David Drake

My wife and I visited Niagara Falls in June. Here I boldly go where Frederick Church (and many others) went before.

On April 17, 2007 Toni Weisskopf hosted a Baenish dinner at the chef’s table (which turned out to be a work table in the prep room; we were sitting on bar stools) of the Angus Barn in Raleigh. From left are Mark L Van Name (Baen consultant and author), Jo Drake, Dave, Jennie Faries (Baen graphic designer), Hank Reinhardt (Mr Toni Weisskopf) and Toni. It was both fun and delicious. Most of us are teetotal so we didn’t do justice to the wines, but the wine steward’s descriptions of the choices for each course were neat anyway.

The menu included: Lump crab on cucumber rounds, Coconut shrimp on a bed of jalapeno cheese grits with a Thai pepper sauce, Duck confit and goat cheese raviolis in a roasted tomato sauce, Field greens with marinated mozzarella in a balsamic vinegarette, Mango sorbet palette cleanser, Six week aged beef tenderloin over saffron risotto and grilled asparagus, Pears poached in red wine and cinnamon with chocolate mousse and berries

A bookseller asked if I’d sign bookplates for her; sure, I said. (I always say that.) But this time instead of using a commercial product, she wanted to create personalized bookplates with Photoshop. She asked if I still had the pictures I took of my Damascus-steel dagger for Gary Ruddell when he painted the cover of Dagger. I didn’t, but I had the dagger and a camera with a timer. It was cold and windy, so I put on my motorcycle jacket (normally I’d have been wearing a ratty nylon bomber jacket under a photographer’s vest; but then, normally I wouldn’t have been holding a long custom dagger).