Cover art: Donato

My friend Mark Van Name is, among other things, a business consultant. After I sold the final trilogy in the Isles Series to Tor but before I started work on the three books, he asked me if I would like him to do a business analysis of the Isles fantasies. I said I would appreciate that. (It would never have occurred to me to ask.)

Mark shortly provided a written report, which he went over with me. I won’t describe his methodology, but even if it hadn’t seemed valid on its face, I would have accepted it anyway: Mark is an expert on the subject; I am not. I don’t argue with experts in their own fields.

Mark’s most significant recommendation was that I structure the final trilogy as a whole–that is, plotting all three books (at least in rough) before I started writing the first one. I have worked very hard to make every one of my books self-standing. Fantasy readers today are so used to trilogies, however, that they expect to have to read books in order of publication. My fantasies, therefore, didn’t have quite the right feel.

I thought about this for some while, then created a three-book arc in which the world of the Isles changes at the end of each volume. The result of the changes was explored in the next volume in the first two cases, and the whole nine-book series is completed with a crash at the end of the last. The individual volumes would have limited problems of their own which would be solved in that volume, but you would gain a great deal if you read the first volume before you read the second, and the trilogy’s third volume climax grows directly from events in the first.

Then I did a detailed plot of the first book, The Fortress of Glass, and wrote it.

This isn’t terribly different from the way I worked on the first six Isles novels (or for that matter, different from the way I’ve written most of my other series novels). Basically, I knew the situation and climax of the two following books, but I knew also that I would have to work out the details of those novels in the light of what actually appeared in the pages of the first one. I compose detailed outlines, but the personalities of the characters develop considerably from the sketches the outlines provide.

The plot background of The Fortress of Glass stemmed from two SF works which I read when I was 14: Spawn, a 1939 novelette by P Schuyler Miller, and Star Bridge, a 1955 novel by Jack Williamson and James E Gunn. I recommend both of these works strongly, though in the case of the novel, I doubt you’ll be able to determine what I stole and placed at the core of my own work.

Details of plot business came variously; I’ll mention one, but rest assured that it stands for many. The funeral early in the book is based on the funeral of Septimius Severus, as described by Herodian (who was present). I considerably simplified the real event. I’m well read in the classics, and I find it a great deal easier (and more satisfying) to steal from history than to invent things myself.

There’s one other thing to be said about this novel. When I plotted the three-book arc, I realized it would be necessary to kill two major supporting characters in order to justify the actions of the second and third volumes.

It frankly never crossed my mind that people would think that I had killed the characters casually. People, nothing in my writing is casual. It was necessary for the course of the trilogy that one of my major characters become a genocidal monomanic, so that she could come to terms with herself for the first time, and so that she could find happiness in the climax.

Well, as much happiness as her kind, which is pretty much my kind, can hope for.

What I did infuriated a lot of people, which I regret. I think the fact that I described the event and its immediate aftermath with an absolutely flat affect contributed to their sense of outrage.

Under the circumstances I describe, your emotions do shut down. Anybody who’s been in hard places can testify to that; but a lot of readers, particularly fantasy readers, don’t have that personal experience to draw from. To them, I was being casual and uncaring.

Would I do the same thing again? Yes, because I was absolutely correct in terms of the trilogy as a whole; and I’d do it the same way, because I will not fantasize when I’m writing about violence.

But if I do it another time, I’ll know from the beginning that many people won’t understand.

–Dave Drake

The Fortress of Glass. Crown of the Isles Trilogy. 2006, New York, NY: Tor. 384 p. 076531259X. $25.95.
————– 2007, New York, NY: Tor. 402 p. 978-0-765-35116-6 (pb) $7.99.

In the most recent newsletter I said that I’d just started the rough draft of the next RCN space opera, WHAT DISTANT DEEPS. I now have a hair under 60K in draft. As usual, I’m very depressed about it–though I’ve found an interesting evolution in my thinking over the years. 

For a long time, when I was in the middle of a project (this is true of short stories as well as novels, but of course I get through the middle more quickly) I thought that I was writing badly and that the result would be incredibly dull. As I got into this one, I found that I no longer think that I’m writing badly: I’m subconsciously aware that my line-by-line writing skills are of a high order, as they darned well should be after forty-odd years of practice.

But jeepers, does the book seem dull! And when I do get to an action scene, it’s not going to be as exciting as previous action scenes that I’ve written. Furthermore, I become depressed about the project much more quickly than I used to and stay depressed deeper into the climax.

So I guess you could say that I’m refining my misery. I don’t think this is necessary to the process of writing, but it _might_ be. That is, if I didn’t worry so much about the quality of my work, maybe the work wouldn’t be as good. That isn’t a testable hypothesis, however: the worry isn’t something I can change, any more than I can change the color of my eyes. (Hazel, if you were wondering.)

Over the years, many people have told me how lucky I am to be a writer: I’m my own boss, I can decide my own schedule, I get to work at home… lots of things along those lines. All of that is true, but it isn’t the whole truth.

I really am lucky to be a writer, though.

The Hammer’s Slammers role-playing book from Mongoose is out. It’s a very attractive package with an enormous amount of information in it. I find the amount of effort other people put into my creation–my world, if you prefer–to be kind of boggling.

I tend to see my stories in microcosm–the way, basically, that the characters themselves are seeing things. I don’t have a future history in mind; I don’t really believe in a future history in the sense that ‘we start here and we end there’ because we don’t end except in the sense that human life will vanish from the universe at some point. (Having grown up in the ’50s with the Cold War and nuclear holocaust an accepted possibility, I’m conditioned to believe that the end may be within a century rather than within a billion years.)

But until then, human history just goes, rather than going somewhere. Event follows event. Very rarely, in my opinion, does event cause event–at least not in the simple fashion one would use to describe a chemical reaction. A more organized viewpoint is valid, though, and the game book is really neat.

I should mention that the proofs were sent me in the form of a pdf so large that a friend downloaded it from an FTP site and burned it to disk for me. I proofed it on-screen instead of printing it out as I would have done with my own prose. I’ve always felt that I lose a lot of comprehension by reading on-screen; and boy! did this example prove the matter for me.

My introduction, Five Firebases, was about natural phenomena which I still remember vividly from my time in Southeast Asia. Mongoose had dropped an incident for length, which was fine. They hadn’t changed references in the introductory text from five to four, however, and I didn’t catch the mistake.

Live and learn: next time I will run off at least the bits that I’ve written. And for those of you who want the essay uncut, it’s on the website.

The paperback of BALEFIRES, my horror/fantasy collection from Night Shade, is out. Whee! As of this writing I haven’t actually seen the edition, but when I asked for author’s copies they shipped some which reach me soon. I’m really proud of this book; a lot of my life is in it.

And the entire Belisarius series is now out in three hardcover omnibus editions for which I did new introductions. I plotted the series as three novels; Eric Flint wrote them very ably as six novels; and now they’re back to my original design under my original titles to the outlines and with new, uniform covers by Kurt Miller. (Quite nice ones.)

The Baen reprint of my Young Adult novel PATRIOTS is due out in September. I won’t repeat what I said about it in Newsletter 51, but I will say that I genuinely like the book.

In October Baen brings out volume one of the COLLECTED HAMMER’S SLAMMERS as an omnitrade paperback. This is sort of an intermediate size between mass market and trade paperback. Having read novels by Clavell and Michener as mass-market paperbacks, I’m rather glad the Hammer volumes are getting a somewhat larger page size. The first one is long, and each succeeding volume gets longer.

Baen is giving the paperbacks new cover art. The first two (by Kurt Miller) are very good.

When I saw the sketch of volume two (February, 2010), I liked the detail but wished that there was more color contrast. I suggested to Jennie (Faries, my friend and Baen graphic designer) that perhaps the tank in the foreground could be magenta. Toni (Weisskopf, my friend and Baen publisher) had similar thoughts but brightened the gray shades with explosions instead of a frou-frou tank. Her way is better.

I had a horrible realization when I started checking when books were coming out before I did this newsletter. Tor had moved the first book of my new fantasy series from November, 2010, to July. That pleased me. But Baen has the new RCN novel (the one I’m working on) scheduled also and I didn’t know when that was.

As it turns out, it’s September, 2010, a two month separation which shouldn’t hurt much. Believe me, it’s really bad for the books, the author, and the publishers to have two novels come out on top of one another. I’ve got personal experience, but so has Dan Simmons and I’m sure a lot of other writers.

I was remiss in not thinking about the possibility sooner. Okay, I’m busy writing books; but I should have thought about it.

My friend Mark Van Name lightly revised the Wikipedia article on me, correcting minor errors and changing the tone, and my webmaster Karen Zimmerman put it up. I told Mark that I didn’t want a puff piece, but neither was I comfortable with something that made me sound like a Neocon. Thanks to both of them and to the friends who’ve been prodding me to do something about the article.

Nothing much has changed with the website. I’ve read over a chunk of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (the Hercules Cycle), but I’m not ready to do a serious translation yet. I have a novel to write.

I frequently read military memoirs, most often from Viet Nam. I recently read several more, which got me to thinking as such things usually do. Dunno, maybe I’m trying to make sense of 1970. I haven’t succeeded yet.

But it did remind me of something. In April, 1970, I flew from Travis AFB (near San Francisco) to Bien Hoa in a DC-8/Super 61, owned and operated by United Airlines under charter to the Army. It was a standard civilian aircraft with stewardesses.

Until quite recently airlines had retired stewardesses at age 35, but new legislation had prevented them from continuing the practice. (Not everything Lyndon Johnson did was bad, though the Viet Nam War was bad enough to lower his average a very long way.)

Stewardesses bid on runs (cabin attendants probably still do), and it was very noticeable that all those on our flight were older women with a great deal of seniority. They had chosen to fly with us.

After we landed at Bien Hoa (after the steepest approach I’ve ever experienced; I’ll swear I was looking straight down through the portside window before we started our dive toward the runway), the stewardesses stood by the exits and cheerfully wished us good luck as we disembarked.

And every once in a while, one would turn her face away and wipe her tears.

God bless those women. Civilians didn’t have a lot of use for American soldiers back in 1970, but our stewardesses cared.

–Dave Drake

***
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I’m well into (about 60K) the rough draft of THE LEGIONS OF FIRE. This is the first book of the new fantasy series for Tor. When asked, I picked The Books of the Elements as the series title because I thought it sounded good and I sincerely hoped that it would fit the series as it developed. Now that I’m this far along, it seems to be fitting pretty well. 

Of course Fire is an easy element. It remains to be seen whether I’m going to be as happy about the title when I get to Air, but there’s always a chance that a giant asteroid will have struck the Earth before then. I’ll deal with problems as they arise.

LEGIONS is set in a place that’s very similar to the Roman Empire in about 30 AD. The capital city (where the action begins) is Carce, however, not Rome. The series is in no sense Alternate History: it’s about a place where the legends of our world may be real, and where the myths of other cultures impinge on the civilized folk of Carce.

The rough draft is moving along very nicely. It took a long time to create the outline (which meant creating the world); but with that done, the writing has been smoother than most of my books. As I said, the background is very similar to Rome, and I know a great deal about Roman history and culture.

Those of you who’ve been reading these newsletters for a while (let alone those who know me personally) know that there’s going to be a catch, however; and so there is: I’m afraid that people are going to find the lavish background details to be silly and boring, of interest only to specialized antiquarians like me. (There are other people like me, kinda, I’m sure; but not enough of us to build a writing career on.)

Furthermore, the novel has completely different feel from the Isles series and from anything else that I’ve written. There’s a lot of characterization, but the characters aren’t the sort of people I used in the Isles series. These are urban, not rural, folk, and individually as well their personalities have little in common with the characters of the Isles.)

So maybe folks are going to hate it. Maybe I’m doing it completely wrong. Maybe the giant asteroid won’t come in time to save me from the results of my failure.

I’d be a different person if I didn’t worry about that sort of thing. Perhaps I’d fail more often if I worried less–but it doesn’t matter: this is how I am.

THE GODS RETURN, the last volume in the Isles series, is out from Tor with yet another wonderful cover painting by Donato. The final three books of the series (the Crown of the Isles Trilogy) is an honest-to-goodness trilogy which will gain if you read the books consecutively.

Though each book is in most fashions self-standing, there are some plot threads which start in THE FORTRESS OF GLASS and are not resolved until the climax of RETURN. The people who wrote me in horror when they’d finished FORTRESS (you know who you are) will find the planned resolution. I personally find it satisfying, and I think most readers will agree. (Those who’ve commented to me about the whole trilogy are pleased.)

Tor released the second book of the Crown of the Isles, THE MIRROR OF WORLDS, in mass market at the beginning of November, just before they brought out the hardcover of RETURN. The Donato cover of this one is effective even in the smaller paperback format. It has wyverns, by the way, the heraldic animal of the Drakes of Ashe, my distant ancestors.

A friend commented to me after he’d picked up RETURN that I must feel relieved (to have completed the nine-book series). In fact I didn’t have much feeling about that at all. What relieved me was the fact that I’d finally begun writing LEGIONS.

Once a book is done, I move onto the next thing. Since I finished RETURN, I’ve written the RCN space opera, IN THE STORMY RED SKY, and begun the brand new fantasy series. The Isles series was, if not the farthest thing from my mind, at least well down the list.

But I am really proud of the Isles. I built the nine-book arc carefully and ended it both thoroughly and on a high note.

I mentioned IN THE STORMY RED SKY, which will be a Baen hardcover in May, 2009. Steve Hickman’s striking image is up at [http://david-drake.com/news.html]. When the cover is printed, it (like its RCN predecessor, WHEN THE TIDE RISES) will have Holotrans foil where the holographic image is in the painting. I’m very fortunate, both in my cover art and in the production which Baen and Tor have given my books.

Speaking of the SKY cover, I have advertising postcards for it. I haven’t done a postcard giveaway for a while, so: anybody who sends a request with their address label and a standard postcard stamp (27 cents as I write this) to Drake/PO Box 904/Chapel Hill, NC 27514, will get a signed postcard by return post. (I’m not sure where I’ll sign it, but somewhere.) The card has the cover image on one side and a list of the previous six books in the series.

I mentioned in the newsletterette last month that Audible has brought out the first six RCN (Leary/Mundy) space operas in MP3 audio format for download. There’s a possibility that Brilliance Audio (they’re both now part of Amazon) will bring out the series in physical form (MP3 CDs, I suppose), but they haven’t contacted me yet. I hope they do.

There are new pictures on the website  from the Walden West Festival and from World Fantasy Con. The former is in Sauk City, Wisconsin, and is dedicated to the life and work of August Derleth. Derleth gave me my start in writing by buying my first four stories, so I was really pleased to get the invitation to speak there.

I was struck by the fact that many–and I think most–of those attending had never met Derleth during his lifetime. He was a complex man–and yes, that means there was a bad side to him–but he helped many would-be writers. Some of us–Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, and me–have gone on to respectable writing careers as a result of his encouragement.

A large number of his fantasy stories will be reissued in four volumes on the centennial of his birth, February 24, 2009, by the August Derleth Society in conjunction with Arkham House, the small press which Derleth founded and which his daughter now operates. The volumes have new introductions. I did one, and for the heck of it I’m going to put it up.

I like doing little essays. We’ve started a new little corner of the website for my essays, musings and interviews. There’s not much there yet, but we’ll keep adding to it as we can.

Speaking of odd things on the website, I have completed a rough translation of the Pyramus and Thisbe section of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but the edit stalled halfway through because LEGIONS began absorbing all my time. Which is as it should be, but I really need to bring those star-crossed lovers to their miserable ends.

I’ve been chatting with my friend, Mark Van Name, about scenes in the book he’s writing. He’s decided to do them right instead of slanting them to what he thinks the potential readership will want.

I’m pleased, because that’s always been the choice I made. Oh, I don’t mean that I’ll never modify a bit of literature or history that I’m using as a template for my story. After Odysseus comes home, he slowly strangles all the female servants who have been sleeping with the suitors whom he and his allies have shot. That was a satisfying conclusion for an Iron Age Greek, but it wasn’t one that I personally liked or which I thought would be popular with modern readers of my CROSS THE STARS.

But many years ago I read a very good first novel which had a scene that bothered me. A couple was about to undertake a mission which carried a high risk of death for one or both of them. They spend the brief interval in an ecstasy of romantic love.

I remembered the day and night before I got on the first of a series of planes that would take me to Viet Nam. My wife and I were both under great stress. It was not a good time. When I met the author shortly after reading the book, I mentioned that to him. (I’m not going to name him here. It’s getting toward Christmas, and I don’t feel like making an instantly searchable attack on somebody I don’t dislike.)

He explained that initially he’d written a scene in which the couple ends up sitting on opposite sides of the room, each acting as though the other party didn’t exist. He’d decided that was a downer for readers, though, so he’d changed it to a scene of bliss and happiness.

He hadn’t been ignorant. He had deliberately concealed what he believed (correctly, in my experience) to be the reality of human nature, because he thought the book would sell better if he lied.

I was appalled, but I didn’t argue with him. I knew that I would never do what he had done (I make plenty of mistakes, but I don’t lie), but I figured he might be right.

And maybe he _was_ right. From the vantage of hindsight, though, I wonder if his attitude about ‘doing the commercial thing’ is at least part of the reason that someone with his great natural ability has had only a shadow of the career I would have predicted for him at the time. If you don’t respect the truth, you can’t respect your readers. They’ll pick up on that.

Mark is making a different decision. That pleases me a lot.

Merry Christmas, people. Try to be nice to others. I’m not as good at that as I should be, but I try–and you can too.

–Dave Drake

***
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On April 17, 2007 Toni Weisskopf hosted a Baenish dinner at the chef’s table (which turned out to be a work table in the prep room; we were sitting on bar stools) of the Angus Barn in Raleigh. From left are Mark L Van Name (Baen consultant and author), Jo Drake, Dave, Jennie Faries (Baen graphic designer), Hank Reinhardt (Mr Toni Weisskopf) and Toni. It was both fun and delicious. Most of us are teetotal so we didn’t do justice to the wines, but the wine steward’s descriptions of the choices for each course were neat anyway.

The menu included: Lump crab on cucumber rounds, Coconut shrimp on a bed of jalapeno cheese grits with a Thai pepper sauce, Duck confit and goat cheese raviolis in a roasted tomato sauce, Field greens with marinated mozzarella in a balsamic vinegarette, Mango sorbet palette cleanser, Six week aged beef tenderloin over saffron risotto and grilled asparagus, Pears poached in red wine and cinnamon with chocolate mousse and berries

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

Children's Book	Cookbook	Diet Book
Mystery	Parenting	Politics
Religion	Romance	Self-Help
Travel	Western