At the time, technothrillers were a hot new genre. Tom, Jim, and Tor’s financial backer decided that they wanted in on it and I was the guy to deliver for them. Jim called me, telling me what they wanted.

I was a little doubtful. I’d decided that I would write a mainstream historical novel set in the 1690s in England and India. I’d done an enormous amount of research and had well over a 100K words written. Tor agreed to buy that novel also (Court of Diamonds–my title; The Diamond Court as it appears in Tor documents) when it was finished, but I should get onto the technothriller first.

I dived straight in. We’d vacationed in Algeria the previous summer, so I set the book there. I did my usual amount of research. One day a woman on the bus I was driving insisted on learning what book I was reading on a layover. Parenthetically, driving a bus wasn’t a bad job, but dealing with the public wasn’t a part of the task that I ever warmed to. The woman shut up when I handed her How to Kill, Volume III.

The book proceeded. It was immediately evident not only that I didn’t need to drive the bus for the sake of financial security, I actually lost money because my time would have been more productively spent in writing. I kept the job, however, because I was afraid that if I didn’t force myself to get out and interact with people I’d get dangerously weird and reclusive. (My friends are probably chuckling as they read this.)

Then management dealt with a disciplinary problem (which had nothing to do with me) in a fashion that made my life there much more difficult. I exploded, “I don’t have to take this crap!” And I didn’t.

I gave my two weeks notice, and since then have been a full-time freelance writer.

–Dave Drake

Skyripper. 1983, NY: Tor. 352 p. 0812536185. $3.50.
————– 1992, NY: Tor. 352 p. 0812520041. $3.99.
In July, 2011, Baen Books is reprinting the paired Tom Kelly thrillers SKYRIPPER and FORTRESS) as an omnitrade under the combined title LOOSE CANNON.

Cover art: Dave Seeley

In 2011, Baen Books reprinted the paired Tom Kelly thrillers (SKYRIPPER and FORTRESS) as an omnitrade under the combined title LOOSE CANNON .  The mass market paperback is due out August 2012.

Tom Doherty really liked Tom Kelly; I didn’t, not least because Kelly could have been me if things had gone wrong (or anyway, had gone wrong in a different fashion).

Kelly is a very angry man. I’m less angry now than I was in the ’80s when I wrote the novels; that said, I can still see Kelly when I look far enough back inside myself. That’s a good reason to have refused to write more books in the series when Tom wanted them; and it’s an even better reason not to look very deeply inside myself.

–Dave Drake

Just as I predicted in Newsletter 58, I’m completely wrung out. Most of that is connected with the one major thing in this newsletter: I completed OUT OF THE WATERS, the second (of four) fantasies in my new Tor series. It’s scheduled to come out in July, 2011, with a Donato cover. 

I haven’t seen the cover painting, but I believe Donato is using a scene with high cliffs and a sea serpent–a scene which I wrote while thinking about Donato’s cover for MISTRESS OF THE CATACOMBS, the fifth book of my Isles fantasy series. Everything in the world really fits together. Sometimes the connections are more obvious than at other times, but they’re always present. The musings of Ilna in my Isles series aren’t a million miles away from those of her creator in a reflective mood.

I shipped off WATERS on September 17; why am I still exhausted? Well, I did two complete drafts after I finished the rough on September 1; this included keying in the very extensive changes I’d made in holograph on the rough typescript, followed by the less extensive changes I made in holograph on the second draft. I was on the verge of despair after two days of brutal work had only gotten me fifty pages into the 560 page manuscript, but the edits slacked off (generally) after that. The early portion of a book always needs a lot of work, but this time it seemed extreme.

Those of you who know something about the business will realize that the book was scheduled before I finished writing it. This is a token of Tor’s confidence in me and for that reason was welcome. On the other hand, it certainly didn’t reduce my stress.

Over Halloween I attended the World Fantasy Convention, as I’ve done more years than not. This is the major professional convention in the SF/fantasy genre. (The world SF con and regional cons–many of which have greater attendance than WFC–are fan/social gatherings.) Everything went fine: my panels were good ones and I didn’t embarrass myself as best I recall. (Moses Siregar III put a YouTube video of one of them on his blog so you can judge for yourselves if you want to.)

The reason I go to WFC, however, is to meet the people I do business with; this time including Steve Feldberg of Audible for the first time. Speaking of which, the audio version of WHAT DISTANT DEEPS, my latest RCN (Leary/Mundy) space-opera, is out from Audible right now.

Throughout my career, I’ve chosen to work for people whom I like rather than with the people who might pay me the most for a particular book. (In the longer term, I think working for people I like has also led to me earning more than if I had gone for short-term income.) Meals and just general chats with the folks I work for were therefore friendly affairs; but four days of face-to-face business contact is still stressful for a guy whose chosen milieu is the deck of a house in the middle of 23 acres with his dogs and a keyboard.

Also in July, 2011, Baen Books is reprinting the paired Tom Kelly thrillers (SKYRIPPER and FORTRESS) as an omnitrade under the combined title LOOSE CANNON. Tom Doherty really liked Tom Kelly; I didn’t, not least because Kelly could have been me if things had gone wrong (or anyway, had gone wrong in a different fashion).

Kelly is a very angry man. I’m less angry now than I was in the ’80s when I wrote the novels; that said, I can still see Kelly when I look far enough back inside myself. That’s a good reason to have refused to write more books in the series when Tom wanted them; and it’s an even better reason not to look very deeply inside myself.

The cover is by Dave Seeley. I think he did an excellent job. A mockup of the cover is at http://david-drake.com/2010/loose-cannon/.

It’s not ideal to have books coming out from two different publishers in the same month, but I don’t think there’ll be too much crossover between a new fantasy and a pair of 25-year-old thrillers. (Except for completists, I suppose, if there are Drake completists. Presumably a true completist will buy both with only a slight twinge at the expense.)

What would have been bad is if INTO THE HINTERLANDS, which John Lambshead wrote from my outline, were coming out from Baen in July. Thank goodness, it’s a September book. The cover by Bob Eggleton catches the novel’s theme of spiritual growth instead of focusing on shoot’em-ups on exotic planets (which would also be a valid description of the book).

Ever since the glory days of John Campbell’s _Astounding_, there have been a lot of engineers writing SF; there haven’t been nearly as many real scientists. My friend John Lambshead is a world-class scientist (a molecular biologist), and I am delighted with the way his knowledge enlivens my plot.

There are a few new pictures up on the website. Our hound Sam died at age 15 (or so; all our dogs have been rescues). We now have Red, probably 2, and (mostly) a Jack Russell, to keep company with Comet, our old part-sheepdog. Sam was a wonderful dog, but so is Red; and a dog weighing something over 20 pounds is a lot easier to convince to do something than a dog of over 100 pounds is.

While at WFC I visited not only the Columbus Art Museum but the house in which James Thurber lived with his family while he was at Ohio State. This is the setting of _The Night the Bed Fell_, and I found it very evocative.

There’s also an example of visual bragging: a picture of me with a pile of roots and the tools with which I ripped them up as the final stage in my land clearing. Every time I get a sufficient pile, I burn them; this was one pile of over a dozen. Land-clearing is darned good whole-body exercise.

I said above that I’ve gone to most WFCs. That includes the first one, and this was the thirty-sixth. _That_ realization brought me up short.

The first WFC was at a Holiday Inn in Providence, RI, in 1975. My agent, Kirby McCauley, booked the space and told me I had to come: it would be very different from the 1974 worldcon which I’d just experienced (and which was one of the more unpleasant events of my life which did not involve uniforms).

WFC _was_ different: a few hundred people, and fewer of the really unpleasant ones. We shared the hotel with two other conventions: an association of handicapped people, and a legal secretaries’ group. (Let me tell you, legal secretaries know how to party.)

I was on a New Voices in Horror panel. I’d been professionally published nine years before; Ramsey Campbell had been published eleven years before; and even the two relative newbies, Karl Wagner and Charlie Grant, had made their first sales seven years back.

I don’t know that I’ve said anything in print about the second one (a disaster in Manhattan; the only time the convention has been held in NYC). I was placed as an afterthought on a panel on heroic fantasy. The stars on the panel were Roland Green and Christopher Stasheff.

I recall quite a bit of the wisdom I was offered at that con. I proceeded in my own fashion; not because I disagreed with what I was being told, but because it was my life. As things turned out, I might reasonably have disagreed as well.

In 2010 I’m one of the seniors at WFC… but I don’t _feel_ any different, even when I’m chatting with people about things which I suddenly realize took place before they were born. I’m nervous before panels and extremely nervous before the autographing session–even though now I know that I won’t be sitting there with a fixed smile as people bustle past with books for others to sign. (The organizers actually set me at a solo end table because they didn’t want my line to get in the way of other writers. Friends brought over tables to join mine, thank goodness.)

I’m still me, still the scared kid who in his heart expects people to make a point of insulting him (as goodness knows happened often enough in the ’70s). If you were there and met me, I hope I was courteous; I really try to be. But whatever I may have said or done, remember you weren’t seeing a senior writer/editor/publisher (I’ve been all those things); it was the kid from Dubuque who writes as well as he can.

–Dave Drake

***
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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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1984 hardcover dust jacket; Cover art: Michael Whelan

BIRDS OF PREY was the first novel I tried to write. It was a very long time before I succeeded, but I think in this case the wait was worth it.

While I was still in law school I got and read the two-volume Teubner (Latin text only) edition of the so-called Scriptores Historiae Augustae, the Augustan Histories. This is a collection of lives of the later emperors (Hadrian through Numerian), purportedly by many contemporary authors but probably by one man of much later (5th century?) date with political axes to grind. While the SHA is in many respects a fictional text, it does incorporate material from books that haven’t survived–and is, for my purposes as a writer, very evocative.

I became interested in the so-called Third Century Crisis: the point at which the Roman Empire shattered and almost ended, only to be pulled back by Diocletian to further centuries of flowering. I got some notions–scenes only, but vivid scenes–and thought maybe I could turn them into a novel.

Not then I couldn’t. I wrote a chapter or two, then stalled out. I didn’t know how to plot yet, and I didn’t know that I had to plot. (There are various ways to write a novel. The way that works for me is to plot it out in detail before I start the actual writing.) That first attempt occurred before I was drafted in 1968.

1985 Tor paperback

I made several more tries at writing a novel in the years following. Not only did I write a few chapters (probably the same few chapters) of my 3d century fantasy (it got a title this time: The Warm Summer Rain), I did a time travel YA (which I actually completed; Karl Wagner read it and heaped no-doubt deserved scorn on it. No one else is likely to read it during my lifetime) and some chapters of a Roman historical which have a degree of merit. They weren’t a novel, but the writing was vivid.

There matters rested till andy offutt asked me to plot a novel for him (see my comments on The Dragon Lord) and I learned what a novel was. (Incidentally, if it seems to you that there were easier ways to get where I was going, I think you’re right. This is the way I took, but I’d never recommend that another would-be writer try to model him- or herself on me.) I wrote The Dragon Lord, then wrote The Forlorn Hope for Ace (see the comments on why Ace didn’t publish it) and Skyripper in response to a call from Jim Baen who needed material for Tor Books, which Tom Doherty had just founded and hired him to be editorial director of. (There’s a story in that too, but I’m not going to tell it. Even for me, some things are water under the bridge.)

1999 Baen cover

After I turned in Skyripper, Jim called again to offer me a two-book contract, a major book and a minor one. I was ready this time to write the 3d century novel; it became Birds of Prey. (The minor one was Cross the Stars; not in fact as minor as I thought it was going to be. And the day after that call, Jim called back and made it a three-book contract, the third being Bridgehead. It was an exciting time to be alive–but you know, they all are if you’ve got the spirit to understand that.)

The title came from a Kipling poem, “The Birds of Prey” March, a perfectly-realized description of soldiers boarding a troopship for overseas deployment. The refrain, “The Large Birds o’ Prey, they will carry us away, and you’ll never see your soldiers any more,” caught for me the mood of the book I intended to write. Jim didn’t tell me that The Warm Summer Rain was the stupidest title he’d ever heard of, but he might have done. (Nowadays he probably would.)

I did a great deal of research into the history of the period (the SHA is mood and incident, not history). Most of it’s archeology and conjecture; there really are no first-rate written sources extant. That wasn’t an entirely bad thing from my viewpoint. My most valuable single source was a trip to Adana, Turkey, and across Mesopotamia by road to Diyarbakir on the Tigris. That was possible due to my friend Glenn Knight, then US vice-consul in Adana. (I’d originally–that is, in 1968–intended to climax the novel in North Africa; which, oddly enough, we’d visited a couple years before the Turkish trip when Glenn was GSO at the US mission in Algiers)

2011 Tor Reprint

I wrote Birds of Prey in 1983, about 15 years after my first attempt. I’d learned to plot and I’d learned more about writing (I’m still learning more about writing); but the most important difference had come in the years 1969-71. During that time I got intelligence training from the US Army and was given a close-up view of what war, soldiers, and lands wrecked by catastrophe are really like.

Birds of Prey isn’t a perfectly-structured novel, but it’s a darned strong and vivid one. It has in it a lot of what I believe is true. I’m proud of the result, and I don’t regret that it was a long time coming.

–Dave Drake

Birds of Prey. 1984, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 348 p. 0671559095. $14.95.
————– 1985, New York, NY: Tor. 348 p. 0812536126 (pb). $2.95.
————– 1991, New York, NY: Tor. 348 p. 0812513568 (pb). $3.95.
————– 1999, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 348 p. 0671577905 (pb). $6.99.
————– 2011, New York, NY: Tor. 352 p. 978-0765368461 (pb). $7.99.