What are you working on now?
April 2, 2010
What are you working on now?
4 September 2010: I’m editing Out of the Waters, a fantasy for Tor in the Books of the Elements series.
FAQ
Finding Dave’s Books
June 4, 2010
Some links to places you can find Dave’s books:
Where can I get Dave’s e-Books?
September 6, 2010
Authorized (they pay me royalties) electronic copies of my books (including Tor titles) are available at Baen.com, either at Webscriptions or in the Free Library. Baen’s Bar has two discussion areas where you can get more information about e-book formats for various readers: Webscriptions EBooks, and EBook Reader.
Do you use a computer for your work?
May 26, 2010
I’ve been composing on a computer since 1986, when IBM came out with its first laptop. From 1981 I was using a dedicated word-processor for second and third drafts, but I was composing with a pencil on legal pad. (Many legal pads.) As soon as there was a computer I could take out in the yard and work as I had with pencil and paper, I switched to computer first drafts.
I’m obviously not a technophobe, let alone a Luddite; but neither do I find anything magical to technology. Some of the stories that I wrote longhand and typed on a portable I bought in Nam (electric but with a manual carriage return; very cheap) are still in print after thirty years. continue reading…
Has there been any gaming interests in your books?
May 26, 2010
Yes, in several fashions.
Mayfair Games brought out a Hammer’s Slammers board game back in the ’80s.
Intracorps licensed electronic game rights to Hammer’s Slammers in the mid ’90s. They got seriously into development, but they were overextended and went bankrupt well before they completed the game. (They paid me part of the money. The business was frustrating in a number of respects, but I was paid well enough to justify the hassle.) continue reading…
Have any movies been made from your books?
May 26, 2010
Years ago I had a few TV options on short stories, none of which were ever picked up.
While I would be delighted to have somebody buy the right to make a movie from my fiction, I’ve never made it a priority; I write books. They’ll really have to come looking for me–and to date nothing in that line has gotten to the point of signed paper and a check in my hand.
There’s a person named Charles Platt who’s lived in the US for many years but who has all the attributes that go into the term ‘Chinless Wonder’ for the British upper classes. (His uncle was in the House of Lords.) He produced a supercilious review of Hammer’s Slammers suggesting that if I’d really seen war I wouldn’t write such queasy voyeurism. I didn’t respond directly–you don’t respond to reviewers, in my judgment–but I haven’t forgotten that either.
I stick my head in on Baen’s Bar regularly (http://bar.baen.com), but I don’t have (and don’t want) a conference of my own. I’ll generally find a question or comment with the words David Drake in it on the bar and respond to it. continue reading…
Probably not. I’m proud of the existing trilogy; in some ways they’re my best and most subtly complex books (observe, for example, the way in Vengeance and Justice that words are echoed either from the end of a section to the beginning of the next, or from the end of one thread to the resumption of that thread), but they’re also harsh in a fashion that I no longer feel a need to be. continue reading…
Dave Weber asked me for a novella for his first shared universe anthology set in the Honor Harrington universe (Worlds of Honor). I’d been thinking of doing a series of space operas based on Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series, so I decided to use this novella as a chance to test the concept of two dissimilar friends as dual leads. continue reading…