David Drake

KILLER holds a lot of memories for me, most of them bad. Sometimes things work out that way.

August Derleth died in 1971. His small press, Arkham House, was the only market to which I’d sold fiction. F&SF published some fantasy but not (as I learned by trying) heroic fantasy; so when I wrote Hunter’s Moon, a heroic fantasy set in Italy under the Emperor Domitian, I sent it to the other possible market: Fantastic. Ten years earlier under Cele Goldsmith/Lalli, Fantastic had been a very good magazine. That was no longer the case, but beggars can’t be choosers. continue reading…

Me, Manly Wade Wellman and Dave Shelton, 1971

On March 17, 1970, I met Manly for the first time, in his writing office above a drugstore in the center of Chapel Hill. According to my journal for the day:

Talked to Mr. Wellman (“My parents wrote my great-uncle Manly to say they were naming me after him. He wrote back ‘Forget about me; name him Wade Hampton!’ So I got the full load.”): heavy, iron-grey with a brush mustache, wearing a sport coat, dark blue shirt & tie.

continue reading…

Dear People,

I’m going to start with something positive: I’ve now seen a cover comp for THE LEGIONS OF FIRE, the first of four books in my new fantasy series, due from Tor as a May, 2010, hardcover. I’d seen a black and white version, but that gave me no inkling of how very impressive the cover would be in color. continue reading…

HAMMER’S SLAMMERS is a short story collection, not a novel, and my first book. It made it possible for me to become a full-time writer, though I didn’t realize it at the time.

I’d sold a story as an undergraduate, another story after I started law school, and even one while I was in Nam. After I came back I continued writing at a faster rate, in part because I became friends with two writers in the Triangle area: Manly Wade Wellman and Karl Edward Wagner. Manly and Karl suggested that I use Southeast Asian settings instead of writing historical fantasies. I wrote a fantasy, Arclight, and an SF story, Contact! and both sold. These were set in Nam (come to think, both were based on things that happened in Cambodia), but there was no military theme to the stories. continue reading…

I started writing with heroic fantasies either explicitly set during the classical past or closely modeled on that past. Black Iron was the fourth story I sold and the first that I consider to be really publishable.

These aren’t necessarily my best stories (though The Barrow Troll comes pretty close), but they’re very dear to my heart. continue reading…

My original title for this collection was BALEFIRES. Jim Baen asked me to change it late in the process because a big-budget book of that title was due out shortly. I may use the title on the planned Fedogan & Bremer collection of my early horror stories, but by this point I’m not sure it’s a good title.

continue reading…