David Drake

NEWSLETTER 63: July 4, 2011

Dear People,

I have written a(nother) novel! The Road of Danger, the latest RCN (Leary/Mundy) space opera went off to Baen Books at 124,889 words. For the moment it feels good, but I’ll shortly start to be antsy that I’m not accomplishing anything, I’m sure.

I don’t think I’m exactly a workaholic–I don’t think that everything hangs on me or anything like that. But I’m most content when I’m working and the project is going well. Work structures my existence and keeps me from thinking too much about the meaning of life. (I figure I know the meaning already, and it’s not something that makes me happier to dwell on.)  continue reading…

The Hammer’s Slammers series of Military SF stories and novels focus on a mercenary armored regiment in the 30^th century. I based the fiction on my experience in 1970 with the 11^th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Viet-Nam and Cambodia.

For information about the stories and novels, see Hammer’s Slammers Fiction

The series has been adapted to various forms of gaming.  See Hammer’s Slammers Games

Which genre do you feel is your best to write in?

Best is tricky. I don’t know really. I can do some things in the military that others who’ve had different lives can’t, but I personally think some of the Old Nathan stories are as close to a unique thing as I’ve done.

Dear People,

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. continue reading…

Video Interviews:

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.

—–  continue reading…

Dear People,

The major news item is that while I haven’t yet finished IN THE STORMY RED SKY, the next RCN (Leary/Mundy) space opera, I’m getting darned close. As I write this I’m in the midst of the climactic battle, and I hope I’ll have gotten into the conclusion by the time you read it.  continue reading…

THE SHARP END is a book many people tell me is one of their favorites; they’re generally surprised to learn I don’t have a high opinion of it myself. I’ve given various reasons for my ill feelings, all of them true to a degree; but now, forcing myself to look at the situation from the safe distance of a decade, I’m ready to be honest.

The early ’90s were a difficult period for me. I’d been a full-time freelance writer since 1981. I’d done all right financially from the beginning and from the mid-’80s on had done very well indeed. We’d bought a tract of land in the country and my wife was becoming increasingly demanding that we should start to build a (much larger) house on it. She was quite right: it was time. We arranged with an excellent and utterly trustworthy architect and contractor to begin work. continue reading…

Cover art: Steve Hickman

COMING HOME BY THE LONG WAY

A few years ago I collected my humorous stories in All the Way to the Gallows.” In my introduction I admitted that I wasn’t best known for writing humor.

This is what I’m best known for writing.

The impetus for this book was a fan suggestion that with surveillance cameras becoming increasingly prevalent all over the world, it would be a good time to get the Lacey stories back in pring.  I thought about the notion.  continue reading…

REDLINERS is possibly the best thing I’ve written. It’s certainly the most important thing, both to me personally and to the audience I particularly care about: the veterans, the people who’ve been there, wherever ‘there’ happened to be.

Having said that, Redliners isn’t a book for everybody. It’s very tough even by my standards, and to understand the novel’s underlying optimism you have to have been some very bad places. continue reading…

LORD OF THE ISLES was my chance to get back to writing fantasy. It now seems an obvious thing to have done, but it sure took me a long time to come to that realization.

Andrew Lang’s Color Fairy Books were a staple of my reading as a child, and when I entered my teens and could buy books for myself I was just as interested in fantasy as science fiction. Robert E Howard’s heroic fantasy stories were a lot of the reason I started writing myself, and when I was seventeen I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time. (I’ve reread the work frequently).

It’s my belief that heroic fantasy forms a broad arc, with Howard being one pole and Tolkien the other. The works of the two men differ in emphasis but are extremely similar at the core level. Both writers affected me and my writing a great deal. continue reading…