Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 113

Boskone 53

I’ll be spending the weekend at Boskkone 53, Boston’s stellar science fiction convention. (Our motto: “It’s still about the books! Except when it’s about the whiskey! But it’s mostly about the books!”) But beforehand I’ll be in Cambridge, MA, for a signing and chat at the Pandemonium bookstore, Thursday at 7pm. The signing will include Charles Stross and Max Gladstone, so even if you’re bored with me— which is hard to picture, frankly— you’ll have some great writers to listen to. The conventi...

The iBooks Store: Stairway to Oblivion

So let’s all do this exercise together, shall we? Let’s say that you want to find one of my books on iBooks, but you’ve never been on iBooks and don’t have an account there. So the first thing you do is Google iBooks, which gives you this: So let’s say you click the link to “iBooks Store,” which is the one right at the top of the page, and the one that Apple is paying Google to display. Now if you’ve already downloaded the iBooks application, you’ll get a page of the Amazon top sellers. B...

Public Service Announcement

I saw last night’s episode ofCastle, in which Richard Castle read from one of his books at a party for $15,000. I would like you all to know that I, too, will read at your party for $15,000, and that you’re more likely to get me than to get Richard Castle. Thank you. Operators are standing by.

Reliable

Unreliable Narrators has posted a podcast interview with me, in which we discussTaos Toolbox and then go on to other subjects. Three of the four interviewers are Toolbox graduates, and their enthusiasm for the workshop is evident. (Which means, folks, that they like the workshop evenafter I’ve critiqued their work and run them up and down mountains. Which means the odds are good that, if you come,you’ll be enthusiastic, too.) Give it a listen!

Reviews in the Nick of Time: Hail, Caesar!

Hail, Caesar is a love letter from the Coen Brothers to Old Hollywood, and if you’re a fan of old movies, this is the movie they made just for you. The film is even better if you have any memories of Esther Williams flicks, hokey Victor Mature historical epics, and anything with singing cowboys and/or Carmen Miranda. And hey, the star power! George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Jonah Hill, Francis McDormand, Channing Tatum, and Alden Eh...

Toolbox: the Video

A friend of the workshop, indiepub guru E.M. Tippetts, has created this awesome promotional video for Taos Toolbox. Because a picture is worth 1000 words. And she did this totally on her own, without my asking even. Now how cool is that?

Newer. Prettier. But the Same.

I’ve been engaged in the detail work of bringing my ebooks up to the modern standard, modern being “2016” as opposed to “2012.” Which is to say they look prettier, are better organized, have functioning tables of contents, and almost entirely up-to-date clickable lists of my other works, so that you can find them and buy them very easily, nearly without having to think, which is sort of the point. Don’t think, just buy! (Clickable links not available at Smashwords or Google, for technical rea...

Touching on the Toolbox

There are still some places left at Taos Toolbox, the master class for writers of science fiction and fantasy. If you’re a workshop veteran and missing the workshop community, or someone who’s sold some work and stalled, or someone who hasn’t sold anything at all but is serious about your career, you owe it to yourself to apply. This year is offering the collective publishing wisdom of instructors Nancy Kress and Walter Jon Williams, indiepub guru E.M. Tippetts, and James S.A. Corey, author o...

Turtle Tag

Turtles. Because they’re awesome. Last year on Maui, we were diving Lahaina Pier, and there was this little turtle, maybe a foot across, that was kind of swooping in and around and playing tag with us. And then the guide pointed out something, and we got interested in that, and the turtle got more and more frantic as it circled around, because we’d stopped paying attention to it. Just like a little kid. Older turtles are more sedate, but I always get the impression that we bore them a lot fas...

Genres Extinct

My recent post about Nevil Shute set me thinking about literary genres, and their rise and fall. Shute’s own particular niche is pretty well dead— not a lot of stories about zeppelins or epic aircraft flights being written these days. But Shute’s in good company. For example, I think we can safely say that the Homeric epic is dead. At one point producing a long narrative poem was a writer’s best chance of getting a Nobel Prize, particularly if it could be considered anational epic, a poem def...