neither do I find anything magical to technology. Some of the stories that I wrote longhand and typed on a portable I bought in Nam (electric but with a manual carriage return; very cheap) are still in print after thirty years. continue reading…

How do you go about writing your drafts?

I work on a notebook computer outside, then edit the hardcopy and go through at least three drafts.

DAGGER was an important book for me in various odd ways. In the Fall of 1979 I ran into Bob Asprin when we were both boarding an airplane to return from a convention (probably World Fantasy Con in Providence, but I don’t swear to that). I told him I’d picked up a copy of his new novel Tambu. “But did you get Thieves’ World?” Bob said. “That’s much more important. Read it and write me a story for the next volume.”

Looking back on it, the whole business seems improbable–starting with an author saying his solo novel was less important than the anthology he’d edited–but it really did happen that way. And Bob was right: Thieves’ World was possibly the most important book in the f/sf field during the 1980s. There’d been earlier shared universe volumes, just as there’d been horror novels before Carrie; but Carrie and Thieves’ World created new genres which for a time were the hottest thing going. continue reading…