Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 157

Angel Sale!

I’m pleased to announce that for the next week or so, the ebook of my novel Angel Stationis on sale for a mere $0.99. (Or, if you live outside North America, for whatever $0.99 is worth in your currency, probably 00,99.)
You may find Angel Station atAmazon,Barnes & Noble,Kobo,Smashwords, and other places like Baker & Taylor, Diesel, and iBooks. (I’d love to provide a link for iBooks, but Apple seems immune to my attempts to search it.)
(If you want to find out a little bit more about the book,...

Field Exercises

Let it not be said that we at Taos Toolboxleave any educational stone unturned! Today’s literary exercise took us into the field, to green, fragrant Yerba Canyon, in order tovisit theTaos Toolbox Sacrifice Stoneand re-enact The Hunger Games.
Here’s Toolbox student Jessica May Lin‘s take on the exercise, featuring fellow student Kenneth Kao.

Crossing the Threshold

Today was the first day of Taos Toolbox, the master class for science fiction run by Nancy Kress and my ownself. We’re up the Ski Valley with fourteen talented, hard-working students, and we spend a lot of time talking about writing.
To get an idea of what we talk about, check out this masterful exposition of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey.”

(thanks to Effie)

Rejoicing Over the Water

Awright, my friends, Implied Spaces is finally available in electronic form outside North America!
Because Nook and Smashwords aren’t very good about separating North American rights from others, the book is available only on Kobo and Amazon. (Here’s Amazon.co.uk. It’s also available on all the other Amazons outside North America.)
I can’t provide you a link for Kobo, because I happen to be in North America,and Kobo will only show me books I can legally buy. (Which is lucky for me on other coun...

Minutes I’ll Never See Again

I finally went to see one of the summer blockbusters (World War Z), only to find that it was proceeded by forty minutes of previews and ads. Forty minutes from the time when the movie was supposed to start.
Forty minutes I’ll never see again. Some of the ads were shown more than once!
What the hell did I spend my twelve bucks for? So that I can be pummeled by ads for products I’ll never buy and movies I’ll never see? If I’d watched two hours of commercial TV, I wouldn’t have seen that many ads,...

Pretend Reading

Bookriot has published a list, complete with a handy Venn diagram, of books people lie about having read, along with books they wishthey’ve read.
(Both they, and I, were a little surprised that Pride & Prejudicetopped both lists. It’s not as if comprehending the adventures of Miss Elizabeth Bennett require knowledge of post-structuralist theory, now does it? I mean, you want to read it, just read it,it’s not that hard, honestly.)
And people pretend to read 50 Shades of Grey. If I’d read it, I’d...

Tea Time

British author Guy Walters recently had what (for me) would be an incredibly successful signing, in which he spoke to 800 people and sold no less than sixty hardback books! And then he added up his expenses (driving 250 miles and spending two nights away from home), considered his compensation (a few gift bottles of wine, some royalties which, if paid at all, would be delayed for years) and realized the whole business had cost him money.
Over the past five years, every writer I know has been t...

Commodities

So Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s House of All That’s Evil, has figured out a way to magically lift money from all our pockets.
It turns out that while Congress was busy passing all 875 bewildering pages of the Dodd-Frank Act to better regulate our financial titans, they also loosened some regulations, and big banks are now allowed to trade in commodities.
So what did Goldman do? Corner the market in aluminum, that’s what.
Before Goldman bought Metro International three years ago, warehouse custom...

Rejoice If You Live Across the Water!

Right now, my novel Implied Spaceshasn’t been available, in English, in most English-speaking countries. That’s because Night Shade bought the rights only for North America, and the rest of you were left out in the cold.
Until . . . realsoon now.
Very shortly, I will be making an Implied Spacesebook available outside North America. Rejoice, O Brits! Halloo, O Kiwis! Let the wild rumpus begin, O Australia!
Here’s Version 1 of the cover.

Ado

All these big summer blockbusters on offer, and the only pictures I’ve seen in the last few months were small-to-middlin’.
Last year I wondered what Joss Whedon’s post-Avengersproject would be, now that he’s the most important man in Tinseltown. Little did I know that he’d already shot the movie while he was doing post-production on The Avengers, and that it would be a small black-and-white adaptation ofMuch Ado About Nothing, starring mostly veterans of Mr. Whedon’s past projects.
It’s a delib...