Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 27

Ciao!

Mondadori has brought out an Italian translation of my novel Aristoi.

Aristoi is challenging for any translator/editor/publisher, because of my unconventional formatting of the text. I applaud Mondadori for making the effort.

What’s On the Slab

It’s getting cold at night, so Kathy decided it was time to have a roast beast. Behold a boneless leg of lamb, slathered in olive oil, rosemary, and garlic, and cooked sous vide for eight hours, after which it was flung on the grill to catch fire. (It did catch fire too, with all that olive oil. The fire only improved it.)

Kathy served up the broccoli in ginger-garlic-soy sauce, and I added smashed potatoes with onions, pepper flakes, and lime zest. The potatoes were left over from R...

Adventurous

A few days ago Imperium Restored achieved a #1 on Amazon in the category of Women’s Adventure Fiction. I’m not sure what that category actually means— I’m reasonably certain that Men’s Adventure features firearms being discharged in all odd-numbered chapters, but Women’s Adventure as a category seems far more slippery.

So I checked it out.

As of today, the #1 book in Women’s Adventure Fiction is described as a “Billionaire Boss Romance,” in which the Billionaire Boss is presumably a gorg...

Mountainous Good Time

I’ve been off to the New Mexico mountains for the last week, in Angel Fire, hosting the Rio Hondo writers’ workshop, delayed by COVID for over two years. The workshop took place in mountain cabins at nearly 8000 feet, and featured food, drink, and serious discussions of literature— all the things that writers consider part of the good life.

Attending were (L to R), Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Carrie Vaughn, meself, Alex Jablakow, Paolo Bacigalupi, Diana Rowland, John Kessel, C.C. Finlay, Rick ...

#1!

Counting Down the Hours . . .

Imperium Restored, a Novel of the Praxis, will be released September 20, 2022.

Hey! That’s tomorrow!

Find it wherever fine books are sold!

Ears, Pointy, Two

I’ve watched three episodes (all there is, so far) of Amazon’s billion-dollar Tolkien fanfic, Rings of Power, and I find my reactions mixed.

Public reaction so far has featured complaints that the series isn’t faithful enough to the source, but that complaint doesn’t have any weight with me. The filmmakers didn’t have the rights to the Akallabêth, and had to settle for the appendices to LOTR as a source. Drama is different than written narrative, and will inevitably take shortcuts, combi...

Signed Books

Apropos the Privateers & Gentlemen books, a whole box of the original paperbacks has been discovered!

Our friend Nadine is making them available . All are signed, and all but one are unread and in good condition.

You can buy them singly or buy the whole set of five. These have been out of print since the 1980s, and are unlikely to be reprinted anytime in the next millennium. If you’re a collector of these sorts of things, you’ll probably be interested.

Five by Five

The fifth of my Privateers & Gentlemen series is now available as an audio book. read by the estimable Bronson Pinchot. It may be available only on Audible for the next 90 days or so, but that rule does not seem universally enforced.

The Tern Schooner is appearing as if it’s the final book in the series, which it is not. Under its original title, The Yankee, it was published second. According to internal chronology it’s either third or fourth, depending on how you count these things. ...

Electronic Vacation

I returned home from Worldcon to find that my neighborhood had been hit by an electronic blackout. Without AC, our house was unlivable and we spent the evening with Terry and Jim, whose hospitality was much appreciated.By the time we got home, the electricity was on and the house was cool, but wifi and our landline were both out of commission. Probably the cable was cut by the crews repairing the transmission line.We await the arrival of a technician, but in the meantime I’m doing my posting fr...