The cover art by Donato is stunning. Click on the image for a larger view.

The Legions of Fire is the first of a quartet of fantasies in The Books of the Elements series from Tor.

First and foremost, The Legions of Fire is a novel about a fictional city named Carce (pronounced CAR-see) and the empire which Carce rules. It is not a novel about Rome and the Roman Empire in 30 ad, under the emperor Tiberius.

Having said that, a reader who knows a little about Roman history and culture will find similarities with my Carce. A reader who knows a great deal about Rome will find even more similarities. I’m not writing a historical novel, however, or even a historical novel with fantasy elements.

The fantasy elements which I’ve used here, like the historical and cultural elements, are real. The Cumean Sibyl did exist; so did and do the Sibylline Books, which a committee of Senators examined when Rome was in particularly grave danger (for example, after the disaster at Cannae).

I prefer to use real things instead of inventing pastiches which I hope will sound right. The magical verses of this novel come from the Sibylline Books and (for reasons which will become clear to the reader) from the Voluspa, a Norse prophetic poem. (Occasionally you will find lines from other poems of The Elder Edda as well.)

There are various literary borrowings throughout The Legions of Fire. This wasn’t research on my part, exactly: I read classical literature for fun, and I found it easier to snatch something from (for example) the elder Seneca, or the Homeric Hymns, or Silius Italicus, than to invent it myself. (This is the first time in forty-odd years that I’ve found familiarity with Silius Italicus to be useful knowledge.)

One final note: the word “servant” occurs frequently in this novel. In Carce as in ancient Rome, the word generally means “slave.”

Click on this image to see the detail of the central panel

I’ve heard intelligent people state that classical slavery wasn’t as bad as slavery in America’s Antebellum South. You can make a case for that, but I consider it along the lines of arguing that the Spanish Inquisition wasn’t as bad as the Gestapo.

A Roman householder had the power of life and death–and sexual control–over the slaves in his or her “family,” and this power could be extended to freed slaves as well. I’m not writing a political tract, but the reader should be aware of this background in order to understand the social dynamics of The Legions of Fire. A servant in Victorian England might lose her position if the mistress became angry. A servant in Rome–or Carce–could lose considerably more.

I’ve had a lot of fun in trying to make a foreign culture accessible to modern readers. The fact that the culture is (pretty much) real and is one of the major underpinnings of Western Civilization made my task even more fun.

Paperback cover

But I’m not an educator. I’ll have succeeded if you readers also have fun with my story.

–Dave Drake

The Legions of Fire. The Books of the Elements. 2010, New York, NY: Tor. 368 p. 9780765320780 (hc) $25.99
Paperback May 2011 ISBN: 9780765360458

Written for the Tor/Forge May 2010 Newsletter

THE MOTORCYCLE WAY TO COMPLEX PLOTTING

Writers use various tools in their work. One of my tools is my motorcycle.

Well, plural: my motorcycles. Bikers learn quickly that if they expect to ride every day, they’d better have two. (And that’s if they’re Japanese, as both of my current rides are. More exotic bikes tend to be two-wheeled versions of owning a Lotus Elan.)

It’s a bit of an overstatement when I say I ride daily, but most weekdays I make a run from our home in the country to my post office box in the center of Chapel Hill, about a 40-mile round trip. My wife has a car and drives it whenever we go somewhere together, but I haven’t driven a car since 1986 or ’87. That was to carry Larry Niven and his luggage to the airport, something I couldn’t do on a motorcycle.

And there’s the real beauty of a bike for a writer: you’re alone. You know how rare it is to be really alone and how valuable that can be.

People who drive cars can do a lot of things that engage their intellects beyond their immediate physical surroundings. Cell phones and texting are modern examples, but fiddling with the CD changer, reading a newspaper (really), and chatting with a passenger (or screaming at the kids/dogs in the back seat) all take you out of the experience. A serious-minded driver can even zone out listening to recorded lectures on Greek philosophy.

A biker can get a helmet with a cell phone (or CB), just as most bikes will carry a passenger…but nobody expects you to do that. Windrush makes even an MP3 player doubtful at best. (My hearing loss from Nam makes it impossible.)

A (surviving) biker is in the moment at all times. Is that car at the intersection ahead going to start across? Will there be a garbage truck stopped around that curve, like there was last week? Is this rain starting to freeze?

Or even: Holy Crap! The woman beside me is pulling into my lane to get around the bus ahead of her!

Even when riding on a lovely day and a familiar road, my conscious mind is wholly focused on my immediate physical surroundings. It’s amazing how much complicated work your subconscious mind gets done under those circumstances. It’s even better than sleeping on problems.

I create complex plots and my prose structure tends to be very tight. Part of the reason I can accomplish those things is that when I pull off my helmet, I suddenly see how to combine three clumsy sentences into two clear ones, or I realize that if I transfer a bit of business from Hedia to Alphena, everything will work.

Cover art: Donato

Hedia to Alphena? They’re two of the four viewpoint characters in my new Tor fantasy, The Legions of Fire. This novel uses a setting very similar to that of Ancient Rome–and by that I mean the real Rome, not the cardboard fakery you get from Hollywood or HBO. I know the background pretty well (you can find my translations of Latin poetry on my website), but fitting my usual considerable amount of action into a world so complicated took all the help I could get. My bikes provided a lot of that help.

But besides those practical reasons, a long sweeping curve on a bright Spring day makes me a much happier writer than I would be otherwise.

–Dave Drake, May 2010

The Legions of Fire (0-7653-2078-9; $25.99) is available from Tor.

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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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.

The layout (shrinking the cover painting to a banner in the middle) is what my friend Mark explains to me is the new Big Book look for major publishers. Now: if I’d been asked how to use a stunning piece of Donato art like the present one, I’d have said to run it full-height as a wrap-around. I (usually) don’t get involved in cover art or design, however–I don’t know squat about either subject. This treatment (which wouldn’t have crossed my mind) turns out to be extremely effective, besides being a coded message to buyers that Tor is pushing the book.

I’m really pleased. I hope people will like the book.

LEGIONS is the first book of a series set in a city called Carce, which is very similar to Rome in 30 AD. I’ve been asked repeatedly why I call the city Carce when it obviously _is_ Rome.

Well, it isn’t Rome. I’m not writing historical novels with fantasy elements added, I’m writing fantasy novels. This fact will be significant at the conclusion of the series, which I hope will add to more than the sum of its parts. (I tried, I think successfully, to accomplish the same thing in the Isles fantasy series for Tor.)

That’s one reason for the name Carce. Another stems from a panel about writing books with Roman settings that I was on many years ago. I commented in passing that the quickest way to tell that an author didn’t understand the classical world was if they gave the dates AUC–ab urbe condita; that is, from the founding of Rome. Greek and Roman historians didn’t use that system, not least because there was no agreement on what the actual date of Rome’s founding was. (There were at least three dates in serious contention.)

I then learned to my embarrassment that everybody else on the panel gave dates AUC in their novels. I hadn’t been wrong, but I’d been unconsciously unkind.

I know enough about ancient Rome to know how very much I _don’t_ know. Calling the city Carce instead of Rome is an explicit acknowledgment of my limitations.

Further goodish news is that I’m finally getting somewhere in plotting the second book of the series, with the current working title MONSTERS OF THE SEAS. This has taken several weeks longer than I think it should have. I gathered material in the usual fashion, but it wasn’t coming together properly.

I think the problem may have been the unusually cold weather we were having at the time I started laying out the plot. I had to leave the furnace on overnight, which messed up my sinuses just enough to keep the topmost registers of my brain from working the way I expect them to. I can take notes and even write when I’m not absolutely 100%, but apparently I can’t weave together the very complex plots I’ve been using for the past twenty years.

I have all the scenes sketched in rough order now. I reasonably expect to be well underway on the book by the time of my next newsletter.

Baen has moved the hardcover of WHAT DISTANT DEEPS, the next RCN (Leary/Mundy) space opera, back from August, 2010, to September and has moved the paperback of the immediately previous RCN volume, IN THE STORMY RED SKY, from July to August. This may have been done to increase the distance from Tor’s release of LEGIONS, but there’s a whole slew of factors going into a publisher’s schedule. Things can change abruptly.

One of the changes was that Tor moved the pb of THE GODS RETURN from November, 2009, (as I said in Newsletter 54) to December. It’s out now, however. This is the climax and conclusion of my nine-book Isles fantasy series.

It’s odd to look back on the Isles series. I was about to say, “it was a life-changing event for me,” but that isn’t quite true.

My life was changing regardless in the mid-’90s. The Military SF for which I was known was taking a hit because the US military was being downsized, and space opera (which I wrote a lot of, though mine was generally reviewed as Military SF) was still smothered by the weight of the Star Trek media tie-in juggernaut.

What writing the Isles series did was to gain me a reputation as a successful writer of high fantasy, rather than allowing me to slip into the ranks of people who’d been major players in previous decades. There are fashions in the F/SF genre as surely as there are in any other aspect of human existence. I’m very lucky to have weathered a major change–

But I assure you that I worked my butt off to capitalize on the chances I got. To be honest, I didn’t expect to succeed; but there was never any question but that I was going to try.

Baen has brought out the second volume of THE COLLECTED HAMMER’S SLAMMERS as an omnitrade (think of it as a shrunken trade paperback), reprinting the Night Shade hardcover. HS2 collects the four Hammer short novels and adds the short story THE DAY OF GLORY, which I wrote for a tsunami-relief anthology. I guess it sort-of fit there, since it’s certainly about a disaster.

Kurt Miller’s excellent art for the third volume of THE COLLECTED HAMMER’S SLAMMERS has been up since Newsletter 54, but the final now can be viewed at larger size along with a close-up of the turret of the central tank. This is the kind of little joke that I frequently put into my prose. I was pleased and amused to see it in the cover art.

I think HS3 comes out in June as a Baen omnitrade. It incorporates the two full-length Hammer novels and the newer novelette THE DARKNESS, which in its way may be the most accomplished piece of fiction I’ve ever written. The story is, for those who understand it, unusually bleak for me also.

Bragalonne in France has listed the third volume of the Isles series, SERVANT OF THE DRAGON, for February, 2010. I don’t ordinarily bother to mention foreign sales, but these large-format French editions have simply the most beautiful covers I’ve ever seen. Images are up at http://david-drake.com/wordpress/2010/french-edition-isles/, so you can judge for yourselves.

Matthew Peterson interviewed me by phone shortly after World Fantasy Con, for a podcast on Military SF. The interview is available (in pieces) with interviews on the subject with Ben Bova, Joe Haldeman, and Dave Weber at http://theauthorhour.com/david-drake/. As I write this, the very lengthy interview Rick Kleffel did at the con still hasn’t been posted.

And I haven’t finished editing my next foray into Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Hercules Cycle. My rough translation did give me the opening for MONSTERS, however. It’s all grist for the mill.

My webmaster, Karen, is planning a complete redesign for the tenth anniversary of david-drake.com in April, 2010. My part in this is to comment on some of my recent novels the way I did on my backlist when we started the website. I want to be deeply into MONSTERS before I start looking back, however.

One unfortunate thing that happened recently is that C Bruce Hunter, a friend of some thirty-five years, died: on November 13, 2009, though I didn’t learn of it until the middle of December. We were closer than that implies, however, and generally spoke at least once a week.

The thing is, the contacts were almost invariably Bruce calling me: to ask a question about Latin or Greek for his books on Masonic ritual, to tell me of a TV show that was worth my attention, to tell me a joke, or–very frequently–to tell me of some exotic food that was being marked down at the local gourmet store.

Bruce was one of the quietly kindest men I’ve ever met. When I needed a ride to get our dog to the veterinary school in Raleigh, he immediately dropped what he was doing and carried me there. Bruce saw Karl Wagner daily even at the end, when the situation was very difficult. He went to the drugstore to bring Karl milk of magnesia on the last night of Karl’s life, and he found Karl’s body the next morning when he dropped in again to check.

Bruce travelled frequently from his Carrboro home to relatives in Asheville and in eastern NC, so it wasn’t a great surprise not to hear from him for a while. When he didn’t arrive for Thanksgiving dinner, my wife checked the hospital (they had no record of him), and the next day I ran out to his house. His car wasn’t in the drive, so I figured he’d forgotten and gone back to Asheville. He’d told my wife that his health had been a bit dicey, and I knew he’d had some memory lapses. In fact he’d been discharged dead from the hospital and taken to Asheville for burial.

Bruce was a good guy. I’ll miss him.

Now, back to expanding and polishing my plot!

–Dave Drake

***
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Quite a lot has been happening. First and foremost in my mind, I turned in WHAT DISTANT DEEPS, the latest RCN (Leary/Mundy) space opera, to Baen Books the day after I got back from World Fantasy Con. I’d carried hardcopy of my second draft with me and edited it while sitting on planes and in parks in San Jose. My first priority on getting home was to key in the final changes and ship the book off. 

It totalled 131,103 words. I’d been convinced during the writing that this one was both short and bad. I’ve written longer books, but 131K isn’t short; and having gone over the whole thing repeatedly during the editing, I’m confident that it isn’t bad either.

I’m probably the only person in the world who thought there would be a problem with the book’s quality… but I really did think that, people. Oh, well. I’m glad to be wrong yet again.

The other big excitement was getting the page proofs for THE LEGIONS OF FIRE, the first (of four books) in my new Tor fantasy series. I was somewhat surprised, because proofs usually arrive about six months before the book comes out. I had been repeatedly told (and have passed on to you) that LEGIONS is scheduled for July, 2010.

When I got the proofs, I learned that the book is now scheduled for May, not July. This isn’t a bad thing (it’s quite good, in fact), but I really wish somebody had told me what the plan was.

Oh well. I wish world peace would come in my lifetime, too.

LEGIONS has a Donato cover, which delights me even before I’ve seen it. The painting is finished, but the designer is still working on the layout. If that changes before this newsletter goes out, there’ll be a URL here.

The cover of WHAT DISTANT DEEPS, another striking painting by Steve Hickman with design by Jennie Faries, is right here. This is a good time to repeat something that I’ve mentioned before: cover paintings are to advertise my books, not to illustrate them. The “dragons” of my novel swim rather than flying like the ones in the painting. That doesn’t matter even a little bit. Steve has the right feel for the book. If he decided he had to transfer the critters from one element to another to achieve that result, I couldn’t be happier.

The paperback of IN THE STORMY RED SKY will be coming out from Baen in August, 2010. Regular readers of this newsletter will know that according to Jennie (designer and friend), the printer used The Wrong Foil on the hardcover. (You couldn’t have proved it by me: I thought it was lovely.) Since then, I have gotten a threatening email from the General Counsel of the firm making the “correct” foil, because I used their proprietary name without adding an ugly trademark squiggle.

I have a high opinion of the firm’s engineers. Their legal department can stand as an illustration of why I stopped working as a lawyer myself.

Tor is scheduled to release the paperback of THE GODS RETURN this month.

Baen will release the second volume of THE COMPLETE HAMMER’S SLAMMERS in February, 2010, as an omnitrade paperback. This volume collects the four shorter novels in the series and “The Day of Glory,” a story which hasn’t been in a Hammer collection before. Omnitrades (now that I’ve seen them) look like regular trade paperbacks but really are smaller. (Compare a British hardcover to its US equivalent for a similar relationship.)

That’s the publishing news. On the website are a few pictures from San Jose. I had a good time, often a very good time, but it was a couple days longer than I’m comfortable being away from home. The weather was nice and San Jose has pleasant parks near the hotel, which made a great deal of positive difference to me. Still, I missed my nest (as I did when we were in the Southwest earlier this year). I’m very much a homebody.

I noticed flags hanging (as often) under the porte cochere at the convention hotel’s entrance. I wouldn’t have paid much attention, except that one flag was that of the Republic of Viet Nam (South Vietnam) which of course hasn’t existed since 1975. The taxi starter explained that the flags are those of the nations of origin of all the hotel staff. I pass this on, because some of you may have wondered also.

I did two interviews as a result of the con. One was audio with Rick Kleffel (one of my con pictures shows him), there in the hotel. It’ll come out as a podcast or a couple podcasts, and (if I understood correctly) there may be bits on the local NPR station. It was interesting to do and ran about three times as long as he said it would. (I’m a good interview subject, perhaps because I say things that most folks will not.)

There was also a written question-and-answer interview after I got back. The result is up at http://travisheermann.com/blog/?p=488 but I should note that the interviewer (Travis Heermann) sent one set of questions, then followed up with a second and intermixed the results. I realized in reading the complete version that I had structured each set of responses into a rhetorical whole. (No, I don’t think anybody else in the world would notice the difference.)

I’ve roughed out a translation of the Hercules and Achelous, and the Hercules and Nessus, sections of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but I want to complete the Hercules Cycle before I put anything up on the website. That’ll be a while yet.

And I’m flailing about in early stages of plotting the second volume of the Tor fantasy series. My working title is MONSTERS FROM THE DEPTHS, but it’s really early days yet.

I’ve been diving into classical texts which range from obscure (Nonnos) to extremely obscure (Avienus). They’ve given me settings, but the trick is developing neat bits into a real plot. I keep digging and scribbling notes, hoping that suddenly everything is going to become crystal clear. Hope is a fine thing….

The interviews and some other stuff that’s been going on–I finished a book, so my mind has too much free time–have gotten me thinking about appearances. This leads me to two stories from my past.

Many years ago, I was buying onyx bookends in a rock shop. It was kind of a New Age place, but they had fossils, bookends, and various other stuff I’m interested in.

I was on a motorcycle with built-in saddlebags; I’d locked my helmet in one while I was shopping. I carried a bookend out to make sure I could pack them in a satisfactory fashion, then walked back inside with my helmet to get the remainder of my purchases. The clerk said, “Oh! That explains it.”

Of course I wanted to know what she meant. After some pressing (and with obvious embarrassment) she said, “Well, I could tell from your aura that you’re in touch with your sensitive, feminine side, so I couldn’t understand why you dressed in such an aggressive fashion.” (I was wearing a motorcycle jacket, boots, and jungle fatigue trousers.) “When I saw the helmet, I realized that you really _were_ on a motorcycle.”

Without going into all the ways that exchange puzzled me (nobody else has suggested that I have a sensitive, feminine side, let alone that I was in touch with it), it did drive home the fact that what people see and hear isn’t necessarily going to be what I think I’m showing and telling. There isn’t a heck of a lot I can do about that, but it kinda disturbs me.

What I think is this: folks, what you see with me is what you get. I’m reasonably smart, quite well educated, and I work hard. There are no mysteries about me, there’s no romance. I do not have a secret key to the door of writing success: I just tell stories and meet my professional obligations. I’m a Nam vet, but I wasn’t any kind of hero. My dad was an electrician; my grandfather was a sheet metal worker; and my great grandfather was a farmer.

What I’ve said in the paragraph above is the absolute truth, but I’m reminded of another story from my past. When I got back to the World in 1971, I said and believed that I was perfectly normal. Viet Nam hadn’t been a lot of fun, but it hadn’t done me any lasting harm.

Five years later, I realized that I certainly hadn’t been normal when I first returned, but I believed–loudly–that I had by then settled back to normal. I was wrong about that too.

Nearly forty years on, I’ve given up claiming to be normal (though I do think that I’m generally safe to be around). And I certainly don’t believe that Nam didn’t do permanent damage to me.

So maybe there’s more to the writing as well. I look at the shelf (shelves, actually) of my books. There still doesn’t seem to be any big deal to it to me (hard work and a focus on storytelling), but realistically there aren’t many people who have equaled my record. Maybe there’s something I’m not seeing, just as I didn’t see (didn’t let myself see) how much Nam had done to me. Heck, maybe it’s the same thing.

But the work is the work, with me as with every other writer. Focus on that, because I try very hard to make it more interesting than I am myself.

–Dave Drake

***
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I turned in THE LEGIONS OF FIRE not quite a month ago–140,845 words including the front matter. I’m overall pleased with the novel, the first of a four-book fantasy series for Tor, but the thing that pleases me most is that I had a chance to use my background in history and Latin, my undergraduate majors. This is an extremely erudite book, even for me. 

Which, of course, isn’t anything you or readers in general should be interested in. More to the point, there’s a story (several interwoven stories) and plenty of action. (I don’t recall ever getting complaints that there isn’t enough action in my books.) The plot is intricate and comes together neatly at the climax. The structure is very similar to that of the Isles novels, but the characters are completely different from those of the earlier series.

But what _I’m_ proud of is the erudition. Vanity comes out in various fashions; that’s apparently mine.

I’m still in the process of relaxing; well, trying to relax. I’ve banged out several short essays: for the Nebula Awards anthology, on Golden Age SF; for a collection of Manly Wade Wellman’s stories about Hok, his stone-age hero; and for the Hammer’s Slammers role-playing game that Mongoose Publishing in the UK is doing. These essays aren’t real work, but they trick my subconscious mind into thinking that I’m working–which it believes is all I should ever be doing.

Obviously I’m not ready to start another novel. I’m not even ready to start seriously plotting the next one (an RCN–Leary/Mundy–space opera). I’m beavering away in Polybius and Nineteenth Century travel memoirs, jotting down notes with a serious expression. Some of these notes, transmuted, will wind up in the current book, while others may appear in later projects. In any case, it’s a good way to imprint neat stuff on my memory.

The most recent RCN novel, IN THE STORMY RED SKY, isn’t quite out; it should appear at the beginning of May. I haven’t seen the final cover, but Jennie assures me that she and the artist, Steve Hickman, have made sure that the holographic foil overlay will be impressive even though it can’t go over the actual hologram in the painting (the lines were too fine) as it did in the previous volume. The image itself (lovely and striking even without foil) is up.

My author copies of the pb of WHEN THE TIDE RISES, the immediately previous space opera, have arrived, so they ought to be in stores by the time you read this. The RCN novels are a lot of fun to write. I like the characters, and the setting allows me to use my interest in history in ways that stretch my mind also.

I realized as I proofed the final draft of LEGIONS that for good or ill, I’m my own man. For good _and_ ill, more accurately. I write books that nobody else would have written, and I write them in my own fashion.

The third Belisarius omnibus, FLAMES OF SUNSET (containing The Tide of Victory and The Dance of Time), is scheduled from Baen in both hardcover and trade paperback in August, 2009. The striking art is by Kurt Miller.

The cover (also by Kurt Miller) for the Baen mass market (but slightly oversized) edition of THE COMPLETE HAMMER’S SLAMMERS, volume 1, is also up. The release date is October, 2009. The contents are the same as the Night Shade hardcover, as will be the case with the other two volumes. (Though I think it would be great if you ran out and bought the hardcovers right this minute.)

I mentioned the Mongoose RPG booklet. They did a really good job. I’ve never gotten into role playing (I’ve done both board games and miniature games, but RPGs were after my time), but I’ve seen a fair amount of RPG material over the years. This booklet is a cut above anything in my experience. I don’t know exactly when it’s to be released, but I think the material is complete.

And I did another interview with Stephen Cobb for his podcast, The Future and You; he split it over two shows. It struck me again that I say things which most people do not. I don’t guarantee I’ll be correct, but I _will_ be honest and you won’t be in any doubt as to my opinion on whatever question I’ve been asked.

Speaking of modern technology, there’s a David Drake Facebook page which a fan put together for me. I have looked at it, and my webmaster, Karen, will be looking in regularly. I think this is fine, but it just isn’t me.

I haven’t done any translations from Ovid since the most recent newsletter. I may glance through the Metamorphoses shortly to see if anything calls to me. Heck, maybe it will even give me notions for the next volume in The Books of the Elements, my Tor fantasy series. I wonder if Ovid ever discusses Britomartis?

The website hasn’t changed much beyond the regular updates on the FAQ and News pages (new titles going up, older ones relegated to the Archive). I was in Toronto for Ad Astra last week, and there’s a picture of me in the Royal Ontario Museum. The museum’s very nice display of fossils includes a set from the Pre-Cambrian Burgess Shale (small, but Deeply Significant).

I was most taken by the giant sea-turtle, Archelon, mounted so that it (actually a casting) swims through the air toward the viewer. For some reason, the turtle’s silent majesty moved me in a fashion that the even bigger dinosaurs did not. Perhaps in a former life, I was a turtle. I suspect things weren’t as peaceful even then as I’d like to dream they were, however.

A couple people at the con mentioned that I’d answered their fan letters twenty-odd years ago and how much that impressed them. In one case I’d apparently written a two-page letter, which surprises me; ordinarily I’d have sent a postcard, though I’ve always made an effort to reply to anybody who was polite.

But that got me thinking about online communication as a contrast to the letters and occasional face-to-face meetings which were the choices in past times. Something over a thousand people are getting this newsletter directly. That’s a larger audience than I could imagine in 1980, even if I were on a panel at a worldcon.

My newsletters are on a roughly bi-monthly schedule. I have friends who blog, giving fans a daily or weekly update on their thinking and activities. And there are plenty of people who update their Facebook pages multiple times a day, and who Twitter. If I were on Twitter, I could inform any number of cell phones that I’m sitting in Toronto Pearson Airport at the moment. There are lots of ways to communicate instantly.

But to communicate what? Would people have come up to me this weekend to thank me for Twittering them decades ago?

I’m in regular correspondence with a few friends. Most of them email me, but with some I respond by surface mail after I’ve printed out their letters and have digested the contents. I think better after a reasonable delay, and I believe my friends do also.

For example, Barry Malzberg mentioned The Brooklyn Project by William Tenn, which precedes A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury by four years but which reads like a deliberate satire of the later story. In checking original publication of the Tenn (which I’d read but didn’t remember) I found that it was in the same issue as Bradbury’s Mars Is Heaven, making it virtually certain that Bradbury was familiar with the Tenn before he wrote A Sound of Thunder.

The Tenn is very intelligent, written in a sophisticated fashion, and was genuinely original. Yet it’s the Bradbury that everybody, including me and Barry, remembers vividly while the Tenn story slipped out of our minds till we happened to reread it in a context of familiarity with the Bradbury.
That sort of synergy, of real communication, wouldn’t have happened if Barry and I limited ourselves to blogs. Could it? Sure; but we all know that it wouldn’t have.

So I’m not against instant communication. But I’m not going to blog, and anybody who emails me through david-drake.com will get a real reply (though probably one that would fit on a postcard, just as in past years).

And I’m going to continue writing letters to friends.

–Dave Drake

***
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Well, I haven’t completed the rough draft of THE LEGIONS OF FIRE, the start of my new fantasy series for Tor, but I’m close. And I’m darned consistent: two months ago I had about 60K; now I’ve got a bit over 125K, so I’m averaging a hair over a thousand words a day regardless of holidays, crises (the water line froze; on the other hand, about this time last year a drunk in a pickup crossed the road and hit us, so I’m not complaining), birthdays, colds and flu. 

I’m in the ‘colds’ part of that catalog at present. I blow my nose a lot and feel as though I’d been dragged by a horse, but I continue to beaver away, following my outline. I’m well into the climax now. Unless the asteroid strikes very soon, I should have a completed rough draft.

This plot keeps a lot of balls in the air. The book (at core) is very different from anything I’ve written in the past. And as usual I’m convinced that I’ve blown it: that nobody will notice the things that I consider to be particularly neat, and that most of it will strike even me as silly and boring when I read the completed manuscript. Part of me is pretty depressed.

But Sunday morning I was sitting outside reading the paper and about to start work. The temperature hadn’t gotten up to 40 degrees Fahrenheit yet, but it was already a pretty day.

A wren landed on my right calf and worked her way up my legs in short hops. Eventually she came around my back, paused on my right hip, and hopped down to continue her search for bugs on the deck.

Very few people have jobs in which that happens to them. Therefore you can think of me as depressed in idyllic circumstances, which is really the truth.

I mentioned a few months ago that Audible had released audio streaming versions of the first six RCN (Leary/Mundy) space operas. [Go to http://audible.com and search David Drake.] To my great delight, sales have been good enough that they’re taking the new one, IN THE STORMY RED SKY, which is due out in hardcover from Baen in May, 2009. I’ve already written and recorded a 2-minute audio introduction for SKY, thanks to the good offices of Mur Lafferty.

When I mentioned SKY, I realized that I should have seen dustjackets by now. The lovely Steve Hickman art is up. The designer–my friend–Jennie Faries tells me that it will have another swatch of neat Holotrans foiling, so I’ve got my fingers crossed.

To mention something that’s already on the stands–the Baen paperback of Mark Geston’s trilogy, THE BOOKS OF THE WARS, is out. I didn’t write these novels (though I contributed an introduction), but they were formative for me and for a lot of writers of my generation. I won’t pretend that you’ll get fuzzy good feelings from them, even in comparison with (say) my own REACHES TRILOGY, but they’re enormously powerful books. Try them; I guarantee that you’ll be impressed.

According to Amazon, the pb of BALEFIRES, my Night Shade horror/fantasy collection will be out at the end of this month. According to Amazon last month, it was going to be out in January. According to the nice people at Night Shade a year and a half ago, it would be out in January, 2008.

This reminds me powerfully of WORSE THINGS WAITING, the first book we (Carcosa) published. It came out something over a year later than we’d planned (and announced). When I chatted with Jeremy Lassen of Night Shade at WFC, he assured me that they really would bring out the paperback, and I believe him. (Toni Weisskopf, bless her heart, had already promised me that Baen would do it if Night Shade couldn’t.)

I guess I can wait; I’ve been waiting a long while already. BALEFIRES is what would probably have been my first (and perhaps only) book some thirty years ago if Mr Derleth hadn’t died in 1971. The included stories and the 12K of introductions I wrote to them are the beginning of my writing life and my career (as it became).

I’ve seen the trade paperback of STORM AT NOONTIDE, the second Belisarius compilation (DESTINY’S SHIELD and FORTUNE’S STROKE, novels written by Eric Flint from my outline and bound together with an intro by me). Jennie says there’s supposed to be a hardcover edition also, but I don’t swear to that. They should be in stores in March, 2009, or a little before.

Gosh, I remember working on the plots for this series (specifically, polishing the first outline and drafting the second one–this volume) while I was at Kipling’s house in Brattleboro, Vermont, with friends and family for my fifty-first birthday back in 1996. All the people with me that week are still in my life, certainly including Jim Baen (though he’s been dead for a couple years). I could use the Belisarius series as a poster of why I’m incredibly fortunate.

And after a long delay, I finally polished the Pyramus and Thisbe section of Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES so that Karen, my webmaster, could put it up. It will show you where Shakespere got some of his ideas–and if you’re a fan of THE FANTASTICKS, as I have been for an awful lot of years, you’ll catch one of the references that wonderful little play makes also.

While I was at it, I translated the next of Ovid’s lyrics also. This is an apparently simple piece on a standard theme–the dangers of sea travel–which at the end gets very tricky indeed. I wound up comparing my translation with several others and found a wide variety of responses. There are several lines whose vocabulary is completely standard but whose meaning is not. The answers I came up with are here on record, so feel free to second guess me.

Finally, here’s a story which you can view as autobiography, or history, or just possibly a cautionary tale of sorts. I’ve been musing about Mark Geston’s trilogy, but I don’t’ need external reasons to think about the Viet Nam War.

In early 1970 my 30-man unit completed Vietnamese language school in Ft Bliss, Texas, and was assigned to Ft Meade, Maryland, for two months of interrogation training. We were all college graduates and all draftees. When we ‘graduated’ from language school, we were promoted to Spec 4–the equivalent of an army corporal.

One of the exercises involved breaking us into groups of five or so and giving each group a real map sheet of War Zone C in Viet Nam. The terrain on these sheets was not only rural but almost entirely jungle. We were told what we, as the American commanders, had in the way of material assets (basically helicopters, bombers and artillery), and what material assets the enemy would oppose us with (basically small arms). Our task was to devise a plan for defeating the enemy and clearing the map area.

Our groups all came to the conclusion that our objective was unattainable. The instructors, senior NCOs, were taken aback. They insisted that artillery fire and bombing would smash enemy concentrations, and our helicopter-borne infantry would encircle and destroy the enemy in lesser numbers.

We pointed out that triple canopy jungle, as covered most of the area, made it next to impossible to locate the enemy from the air, and that the canopies also greatly reduced the effectiveness of shells and bombs. Helicopters could land troops most places, granted; but that the enemy could disengage at will through the jungle, which made a really tight encirclement impossible. In other words, that the NVA would fight only when they considered themselves to be strong enough to win.

The only way we could succeed was for the enemy to give up. Given that they had been fighting since 1945 already, it was unrealistic to expect them to give up now.

The instructors kept repeating the official line: that we could win through technology… but we Spec 4s were right and they were wrong. Everything I saw In Country and everything I’ve read in the memoirs of other veterans reinforces what my class knew at the time.

Now: we were smart people or we wouldn’t have been in that program–but we weren’t smarter than, say, McGeorge Bundy and Robert S McNamara, two of the major architects of the war. We were looking at the facts before us without a filter of ideology, however.

So that’s one aspect of the situation. The other aspect is this: all thirty of us, knowing the utter futility of the war we were being thrown into, went where our country sent us. For twenty-nine of the thirty that meant Viet Nam, where we served to the best of our ability.

I wish that the leaders of our country would generally be less callously arrogant than the Bundys and McNamaras and their ilk–’the Best and the Brightest’–who gave us the Viet Nam War. Recent history doesn’t give me much hope on that point.

But I have more confidence that our country will continue to raise people like my interrogation school class: citizens who will do their duty even though they know their leaders have betrayed them.

–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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Folks frequently ask me how long it takes to write a novel. (People ask me a lot of questions that presumably seem simpler from the outside than they do to me.) The answer depends on a lot of things, in particular the length of the novel. (I average about a thousand words of rough draft per day; thus a novel of 135K words takes around two weeks longer to write than a similar book that was 120K words long.) 

But there are other factors which also affect the time I spend. If I’m working in an existing series, a lot of the basic groundwork is already in place before I start a new novel. In particular, I don’t have to create the main characters from the whole cloth. (The Hammer series may seem to be an exception because the viewpoint characters generally change from story to story. In my opinion, the Regiment itself is the real focus of a Hammer story.

What I’m getting to is the fact that after more than two months of work, I just finished the plot of the first book in the new Tor fantasy series… and I’ll tell the world! it was a job. This is the first new series I’ve started since 1995. I don’t think that in itself made the plotting harder; but because I know a _lot_ more about writing a complex series than I did when I plotted THE LORD OF THE ISLES, I’m working on aspects that I didn’t worry about in 1995. Those things rose up to bite me on the fanny later, but ignorance was bliss while I was creating the plot.

Well, that isn’t really true. I found plenty of things to worry about when I started plotting the Isles series. Experience has allowed me to trade them in for new and improved anxieties.

Still, I have a plot of 16,239 words for THE LEGIONS OF FIRE, first of the four Books of the Elements. I hope to start writing the novel in the near future (in the next couple days, probably). Starting every new novel scares me, and this one is scarier than most–

But after poring over reference books I’ve found the floor plan of the Senator’s house in which much of the action takes place, and I’ve borrowed a bit of business for the opening scene from Petronius and Valerius Maximus. My classical education has once again proved to be a solid anchor for my fiction.

Some months ago, a fellow from the military-themed blog Black Five TV did video interviews of me and my friend Mark Van Name on Mark’s back deck. (They’re part of a series that Baen Books is sponsoring.) As of this writing, two segments are up with more to come.

Watching them was an interesting experience. With me, what you see is what you get. I don’t regret that and I certainly don’t think I’m going to change–but when I’m in the audience, on the camera side of the interview, I’m struck by the fact that most people are less direct and less prone to express their real opinions.

I was also struck by the fact that I’m more likely to have a career in the NBA than I am in politics. (I repeat: I don’t regret that.)

In Newsletter 46, I mentioned that I was going to have to get cracking on the introductions for the audio downloads of the RCN space operas for Audible. It turned out that they’re planning to release the first six novels simultaneously, so I did the remaining five very abruptly after the newsletter went out.

Every time I do an introduction, I learn something new about the work and about myself. (Along the lines of, “Oh, _that’s_ why I did that.”) These were no exception. I don’t know if readers gain by them, but I sure do. I’ll pass on further information about the downloads when I have it.

I don’t ordinarily mention conventions, but I’m just back from Conjecture in San Diego. Not only was everybody nice to me, it was my first West Coast con ever. As a result, I signed a very large number of books for fans who’d either never met me or who hadn’t wanted to lug a trunkload of books to the Midwest or South.

So–if there’s anybody else in the West or Northwest who’s looking for a convention guest, keep me in mind. (I’m a cheap date.)

Among other things the con took me to the San Diego Maritime Museum, where I had a very good time. (There’s a picture of me and the con chair)

Visiting the vessel which was used as the _Surprise_ in the film _Master and Commander_ was unexpectedly moving. Jim Baen got me started reading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series (the direct genesis of my RCN space operas); he and I touched frequently on them when we chatted, right to the end. I kept thinking as I took pictures that I’d really like to burble to Jim about this… and I would.

Well, we burbled a lot to one another while we were able to. For those of you who haven’t learned the lesson the hard way, remember that you don’t have anybody forever. Deal with other people so that you won’t have regrets at the moment you realize that either you or the other fellow isn’t going to be around any more.

I don’t ordinarily mention (this seems to be the newsletter for exceptions) foreign publications, but the French edition of _Lord of the Isles_ is just beautiful. I don’t know that it’s a commercial cover (I don’t think it would be in the US market), but it’s perhaps the loveliest painting ever put on a book of mine. It’s up at http://david-drake.com/album.html.

I’ve mentioned in several newsletters that the paperback of _Balefires_ should be out soon. I no longer think that’s true. My suspicion (I haven’t been told this) is that Night Shade’s distributor is unwilling to handle mass market books from them. That’s a shame, but I’ve been in the business for far too long to argue with commercial realities.

If you see the hardcover–a dealer had three copies at Conjecture, but they didn’t last very long–you might consider buying it. The book is basically the autobiography of my early writing career. Before I had a writing career, come to think.

A cover comp of BELISARIUS 2: Storm at Noontide is up. The book, which collects the second pair of Belisarius novels by Eric Flint and me, will be out from Baen in March, 2009. (BELISARIUS 1 is out now.)

And though I’ve mentioned them before, the hc of THE GODS RETURN and the pb of THE MIRROR OF WORLDS, the final pair of novels in the Isles series, will be out from Tor in November, 2008–in other words, they’re almost in stores by the time you read this. I was pleased with the way I wrapped up the series.

Parenthetically, it’s irritated me over the years to have people tell me that the books of the Isles series are all the same. No, they’re not; the fact that the people making the comment don’t see the movement doesn’t change the fact that there _is_ movement. I hope that with the series complete, I’ll hear less of that.

Writers are always advised to show, not tell; but if you do that, you’ll be criticized by a lot of people who are blind but not mute. You still ought to do it: you should not change your writing style because loud-mouthed twits don’t understand what you’re doing.

I don’t have any new Latin translations up, though I’ve completed the Pyramus and Thisbe section of Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ and have done a partial edit of it. Perhaps by the next newsletter I’ll have polished it to suit me.

Now I’m going to read over my plot outline one more time, in a vain hope that doing so will quell my dread. Only writing the book will do that, by replacing it with the different and equally familiar dread that I’ve fallen on my face in the execution.

But you know, I love what I do. I couldn’t tell you why, but that’s the honest truth. I hope that when it comes down to cases, you all can say the same about your lives.

–Dave Drake

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