Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 21

Freedom . . . from water

I was starting to breathe the air of freedom, for I’ve done all my Taos Toolbox reading and delivered the taxes to the accountant, which between them was taking up about 80% of my energy.

And then the water pressure died, and there was no water in the house.

This necessitated an after-hours visit from our plumber, who fixed the problem in two minutes.

See, when last week’s horrific sludge incident took place, I unscrewed the well’s breaker box to see if there was a problem, and there ...

It’s Never A Good Day When Your Septic Goes Bad

If you’re allergic to discussions involving human waste, read no farther. I forgive you.

We’ve hired some people to renew the trim on our house, and three days ago they discovered that a freshwater spring had opened in the back yard. Which is arid New Mexico sandy desert, so a freshwater spring isn’t exactly what anyone was expecting. Some work with a shovel uncovered a PVC pipe from which water was flowing. This was near our septic tank, but the water seemed clean. The pipe had been sl...

I’m on TV!

I haven’t been posting here because I’m being buried in work. None of this— except writing the novel, I hope— will matter a damn in ten years, but I still have to do it, beginning with my taxes, which for last year is incredibly complex.

But for those of you looking for more of ME, I’m happy to point you at this video on Tubi, in which I am interviewed at length on Zoom. There’s 90 whole minutes of me, responding to questions by author and biographer Jake Brown.

I’ve viewed only a few...

Kicked Into Shape

Edward Willett not only delivers an regular podcast interviewing writers of SF&F, he’s also been editing big doorstopper collections of (mostly) original SF for three volumes now, and he’s opened a Kickstarter for Volume IV.

Give the fella a hand, won’t you?

Speaking Polish

The multitalented Scott Edelman has been conducting interviews with writers at restaurants since before the pandemic. Here he interviews me over a Polish meal at South Boston’s Cafe Polonia.

As well as more recent events, the interview focuses attention on my early career, which may be of interest to some of you.

Again, Episode 193 of Eating the Fantastic.

Success, One Toolbox at a Time

Warlock at Law, by a husband and wife team writing as R.L. Baranowski, has just been released.

The Baranowskis attended Taos Toolbox in 2019, just before the pandemic brought everyone to a screeching halt. Everyone but writers, see, because we work in isolation anyway.

What impressed me about the Baranowskis was that they were dedicated, hardworking, and organized. Writers aren’t usually organized, but these guys were, and they seemed to have a plan.

Looks like the plan worked, a...

Bones

This is a skeleton excavated from an Athenian graveyard under the Acropolis. You’ll notice what looks like a bone plate lying atop the skeleton’s spine.

This is what a fused spine looks like. This gent led a hard working life, either as a slave or manual laborer. He must have spent his last years in a hell of a lot of pain.

Life in classical Athens wasn’t all pretty statues and philosophy.

Sounion/Byron

Here’s the temple to Poseidon at Cape Sounion, perched on a cliff at the very tip of the Attic peninsula, viewed on our trip to Greece last year.

You’re not allowed to walk on the monument nowadays, but it was very different when I first saw the temple forty-odd years ago. I not only walked all over the temple, but I snuck onto the grounds at night along with a sleeping bag and slept there, getting up at first light and capering all over the site, snapping photos of the spectacular Aege...

Double Sale for the Toolbox

M.V. Melcer (Taos Toolbox ’16), has sold a two-book deal to Storm Press. The first volume should appear in October.

I would like to suggest that you don’t want to fall too far behind. If you have ambitions to write and sell science fiction or fantasy, by all means follow Ms. Melcer’s example and apply to Taos Toolbox 2023 without delay!

Go East, Young Man

As I wrote in an earlier post:

Breathes there a man with soul so dead that he doesn’t like cowboy songs?  Even if they’re sung in Mongolian, with indigenous instruments and throat-singing?What you need for a proper cowboy-western song is the following.A sound that somehow invokes the big open spaces.Music that reflects the varieties of natureHeavy-duty nostalgia for days gone byIt also doesn’t hurt if your sound somehow echoes theme music from epic Western films.

Anda Un...