Dear People
I sent off The Serpent, third book in Time of Heroes Series and it has been accepted by Toni for Baen Books. My submission wasn’t nearly as clean as mine usually are. I’ve been having printer issues too.
I had many versions of the book getting in the way of one another. I finally got to the point that I couldn’t remember what I’d already moved or otherwise edited. I really had filled up my buffer. Everyone has been supportive: the problem has been my doing.
I hope to get a proper plot on the next one which I plan to base on the War of the Pacific of the 1870s. I need to do a lot of background thought to set up the situation but at least I’ve got a template
Weird World War III is due out in October with a story of mine in which I used my time in Cambodia as a setting. Let me emphasize: this was the setting, not what I was doing in Cambodia (which was normally pretty boring).
The setting was real though and it probably wasn’t a great idea for me to use it the way I did. I didn’t have anything like a bad war compared to what a lot of guys had, but the mental place I was in wasn’t a good one and going back to it for a setting meant going back to it mentally.
This was 50 years ago, people. It really shouldn’t be so close to my surface. It is though. Most successful people were doing much more important things 50 years ago than I was. The whole Cambodian business was so trivial in the greater scheme of things that during the 2016 presidential campaign Hilary Clinton could forget all about it and brag that her mentor in foreign affairs was Henry Kissinger, who’d planned it.
I can’t forget it though. I probably dwell on it far too much. In a way I’ve never gotten on with my life, and I regret that a great deal. It gave me a vivid setting, though.
The immediate next task is a short story involving military use of robots in my former MOS (military occupation specialty). I was an interrogator, a job for which the dispassion of robots is contraindicated. I don’t know how this is going to work out. I’m doing a great deal more backstory than is required for this story. I don’t know whether or not that’s a good thing, but as usual I let my gut deal with the details
As I mentioned the War of the Pacific is the next major project. Latin America was involved in many wars during the 19th century. the War of the Pacific had some of the most significant results. (It transferred much of the seacoast of Peru and Bolivia to Chile and with it the valuable guano deposits.)
I expect this to be a real RCN novel. Roy Olfetrie from Though Hell Should Bar the Way may be a central character. It occurs to me that it might be a good idea to read some more Alfred Noyes’ poetry. Wish me luck, people. There’s a long way to go.
Covid-19 continues to be daunting and unpleasant for me and I suppose everybody else in the world. Four of Mark’s relatives in Florida who’d been at the beach with us last summer have caught the virus itself, and have recovered. I hope all of you have been at least equally lucky.
Continue to be nice to people as we struggle to get through this bad time.
All best,
Dave Drake