Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 2

Momentum

I’ll be heading to Worldcon tomorrow, and afterwards enjoy a couple weeks’ vacation. This was all planned months ago, without knowing I was going to be trying to finish Heaven in Flames around this time.

I finished the penultimate chapter last week, and then decided not to write the finale right away, but go back to the beginning and do a final polish first, hoping to get some momentum before jumping into the last chapter. Now I’ll be away from the novel for over three weeks, and I’ll lose a...

I Invent the Influencer

Every so often I realize that I’ve predicted the future in one of my stories, which is what SF writers are ideally supposed to do, for all that we do it accidentally. (If we actually try to predict the future, we end up looking stupid when we fail.)

I was signing The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories for a friend, and found myself idly turning pages to remind myself what stories were in it. I lit upon a story called “Pinocchio,” originally published in Jonathan Strahan’s The Starry R...

Skulls, Flags, Space

A couple weeks ago I was on a Zoom panel with several colleagues. It seems the Center for Space Crime, Piracy, and Governance thought that science fiction writers might be useful in contributing to their ongoing discussions. James Cambias was enlisted to wrangle Allen Steele, Geoff Landis, Laura Montgomery, and My Ownself onto the panel, and on we went.

Each of the panelists was very well-informed in regard to their specialties, and I enjoyed the hell out of the event.

Here’s the link!

Heaven in Flames Watch

July 24, 2025

I was rolling along on a new scene when I remembered I was making a Zoom presentation in the morning, and I needed to get my notes in order.

So I put my notes in order. Made the presentation. Had a good time.

And now it’s back to the novel.

July 25

I had a hard time building a rhythm last night.

Lots of false starts, lots of second-guessing.

But once my protagonist started talking the whole scene took off. So maybe I don’t need so much description of the act...

Day by Day, Play by Play

[July 19]

I’m pleased to report that I I have only a few scenes to write in my long-delayed project, “Heaven in Flames,” the third book in my Metropolitan sequence.

It’s taken me three and a half years to get this far. This is by far the longest amount of time I’ve ever taken to write a single work. That’s crazy.

Though the last years have been full of distractions, I’ve written practically every day, slogging through the subplots I left unresolved in “City on Fire.” Much of what I wro...

In the Coolth

I decided I was out of patience with the summer heat and the frantic pace of my days, and so I proposed an extended holiday weekend in Cloudcroft, a little resort town nestled in New Mexico’s Sacramento Mountains at 8500 feet. We rented a large house overlooking a beautiful mountain valley and settled in for four nights.

We were joined by our friend Louy. Louy has invited us on many occasions to spend time at her family’s cabin in Ruidoso, but the cabin burned down in the catas...

Sunset

A view from our balcony. Wherever you are in New Mexico, the sunsets are awesome.

Brekki

A near-perfect breakfast. Leftover paella with a runny fried egg on top.

Praxis For The Masses

Amazon is selling The Praxis, Impersonations, The Accidental War, Fleet Elements, and Imperium Restored at the sale price of $1.99.

They’ve left The Sundering and Conventions of War out of the sale, I assume for reasons so recondite that a mere author would not understand them.

I don’t know how long the sale will last— again, I’m just the author— so you should probably glom the books while the glomming is good.

Other online markets will probably match the price, but I haven’t che...

Whereat I Have Been

So for the last week I’ve been in the remote mountain hamlet of Truchas, NM, for this year’s Rio Hondo Workshop. Attending were Oz Drummond, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Walter Jon Williams, Alex Jablokow, Michaela Roessner, Tara King, David D. Levine, Susan Forest, Rosemary Claire Smith, Alan Smale, Jen Volant, and Kim Zimring.

We read each other’s work, ate each other’s food, drank each other’s booze, and generally had a fine time. My favorite kind of vacation is the one where I come back mo...