Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 13

Talkin’ Atcha

My interview by Steve Bardin is now available on Youtube.

The ostensible topic is my Star Wars tie-in, but the interview ended up quite wide-ranging, so you don’t have to be a Star Wars geek to enjoy it.

From the Time Capsule

I went through an old file cabinet drawer yesterday to see if it was time to send some of the paper to (1) the shredder, or (2) the archives.

The stuff in the cabinet dates from 1975-1982, my earliest years of trying to write professionally. Right up front was a massive research file for the Privateers & Gentlemen series. Nautical charts, articles xeroxed from various dictionaries of national biography, extracts from nautical dictionaries, pages of notes that looked as if they’d been thr...

Toolbox Scores Again

Here I begin a survey of works published by Taos Toolbox veterans in 2023. First up is Refractions by M.V. Melcer, a far-future novel that features intrigue, action, and an all-consuming mystery at its heart.

Nathalie has joined a rescue mission to the once-thriving settlement at Bethesda, which has lost communication with Earth. Her years-long hibernation is interrupted by an on-board fire that kills the mission’s commander and which reeks of murder and sabotage.

Nathalie is now t...

We Have Lost the National Treasure

Here’s Howard Waldrop— that’s MISTER National Treasure to you!— in 2006, reading someone’s submission to the Rio Hondo workshop, then held in Taos Ski Valley.

Howard died yesterday of an apparent stroke. He was 77.

I met him in the early Eighties, when I was writing the first Privateer & Gentlemen books. They hadn’t been published yet, and I was known (if I was known at all) as this guy who wrote books that no one had ever seen, which made me more obscure even than Howard. Pictu...

Crescent

Tonight’s crescent moon at sunset.

Arroz is Arroz is Arroz

Kathy’s away for a yoga weekend, and left me here in the cold. To keep off the chill I wanted a hot mess to eat, so here’s paella! Ham, fresh-caught Gulf shrimp, chorizo, Patagonian scallops, chicken, and bomba rice.

invited Terry and Jim to share it, and they brought a fine Spanish red, so all is warm with the world.

Darn That Spam

Due tp a massive spam attack I have disabled comments for the present. Sorry about that.

Toolbox for 2024

This announcement has been delayed due to my heavy schedule with Mr. Zappy, but I’m pleased to finally be able to announce that Taos Toolbox for 2024 is open for submissions.

Taos Toolbox is a two-week master class in writing science fiction and fantasy, and is helmed by award-winning author Nancy Kress as well as yours truly. Toolbox has been producing great writers since 2007.

This year’s workshop will take place June 2-15, 2024, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Special Guest for ...

Refuge

We spent a pleasant hour this PM at the Bernardo wildlife refuge, and saw thousands of sandhill cranes, snow geese, Canada geese, and other miscellaneous wild fowl. Plus a spectacular sunset.

The night before the night before

The night before the night before Christmas, it snowed on Santa Fe plaza. And here’s the picture to prove it.

As a holiday present to ourselves, we decided on a trip to Santa Fe to catch a baroque concert, dine out with a friend, then spend the night at a classic old hotel. The weather was supposed to be terrible, but in the event this was a bad as it got: a steady light snowfall that went on for hours. It wasn’t a lot of fun to stroll through, but it was far from the worst storm I’...