Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 39

Happy to be Seen

I don’t think I’ve ever been in a foreign country where so many people were so happy to see me. Not just happy either, but ecstatic.

I don’t think it’s because my charisma has vastly increased in the last few years, it’s because 20% of Spain’s economy is dependent on foreign visitors and their money, and for the last 18 months those visitors have been staying at home hoping that Covid doesn’t visit them. It seems that we’re in the very first wave to return to this country, and our no...

Landmarks of Dubious Purpose

We are zooming about Spain with our friends Terry and Jim, who I’ve known since we were in college. Here we see Terry, in a typical pose, offering a salute to Generalissimo Francisco Franco at the Valley of the Fallen.

This colossal basilica, longer than St. Peter’s in Rome, topped by a 500-foot granite cross, and taking nearly 20 years to build, is a monument to the dead of the Spanish Civil War. Allegedly a monument to both sides (as long as they were Catholic), the mausoleum was c...

Taking the Bull by the Tail

First night, I decided to dive right into local cuisine. This is a dish of bull’s tail, braised to perfection. Moist, tender, flavourful, and just a bit gelatinous. When I stuck my fork into one of these cuts, the meat just unrolled from the vertebra without any further encouragement from me.

Of course the evening started with Spanish omelette (mostly potato), homemade chorizo, olives, bread, tossed salad, and lots of fine wine, then ended with coffee and a flaky pastry called, if m...

I Am In Spain

Envy me!

New/Old

Not only is there a new Praxis book in the pipeline, there are new old Praxis books either on offer or about to drop shortly.

What happened was this. Audio rights to the first three Praxis books were purchased by Audible some years ago, for not a lot of money, and recorded by the excellent David Drummond. Audio book contracts run for a number of years, and then either expire or are renewed.

Audible’s rights were scheduled to expire this year, but they were somewhat dilatory about ...

Deerie Me

Here’s a new friend I made over the weekend. The scarcity of people in the pandemic has made animals less shy around people, I guess, and she let me hang around for quite a while. This photo was taken from maybe ten meters away.

Kathy had a major home improvement project scheduled for the weekend, and I thought it a good idea to make myself scarce before a group of home improvement workers descended on our rancho brandishing noisy tools. As it happens the event got canceled, but my re...

Sometimes the Magic Works, Sometimes It Doesn’t

I found some duck breasts at the market, and it occurred to me that I liked duck breast but had never cooked one, and that this could serve as the seed for another fine culinary adventure.

The label assured me that the duck breasts were antibiotic-free and had been raised vegetarian (which isn’t the case at all with ducks in the wild, who enjoy chowing down on a nice frog now and again).

So I looked up recipes online, and they were all basically in agreement, so I picked one, cooked...

Hero State

Over the summer I’ve been participating in a multi-episode online superhero campaign run by Matt Yancik, all installments of which are available on YouTube. The series is modeled on comics, naturally, and first introduces all the characters as if they were appearing in their own title. Then comes the two-parter finale crossover, wherein the assorted heroes form their own Avengers/Justice League and set out to save, if not the world, at least Fenway Park (and maybe the world too).

There a...

Episode 1015

Hank Garner interviews me on Episode 1015 of his Author Stories podcast. He’s obviously had a lot of experience interviewing authors, so give it a listen!

Audio Me

The Best of Walter Jon Williams has just been released as an audiobook from Tantor Audio. You can buy it most places where audiobooks are sold, or you can get it here for free.

I’ll send a download code to the first three people to reply to this post. Be sure to make certain that I can email you the reply.

In other audio news, it seems I’ve sold my early historical fiction, the privateer books, to Blackstone Audio. I never thought this would happen, so I feel fairly pleased with ...