David Drake

Dear People,

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.  continue reading…

Dear People,

For a moment I thought was going to start somewhere else, but no: the big news this time is still that I’ve finished the plot for the next RCN (Leary/Mundy) space opera and expect to begin writing very soon. My working title is IN THE STORMY RED SKY, but that may change. Possibly to CRUISER CAPTAIN. I’ll run options by my demon support staff soon.  continue reading…

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

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

Cover art: Steve Hickman

COMING HOME BY THE LONG WAY

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

This is what I’m best known for writing.

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

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

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

ROLLING HOT–the title is from military aviation, meaning the aircraft is moving to the attack with ordnance ready to fire–is based very loosely on Tet of ’68. That’s an event I’m glad to have missed, but a number of the folks I served with in 1970 had stories and even photographs of what the Blackhorse had been doing then.

For those of you who weren’t around at the time, the Viet Cong made a massive win-the-war attack on US and South Vietnamese forces during the truce declared for the Lunar New Year holiday, Tet. Politically, it won them the war: Tet proved that President Johnson and the US generals had been lying when they claimed the VC was nearly finished as a fighting force. Such public support for the war as had previously existed vanished abruptly. continue reading…