Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 138

Tony and Dr. Sun

So I’ve been making the trek up to Santa Fe to view the offerings at the Santa Fe Opera. Which wasn’t all opera, by any means, thoughDoctor Sun Yat-sen is. This is a new opera, sung in classical Mandarin, modern Mandarin, and Cantonese, by Chinese-born composer Huang Ruo, with libretto byCandace Mui-ngam Chong, co-creator of the Broadway hitChinglish. The Santa Fe production was the American premiere— actually world premiere, since the only performance in China didn’t feature Western instrume...

Bring the Stars

Friend and Taos Toolbox grad Corie Weaver is running a Kickstarterfor a new anthology of science fiction stories for middle-grade readers.
Among the contributors is Toolbox lecturer Nancy Kress, who willchange the name of the protagonist of her story to one of your choosing, assuming of course that you contribute the suggested amount.
Other authors are giving away other goodies.
Check this out!

Prehistoric Selfie

It’s something called Throwback Thursday. So here’s an old photo, from when I was an angel or something. I think I’m about eighteen or nineteen.
I still have the blue velvet shirt, if the moths haven’t got it.

Episode One

SoHardwired, Episode Oneis now available at Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords, and iBooks. There’s been a technical problem with Barnes & Noble, but it should be resolved shortly.
Yes, I’m serializing a novel that’s already complete and available!
Why would I do this, you ask? Before I get into that, let me point out that it’s FREE.
And that it has an EXTRA, which is to say that it includes an essay I wrote about the origin of the novel.
So for FREE, you get that essay and a chunk of the novel. (Which mos...

Number One! Everywhere! All the Time!

Here you see that Kobo has declared that my story “Wall, Stone, Craft” is #1 in Historical Fiction!
You know whatelse is #1? The Macedonian andCat Island, both by me.
As you see,Implied Spaces is #1 in “Sci Fi” & Fantasy!
You know what else is #1 in SF&F? My story “Video Star.” My novella “Solip:System.” My short story collectionThe Green Leopard Plague. And my short novelInvestments.
While I would like to believe that somehowall of these stories are #1, my suspicion is that somebody’s fucking w...

Slinging

Went to see Louisiana guitar-slinger Sonny Landreth the other day. He played at the zoo band shell, and probably kept the lions and zebras up past their bedtime.
One of the annoying things about seeing guitar wizards is that they invariably attract a crowd of guys in front of the stage who just stand there and stare open-mouthed at the guitar player. They get in everyone’s way, and my guess is they don’t learn better guitar, either.
This time the gawkers were foiled, because the band shell is p...

Waterloo It Ain’t

My short novel “Wall, Stone, Craft,” which was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula,and the World Fantasy Award, is now available for your reading pleasure at Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, Barnes & Noble,and soon at various other locations throughout the eReaderSphere.
The story appeared in an Axolotl chapbook back in 1993, and saw magazine publication later that same year.
It was a story that I wrote purely for myself, but like many of the works that I wrote for my own enlightenment (likeHardwired), it...

Eyesight

I’ve been trying to upload an ebook to the iBooks website through Apple’s software iTunes Producer, and it’sjust like jabbing knitting needles in my eyeballs! The interface isterrible, hard to read and confusing, there’s a pop-up that keeps reappearing and you can’t get rid of it, and the results are often something very like gibberish.
Aw, fuck it. I’ll upload through Smashwords, because it’s worth paying them a cut in order not to have to deal with this.
Apple, if you want to compete with Ama...

And Then I Said No

So . . . the other day I said no to a contract from a major New York publisher.
Not that it was a terrific offer or anything. There didn’t seem to be a lot of enthusiasm, the money wasn’t great, and the contract was non-negotiable.
(Non-negotiable contracts are a thing now. Because publishers are so threatened by Amazon and other signs of change that they say to themselves: “Instead of expanding our business, let’s just squeeze the artists!”)
But I declined to be squeezed. Instead I looked at th...

Stripping the DRM

I need to bust me some DRM.
It’s the DRM on my own work, I hasten to add. My publishers have ebook rights for North America on some titles, but I control the rights elsewhere. Easiest way for me to exploit these rights is to strip the DRM from the North American ebooks, then put new covers on them and market them to the rest of the world.
Anybody got a good way to do this?