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Amores III:10
It is the time of the Cerealia, so my girlfriend sleeps in her bed alone. Blond Ceres with your fine hair tied with wheat straw, why do you inconvenience us for your rites? All peoples call you generous, Goddess–a person … Continue reading
Amores III:9
Memnon’s mother and Achilles’ mother both wept over their sons. If such grief could touch great goddesses, then you too, Elegy, shall loose your hair now in unfamiliar grief. Ah, now you must become a funeral elegy: the empty husk … Continue reading
Amores III:8
Does anybody still think that distinguished art and delicate poetry are sufficient to win a lover? Once genius was more valuable than gold, but today’s universal barbarism counts it for nothing. Once my brilliant little poetry collections pleased my mistress, … Continue reading
Book Tour, September 2001
Ranks of Bronze
RANKS OF BRONZE arose from two bits of knowledge I ran into while I was an undergraduate. I don’t know which came first, but I wouldn’t have written the story–and the later novel–without both occurring. I read all of Horace … Continue reading
Bridgehead
BRIDGEHEAD was my first attempt to write what I think of as mainstream SF: a novel about a scientific experiment without any tanks or legions or swordsmen or spies. The genesis of the plot was a friend telling me about … Continue reading
Birds of Prey
BIRDS OF PREY was the first novel I tried to write. It was a very long time before I succeeded, but I think in this case the wait was worth it. While I was still in law school I got … Continue reading
Mistress of the Catacombs
The common religion of the Isles is based on Sumerian cult and ritual. That is, the Lady equates with Inanna; her consort the Shepherd equates with Dumuzi; and the Sister fills the place of Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld. Religion … Continue reading
The Hunter Returns
The Hunter Returns. With J. Kjelgaard 1991, Riverdale, NY: Baen. Reprint with new Introduction, 2015, Riverdale, NY: Baen SLAUGHTERING EARLY HUMANS FOR FUN AND (A SLIGHT) PROFIT This essay describes how and why I wrote my parts of THE HUNTER … Continue reading
The Jungle
THE JUNGLE grew out of the series of Tor dos-a-dos double novels which I discuss in my comments on Surface Action. You can check the background there, so I won’t repeat myself. Tor had terminated that series, but my plan … Continue reading
Surface Action
SURFACE ACTION came about because Marty Greenberg was packaging a series of dos-a-dos short novels for Tor Books, pairing a classic with new work by a contemporary author. He suggested that I write a sequel to Clash By Night, written … Continue reading
Baen Books Moved
Baen Books has now officially moved to North Carolina. Jo and I had dinner Christmas Eve with Jim at his house/office. The place is gorgeous, and it’s in an even nicer setting including five-acre pond.
Old Nathan
OLD NATHAN is a book I wrote for myself. There’ve been books that didn’t do as well as I’d hoped (The Sea Hag is a striking example), but I think Old Nathan is the only one I wrote in the … Continue reading
55th Birthday Pig Pickin’, 2000
Every year (since 1973) for my birthday we have a pig-picking–a whole barbecued pig. The past several years we’ve been borrowing a gas cooker from a neighbor instead of doing it with wood or wood and charcoal; this isn’t as … Continue reading
Lt. Leary Commanding
I’m using English and Metric weights and measures throughout Lt. Leary Commanding, as I did in With the Lightnings. I wouldn’t bother mentioning this, but the decision seems to concern some people. I’m doing it for the same reason that … Continue reading
Early Influences – The Angry Planet
THE ANGRY PLANET by John Keir Cross I was fascinated by SF from a very early age–I’m not sure why–but there wasn’t very much real science fiction available for kids during the 1950s. I made do with books like Miss … Continue reading
Early Influences – The Chickens
THE CHICKENS My parents read to me before I was able to read for myself. One of the books they read–and there were many–was The Big Golden Book of Poetry. The first edition was published in 1947 when I would’ve … Continue reading
The Sea Hag
THE SEA HAG was one of my attempts to write a commercially successful book that was different from anything I’d done before. The closest analog to my plan was The Dying Earth series by Jack Vance: a world in which … Continue reading
Lord of the Isles
LORD OF THE ISLES was my chance to get back to writing fantasy. It now seems an obvious thing to have done, but it sure took me a long time to come to that realization. Andrew Lang’s Color Fairy Books … Continue reading
The Voyage
THE VOYAGE is space opera based on the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, with embellishments from other classical writers who touched on legends of Jason and the Argonauts. It’s a sequel of sorts to Cross the Stars–a minor character from … Continue reading
Mark Twain Mansion
On June 5, 2000, Jo and I visited the Mark Twain Mansion in Hartford, CT. Twain and Kipling were similar in many ways, drawn from poverty by their genius, and they got along well when they met. I was struck … Continue reading
Time Safari and Tyrannosaur
Contents of TIME SAFARI Calibration Run Time Safari Boundary Layer Afterword: The Sixty-Five Million Years Afterword In 1993 Tom Doherty got the notion of reissuing this volume with a new story containing elements which he specified to replace Calibration Run, … Continue reading
Northworld, Vengeance, and Justice
I wrote NORTHWORLD because Beth Fleisher, a wonderful editor, told me as I rose after we’d had breakfast at a convention that if I ever wanted to do something for a larger house than Baen Books, she at Ace would … Continue reading
Killer
KILLER holds a lot of memories for me, most of them bad. Sometimes things work out that way. August Derleth died in 1971. His small press, Arkham House, was the only market to which I’d sold fiction. F&SF published some … Continue reading
Rolling Hot
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 … Continue reading
Hammer’s Slammers (1979)
HAMMER’S SLAMMERS is a short story collection, not a novel, and my first book. It made it possible for me to become a full-time writer, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I’d sold a story as an undergraduate, … Continue reading
The Military Dimension and MARK II
I’ve written quite a lot of military SF. This collection (and its expanded reissue Mark II) weren’t intended to collect all of it (that would take a very big book, even for the short fiction) but rather to show the … Continue reading
The Tank Lords
Contents of THE TANK LORDS Under the Hammer Rolling Hot Night March Code-Name Feirefitz The Tank Lords Appendix Afterword: We Happy Few –Dave Drake The Tank Lords. Hammer’s Slammers Series. 1997, Riverdale, NY: Baen. 391 p. 0671877941 (pb). $6.99.
Skyripper
SKYRIPPER was a more important book for me than I’d realized until this moment. In 1981 I was driving a bus for the Town of Chapel Hill, having decided that being a lawyer was killing me–and quitting the law business. … Continue reading
Vettius and His Friends
I started writing with heroic fantasies either explicitly set during the classical past or closely modeled on that past. Black Iron was the fourth story I sold and the first that I consider to be really publishable. These aren’t necessarily … Continue reading
Fortress
FORTRESS is the only solo book I’ve written when I didn’t want to write it. When Jim Baen left Tor Books to found his own publishing house, Baen Books, I intended to continue working for both men. (They’re both friends … Continue reading
All the Way to the Gallows
This is a collection of my humorous SF and fantasy. To my delight it sold very well. There’s really a lot of humor in my other fiction, but it tends to get lost in the other things that are going … Continue reading
From the Heart of Darkness
My original title for this collection was BALEFIRES. Jim Baen asked me to change it late in the process because a big-budget book of that title was due out shortly. I may use the title on the planned Fedogan & … Continue reading
Lacey and His Friends
I’ve had a lot of good book covers. I’ve never had a cover better than Steve Hickman’s for this volume. The three Lacey stories are harsher than anything else I’ve written. It’s probably not a coincidence that I wrote them … Continue reading
The Dragon Lord
THE DRAGON LORD was my first novel. There was a heroic fantasy boom in the latter ’70s. andy offutt (as he then styled himself) had a contract with Zebra Books to write novels about the Robert E. Howard character Cormac … Continue reading
Rudyard Kipling
Kipling had a major influence on my writing and a lesser one on my life. The photo above is me in the garden of his house in Brattleboro in September, 1996. The one at the bottom of the essay is … Continue reading
Servant of the Dragon
The (common) religion of the Isles is based on Sumerian cult and ritual, but the magic itself comes from the Mediterranean and is mostly Egyptian in its original source. The voces mysticae which I’ve referred to as “words of power” … Continue reading
The Classics
The photograph is a ruined caravansary from southern Turkey, some days’ journey east of Adana. The building was constructed during the Seljuk period–old, probably from the 1st millennium AD, but post-classical. It’s a stopping place for caravans, where merchants could … Continue reading
With the Lightnings
The question I’m most often asked about WITH THE LIGHTNINGS is, ‘Who the hell is Cassian’? Cassian is a mistake; or rather, a series of mistakes. I used ‘Leary Daniels’ as the name of the hero of my untitled novel … Continue reading