David Drake's Blog, page 2

Newsletter #128

DrakeNews #128: October 14, 2022

Dear people,

I am now 77. I had a modest dinner party in a restaurant for family and a few old friends. Jonathan and his wife were present, also grandson Tristan, now a sophomore at ECU, and his girl friend. I now have a tee-shirt reading ECU grandad.

Tristan’s an athlete like Jonathan, only built for quickness rather than power. I’d say I was proud of both of them, only I didn’t have much to do with it. Click here for photo.

I got to thinking about success. I always figured that a writer could expect three material things from his work: money, readership and awards, I wanted enough money for a comfortable life and enough readers to sustain that income. I never cared about awards.

My friend Eric Flint wanted a fourth thing: fame. How different that is from the other three was driven home when his widow had to declare bankruptcy. Eric was a good writer and apparently (to me) successful. It turns out that it’s expensive to keep up the appearance of being successful–being famous, in other words. Eric spent more money on this than he earned, so he died famous but owing a lot of money.

I’d seen this before with Karl Wagner. In that case I’d been close enough to have seen Karl pissing away money–travelling frequently to the UK and buying Jack Daniels for his friends. As an imported liquor, Jack Daniels was extremely pricey in the UK while even in the US Karl had briefly switched to lower-priced George Dickel to save money. He decided he preferred Jack Daniels. He never made a serious attempt that I saw to stop drinking before it killed him because his image as a hard-drinking writer was more important to him than his life.

I didn’t see what Eric overspent his income on. But he also died broke, with a major reputation in the field which he sustained with loans.

There are other writers that do the same. They may be good writers and nice people, but their image is more important than their writing.

My writing was always been the main thing to me. That’s why I’ve retired from writing. I can no longer keep a whole work my  head, so I can no longer write to my satisfaction. I don’t want to turn out inferior stuff, and I’m not financially required to do so.

For now I’m signing off. Be well, people, and be as nice as you can to other folks.

—Dave Drake
Chatham County, NC 27312

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Newsletter #127

DrakeNews 127: August 2, 2022

Dear People,

A problem with getting old is that you’re increasingly likely to die. If you don’t die, you’re likely to lose old friends.

I’ve just lost two, most recently Eric Flint, whom I met in 1999. I had plotted a series for Jim Baen. The first one, the Raj Whitehall series, had been successful. Jim wanted a second one based directly on Count Belisarius (the model for Raj Whitehall). I plotted one.

Steve Stirling, the writer who’d developed the plots for Jim, had gotten crossways with him before starting Belisarius. Jim told me he’d found a guy to write the Belisarius books but he was a commie–a Trotskyite. I didn’t care about his politics–would he follow an outline? We talked on the phone and I learned the term was Trotskyist [not Trotskyite].

I was impressed and he started work. He sent me the first chunk. It was good but I told him to stop using passive voice. I forget his reason for thinking it was a good technique, but he didn’t argue–and he stopped doing it. In one of the later books, he started with a new scene which threw the pacing off and demanded a major change later on. I told him there wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t added the opening scene.

Damned if he didn’t go back and delete about 20,000 words back to where he’d added the scene figuring that was the easiest way to solve the problem. Thais was remarkable self-abnegation.

At a later point I had the Indian villains of the series worshipping the demigod of the planet Mars. Eric called me and said he couldn’t find anything about the worship of that deity. I laughed and said I’d made it up because of my bad experience with a previous writer of Jim’s. Eric could and did do research.

We got along very well and I regret his death.

***

Another old friend died a couple weeks ago–Bobette Eckland–a woman whom I met shortly after I started working for the town of Chapel Hill. She’d just been hired by the new finance director who filled the slot with non-traditional hires. The previous agent–also non-traditional–had resigned because the setting drove her nuts.

Bobette could certainly do the work, but her personality struck some sparks from existing department heads. She was an educated Midwesterner (her previous husband had been a sociology professor). The heads were generally local men from rural background who were not pleased to be told by a small woman that she couldn’t do something because it wasn’t legal. In fairness to them, Bobette had a tongue.

One tried to get Bobette fired. The finance director enlisted my help in saving her job. We succeeded and things more or less settled down, but Bobette’s relationship with senior staff was never an easy one.

She was very proud of her fitness. At age 85 she could still hold a plank pose for five minutes. She was coming back after working out when she fainted walking to her front door. Her husband took her to the hospital where an MRI found a mass in a lung which turned out to be cancer. It had metastasized. They sent her home where in two days she died in her sleep.

She was a good lady and I’m sorry she’s gone

Hoping your lives are going well. It’s never a bad time to be nice to other people.

 –Dave Drake

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Newsletter #126

Dear people

I’ve got mildly good news! I was looking up a book on amazon and ran into mention of a book in the Winston sf series from the ’50s: Danger: Dinosaurs. I had read and liked a number of books on the Winston list but not that one.

They were all YAs, mostly by new writers in the field. Sometimes by old pros who for one reason or another couldn’t turn in an adult work. Danger: Dinosaurs was by Sal Lombino who was at the time writing as Hunt Collins. He later changed his name to one of his mystery pen names, Ed McBain. He was very good.

Thinking about Danger: Dinosaurs, I remembered writing a YA after  I got back to the world in 1971. I had graduated from Duke law school. I took the bar view course but didn’t have a job, so I had a lot of time. I had written short stories and even sold two of them, but I wanted to write a novel–a YA because it was shorter than an adult novel and I thought the literary standards might be lower. I had brought a portable typewriter back from Nam. I got to work with it, typing on whatever scrap paper I could find.

I finished it but I had no idea of what to do with it then. There were two professional writers living nearby: Karl Wagner and Manly Wade Wellman. Karl was my age and had recently started writing himself whereas Manly had been selling fiction since the Twenties. I didn’t think I should bother Manly with something as trivial as my first novel, so I didn’t even bother to ask him to read it. (This was my assessment. In fact, Manly was a teacher and loved teaching.)

Anyway, I asked Karl to read it. He was extremely negative. Utterly dismissive. A bad idea, worse handled. I didn’t even bother typing up a clean copy to submit. I didn’t doubt that the book was bad or that Karl had given me an honest appraisal because I would have done that for somebody else.

I came to appreciate that Karl was very envious of me. In later years, there was something to envy, but not in 1972.

I decided to take another look at my novel draft if I could find it. At first I couldn’t, but my wife Jo dug through a file drawer and found the novel.

I’ve read it now. It has real problems but I had succeeded in my intention: to write a book which could fit in 1950’s juvenile SF line. Could it be rewritten for modern audiences? I’ll have to think.

We know a great deal more about dinosaurs now than we did in 1972 when I wrote the draft. Knowledge about dinosaurs has changed fast but society has changed even faster. The book was written with no reference to sex or drugs. That was believable with 17-year olds in the ’50s, at least with dorks like me, but it isn’t now.

Finding the draft made me feel positive for the first time in a long while. Even if I decide there’s nothing useful to be done with it. There’s a project I think I should be able to handle and I plan to try.

***

Still on the subject of life for an SF fan in the 50s:

My dad usually took his two-week annual vacation at the end of the year, pairing it with next year’s vacation into four weeks by car, generally into the west. In 1958/9 we did that.

On the way out we passed south of Wichita which was a major SAC base. We passed close enough to the base to see the parked B-47 jets. There was one B-52–the tail was too tall to fit into the hangars.

On the way home to Clinton, Iowa, we followed the same route through northern Missouri. Two lane roads through narrow valleys. Reception on the car radio was very bad, and finally dad shut off the radio entirely.

The sky overhead was crossed with very many contrails. This was before commercial jets became common, so we were seeing jet bombers.

I was an SF reader and had recently read Alas, Babylon about the long-feared nuclear war devastating the US. I realized as we drove though Missouri that the war had broken out. That explained the lack of radio reception and the sky full of bombers. I was terrified but said nothing to my parents or sister. There was nothing to talk about that would do any good. Within ten minutes dad found a radio station and there was nothing unusual about the news. I guess there had just been a SAC drill.

Boy, people generally, not just me, were sure worried about nuclear war back then. I don’t think Joe Biden is a great president, but in all the Ukraine crisis I’ve never feared we were as close to nuclear war as I did then–and as I would have been if Hilary Clinton were president. I was sure that the woman who got us into a war with Libya while she was Secretary of State would have responded forcibly to Putin.

One crazy macho world leader is more than enough.

***

Be peaceful to other folks, people. The Fifties weren’t a good time to live.

 –Dave Drake

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Newsletter #125

DrakeNews #125 for March 11, 2022

Dear people,

I’ve been taking Genaire ReBuilder for some while now. At this point I can endorse it.  In combination with working out on machines with my son Jonathan, I am in better shape than I was a year ago.

My balance is off and I’m being driven places rather than riding motorcycle. This disturbs me but it’s livable.

My brain is still shrunken though. I’m not writing. I don’t know how much is the condition and how much is me being a lot less smart than I was and 76 years old.

I’ve got some stories out though which makes me feel good. The odd one for ROBOSOLDIERS, odd because the editor wanted a story set in my own military occupational specialty (MOS). I was an interrogator. I couldn’t think of a believable way I could postulate a robot human enough to achieve empathy with a subject

I then decided to have robots do the necessary support work for the interrogation–the grunt work so to speak. This made both interrogator and subject completely human.

The story supposes that Mr. Trump won the 2016 election. I was glad he didn’t though my wife said “Trump’s a liar and you’re a liar, so I don’t see why you don’t support him?” I didn’t, however.

The story is a story not a political tract. If I had set it in first century AD Rome, a

reader would not assume I was making a reasoned judgment about the merits of Tiberius as emperor, nor should anyone assume my use of a more modern setting means I’m delivering my judgment on today’s politics.

A few years ago a stranger wanting me to collaborate on an alternate history novel sent an outline to my son’s address in Guilford county thirty miles away. The proposal postulated that the US in a crisis turns to the greatest leader available (Douglas Macarthur) who saves the day. I have a very low opinion of Macarthur as a strategist, so the wannabe’s attempt to find my home address through the tax rolls didn’t harm his chances of getting me to help him.

In the course of reading Astronomy magazine I saw mention of an 1888 book of popular astronomy by Garrett P Serviss. Serviss wrote other popular science works and some science fiction, including Edison’s Conquest of Mars. This was reprinted in 1947 by Carcosa House, put together by four fans. Karl really wanted to use Carcosa (not house) for our publishing venture so he contacted them (including Ted Dikty). They were all fine with our using the name.

That was my experience of being a publisher. The honor and status were important to Karl. Jim Groce (the third partner) and I didn’t lose more than we could afford. In all, I guess, a good thing to have done.

Go put a positive spin on whatever you’re doing.

–Dave Drake

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Newsletter #124

Dear People,

I’m not back to writing, but I thought I’d do another newsletter. Karen tells me she just meant for me to pause in the regularly scheduled newsletters, and Christmas seems a good time for an update specially since I was very slow getting a card image and then the finished cards didn’t arrive.

I still can’t concentrate and my typing is terrible. I’ve thought of using voice commands or dictating to a typist. (my wife was the first to volunteer). I didn’t go that way because the real problem is that I can’t think.

All my life I’ve been smart, but that’s no longer true to the same standards. I continue to take the Geneaire supplement and work out with my son, and the combination has physical deterioration on hold. I can’t tell you how much I regret being dull and unable to write; but I’ve got comfortable savings and no debts.

Also I’ve got great fans, some of whom have become friends. I’ve visited a swathe of the world with them. Some of the regular tourist sites like the Parthenon but others off trail like the Bovington tank museum. With the Knights I saw also the Kasbah in Algiers, and more recently traveled to Rome and Mycene. (They’ll come to the beach with us this year also. Good friends for a long time.)

Folks have really rallied round with my health problems There’s not a darned thing they can do, but I appreciate it.

Things seem to be settling down in this country after a rough year in a lot of fashions. I hope you and yours individually are doing well.

And go out and be nice to other people–even if you don’t agree with them. Maybe especially then.

All best
Dave Drake

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Newsletter #123 – the last one

DrakeNews #123, the last newsletter, November 17, 2021

Dear People,

Karen suggested I title this newsletter last, so I’m doing that. My health problems continue, whatever they are. I can’t concentrate enough to write a novel and I even had to give up my project with Ryan Asleben, (who couldn’t have been nicer).

I just couldn’t keep my texts straight. I’m still able to write stories and I think they’re pretty good. One on military robots is coming out in what’s now called Robosoldiers: Thank you for your Servos, edited by Stephen Lawson (Baen June 2022). The later story I did as a whim has been accepted for Weird world War III: China, edited by Sean Patrick Hazlett.

I can’t tell you how much I regret retiring. I’m okay for money and the anger I came back from Nam with has settled down to the point I’m no longer dangerous to other people, but I would certainly be happier if I were able to write.

Physically I’m doing all right, I continue to take Geneaire rebuilder pills. I don’t guarantee it helps, but I seem to be less unhappy. I continue to train at the gym with my son Jonathan. It’s a major positive for me to learn that Jonathan is a very good trainer. I never doubted that he was physically able to handle the job, but training requires people skills also. He taught himself those skills.

I am ticking along as best I can but without being able to write I don’t think there’s much to be said for me. I’m going to continue to try. I hope that most of you are doing better than I am. And regardless, go out and be nice to other people. That’s always good advice.

–Dave Drake

Note from Karen: There is a private Facebook page for Dave’s fans at https://www.facebook.com/groups/34097636315. Follow the instructions and the admins will let you in. Dave is not on Facebook, but sometimes we post comments from him. The contact form on the website still works also.

Please use the contact form to send email to Dave.

Newsletter #122

DrakeNews #122 for September 2021

Dear People,

I had an MRI which seems to say I don’t have Parkinson’s. My brain however has shrunk, and there’s evidence of ministrokes of which I knew nothing. My sister tells me that our mom had TIAs in later life. These are often a warning of future massive strokes,  but in fact mom died of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. I will be careful of tick bites.

The situation disturbs me, but what it boils down to is that I’m mortal and 75.

At present I’m off the levadopa and taking a diet supplement that Greg Benford touts: Geneaire Rebuilder. I don’t know what or how it does, but I think I’m less scattered in the time I’ve been taking it.

I am also training with my son at the gym. I’m sure it’s good for my health but I’m not certain about specific benefits. I’m genuinely trying to keep my mind working. But I’m not getting any work done. I can’t find enthusiasm for getting down to work.

Part of the problem is that I never have privacy. I don’t mean that I’m frequently disturbed: I rarely am. But I always may be and can’t relax.

Will I be able to do more in the future? I hope so. I can’t expect my brain to regrow any time soon but Geneaire may be the magic pill I called it when I first heard about it.

There’s quite a lot of fuss about the  number of afghans who will be harmed by the US leaving the country. Women are the most obvious losers. They will be treated as afghan women have historically been treated by Afghan men. This does not meet western standards of proper behavior.

What should we (western countries) do about this? Invading and replacing officials with Afghan cultural values with those imbued with western values? That hasn’t worked out very well in the long run, has it? Twenty years wasn’t enough time to replace a culture developed over millennia.

Personally, I find abhorrent the practice of burning a widow alive on her husband’s funeral pyre. If a western country invades and stamps out the practice of suttee, however, this paternalism can only be justified by the belief that we know better than the locals do about how men should behave toward women and after all, to quote Hilaire Belloc ‘we the Maxim gun have got–and they have not.’

I was a lot more willing to accept changing other people’s culture by force before I went to Nam than since I’ve come back. Because it does require force and even if I personally think the result is good the means are likely to be pretty unpleasant.

British suppresssion of suttee saved the lives of a lot of Indian women–far more than were killed during the Amritsar massacre by Nepalese troops under British command because an Indian man had insulted a white woman. On the other hand, the suppression of suttee and other Indian customs for good western reasons leads to a culture in which it’s considered reasonable to issue untrained mercenaries from the hills with ammunition and and tell them to fire on a peaceful gathering of lowlanders. Even the British government later decided that wasn’t all right. But if you’re going to ignore local cultural norms which differ from western norms it’s hard to where to draw the line.  I heard Katherine Cramer say seriously that the US should object to the chinese government banning pro-democracy protests in china.

Dunno. I don’t want the Chinese government deciding what I should be allowed to think or say, and I don’t think we should decide what’s right for the Chinese to do either Mabe I’m not liberal enough.

Best wishes, people, remember that everybody else is having a tough time too.

–Dave Drake

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Newsletter #121

Drake News #121: July 6, 2021

Dear people,

Things have been rough for me for a while now and I’ve decided that the Parkinson’s has won. I’m unable to concentrate mentally and my typing has gone completely to hell. I continue to work on Ryan Alesen’s plot, and I did a little short story which the  editor of Weird World War 3, Sean Hazlett, says he loves but he didn’t have a commitment on this volume yet. I had a lot of fun researching it, but I’m not telling you  that I love it.

The Serpent, a novel in series with The Spark and The Storm, is due out today from Baen. The series, Time of Heroes, is my attempt to tell Arthurian romances in the form of far-future SF. The books are SF with a very fantasy feel.

I’ve decided I need to stop riding a motorcycle because of this Parkinson’s. I’m not concerned about having an accident. That could happen, but I don’t think I’m likely to hurt somebody else on a bike which was always my concern with driving.

I took a course on the Can-Am three wheeler. The instructors were quite nice about it, but they really didn’t think I should be riding a bike. This was a kick in the balls but they were being nice about it rather than shouting at me about what I needed to do for my own good. I do not want to start driving a car after not having driven since 1987. I’ve seen a lot of people who drove after they were no longer safe to do so. I don’t want to be one of them myself. I thought of getting a trike regardless of instructors’ opinion. A trike wouldn’t fall over (my concern) and wouldn’t hit most things hard enough to do real damage to them. I’m not strong enough to pick up even a small bike if it goes over.

I’d been considering suicide since the Parkinson’s became clear. I got far enough down that road that I seriously decided I didn’t want to do it. Helplessness was an unpleasant thought though.

In town there’d be public transit, but we’re way out in the country which I like. I made a deal with a local-ish friend to take me places a couple days a week (sort of like Uber). My wife will also take me around.

Things are okay and I’m trying to make the best of them. So far so good.

We’ve had another July4. When I was faced with that choice back in 1970, I wasn’t a bit happy about it, but I made the right decision anyway. The nation’s leaders blew it, but I didn’t.

There were a lot of things wrong in 1970 that were obvious even to a

WASP male like me, but it’s still right for a citizen to stand up for his country.

With that patriotic note, I hope all of you have a good life.

All best,
Dave Drake

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Newsletter #120

DrakeNews #120: May 11, 2021

Dear People,

Things are getting better! The catheter is out and I can pee normally. It took a while and I was doubtful to the end that shrinking my large prostate by embolization was going to work but it did at last. The whole business was beyond depressing and combined with everything else I really didn’t feel much hope.

We both have our vaccine shots with no side effects and can live normal lives. My wife continues to be home at most times. I had a plan to work anyway, but I wound up having a burst of medical appointments and didn’t really try it out. Since then I tried another experiment. I regularly get requests to collaborate with strangers. I regularly blow them off.

Recently however, I decided that because I wasn’t able to get anywhere with my own work I’d take a look at a plot by Ryan Asleben. It was a good job. I have been at work modifying and expanding it. I’m feeling pleasure at working usefully again and a great deal of thanks to Mr Asleben. I don’t know where this is going to go but I think we’ll actually have a book. (I told him I’d see what happened because I was by no means sure that I’d be able to work. If I could, he would pay me whatever  my work had been worth to him.) I’m happy with what I’m getting so far.

Sean Hazlett edited Weird World War III for Baen. I did a story that turned out to be way better than I’d expected. He’s pitching another series to Baen, and I would very much like to do another story for him but I need a story I want to write. When I did the first time I was really happy with the result.

The Serpent, the third book in my Time of Heroes, series is out as an e-arc from Baen. These novels have the feel of fantasies though I suppose they’re technically SF. Basically I’m using the Arthurian Cycle (the Matter of Britain) as an armature for the story. In this particular case the climax is closely similar to the romance of Yvain by Chretian of Tours.

I was interviewed recently on Writers Drinking Coffee. (I was actually drinking tea, but they only recorded audio anyway.) There was nothing earth shattering, but especially recently I really like matters being quiet.

I think I do want to say something about the recent spate of attacks on Asians. This is remarkably stupid. It seems to have gotten started with a fellow shooting a bunch of (mainly) women in the Atlanta area. They were Korean and the media clanged on that fact without  noticing the businesses targeted were massage parlors which happened to have Asian staffs. The shooter pretty quickly announced that he was a sex addict and the women he’d been hiring had been leading him into sin.

I said the business was remarkably stupid, even if you believe in sex addiction as a condition. I’ve known alcoholics, but none who thought they were justified in shooting up bars. The attacks on Asians have continued. Apparently Mr Trump made a point of referring to Covid-19 as the Chinese virus. That’s probably true; which makes it unusual for Mr Trump’s statements on the subject. It doesn’t make the attacks less stupid.

Don’t be stupid (or hostile) people. Work at making the world a better place

–Dave Drake

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Newsletter #119

DrakeNews 119: March 4, 2021

Dear People,

This will be different (and maybe more data than you want). It was certainly more than I wanted.

This has been  a very rough two months. I had my eyes tested for glasses. In the course of this I got eye drops, Apparently as a reaction to the eye drops, my urethra locked up.  After a bad night, my wife ran me over to the ER where I was catheterized and drained of something over a liter of urine, which is a lot on my build. I went to urology a week later to remove the catheter. I still couldn’t pee on my own, though, so I still have tubes in me till see the urologist proper later this week (the earliest option). Dunno exactly what that will mean, but the current situation is only borderline livable. The tubing frequently separates at one joint or another.

Apart from that we got a vaccine shot (and perhaps by the time you read this ) the second.

I haven’t gotten any work done. There hasn’t been any time I could be sure of privacy since lockdown occurred. I used to be able to plot in confused situations. I no longer can. The crunch with which I wrote To Clear Away the Shadows while I was still recovering from being hit by a car, plus the Parkinson’s diagnosis and now this catheter, have combined to rob me of flexibility.

Several times  (usually at 3 in the morning) I have decided that I will no longer try to write novels. I hope either the world or my mind changes for the better in the near future.

In 1977 we visited writer Ramsey Campbell and his wife Jennie in Liverpool. Every morning Ramsey went to an upper floor and sequestered himself from phone and Jennie to work for a fixed number of hours. He came down and lived normally at the end of the period.

A friend of ours spent a lot of time on Martha’s Vineyard and suggested a writing shed like that of historian David McCullough there. While McCullough is in the shed at the bottom of the garden he is at work. When he comes back to the main house he interacts with other people.

I rented an apartment for writing in my way into town back in 2001. Jo began caring for our grandson out of town and I didn’t renew the lease.

All of these are reasonable choices if rigidly adhered to by all parties in the house. At the moment we’re trying a rigid separation within the existing house. We’ll see how it works if we apply the course seriously.

Our cat died of old age and Jo didn’t want a replacement. Last week we were watching TV in the evening and a mouse nosed into the TV room and Jo decided we needed a cat. A friend who does rescues happened to come over in the morning, and we now have Kudzu, an active young cat, named for the weed patch where he’d been tossed in infancy. He’s settling in.

So, a lot of the recent past has seemed bleak but there’s hope. I hope there’s hope for all of you.

I haven’t commented on the capital riot. I don’t talk much about patriotism and don’t think of myself as a patriot. I am very much a citizen though.  What happened in DC was really wrong, whatever your politics are. It wasn’t the work of Americans acting as citizens and I am really sorry it happened.

I have said I was very sorry to vote for Hillary in 2016. I now feel that even if she’d been as bad a president as I feared she would have done less harm to the country than Mr Trump did by egging on the rioters.

As I said. I don’t think of myself as a patriot; but I went to Nam instead of staying home with bone spurs.

–Dave Drake

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