Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 18

The Best Peste!

Cover by Aurélien Police of the forthcoming French edition of The Green Leopard Plague, translated by Jean-Daniel Brèque.

Pretty cool, no?

Personal Appearance

Here we see Roger II of Sicily being crowned by none other than Jesus Himself. Usually it’s a bishop or pope doing the investing, but in this case Roger outranked both, at least in Sicily, so he went straight to the Savior.

His father Roger I— who wasn’t a king, but gets a number anyway, I guess because he was really cool or something— started life as a Norman knight, Roger de Hauteville. When he offered to lead a crusade to replace the Moorish emir of Sicily, he persuaded the pope t...

Segesta

Temple of Athena

By Sunday everything had improved except the weather. Kathy reported that she was swiftly recovering from the worst effects of COVID, and my knee had improved to the point where I could walk nearly pain-free. (I think what might have happened was that my accident had knocked free a piece of cartilage, which was moving around inside the knee joint and causing pain or not according to where it ended up that day.)

At any rate I felt after a hearty breakfast ready to set for...

Just Don’t Put Peas In It

The Laughter of Carthage

Some weird Roman thing

We return, after I’ve caught up with some of the sleep I lost at Toolbox, to Mediterranean adventures.

Saturday was the worst day. Kathy’s COVID was peaking, and her ribs were aching and she was coughing continually, and I was a long way off and unable to help. I was exhausted and stressed and pretty well needed to spend the day in a cool, dark room listening to soothing music. That wasn’t going to happen.

Le Bougainville crossed from Porto Empedocle to Tunis ...

On Their Way

Taos Toolbox for 2023 ended this morning, with all the participants flying off to their splendid futures. The two weeks were busy and exhausting and most of all rewarding. I’d like to thank Nancy Kress for being a wonderful co-teacher, and Emily Mah and George RR Martin for being inspirational guest speakers.

There was a whole room full of talented writers, and I think you’ll be hearing from them soon.
Here’s our class photo.

Back Row:

Neil Flinchbaugh, Thea Boodhoo, Russ Nickel...

Reunion

Taos Toolbox 2023 started tonight, and Nancy Kress and I met our 18 new colleagues whose work will be our work for the next two weeks.

But that’s not who we see in this photograph. This is the class for 2022, or most of it. Because they’re having a reunion right now, just as the next year’s class starts, and they were kind enough to drive down from their mountain digs in Truchas to invite Nancy and me to lunch.

You gotta say, this group really bonded, and they’re still working to ...

Stream Away

“Everything became big tech — the Amazon model of ‘We don’t actually have to make money; we just have to show shareholder growth.’ Everyone said, ‘Great. That seems like the thing to do.’ Which essentially was like, ‘Let’s all commit ritual suicide. Let’s take one of the truly successful money-printing inventions in the history of the modern world — which was the carriage system with cable television — and let’s just end it and reinvent ourselves as tech companies, where we pour billions down t...

O Splendor!

Tonight’s little piece of heaven: a Chilean sea bass filet baked with a pesto crust, and served up with a beurre blanc sauce.

Kanteles

Five kanteles! Four players! Lots of gorgeous harmony!

Tonight’s diversion was Kardemimmit (“Cardamom,” I think), a four-girl ensemble from Finland. They began playing together around the age of 10, when the head of their music academy suggested they start a band, and now 23 years later they come to New Mexico. (Doubtless the highlight of their career.)

A kantele is a Finnish folk instrument “belonging to the southeast Baltic box zither family,” which I’m sure tells you a lot. T...