Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 98

An Actual Conversation

HIM: I don’t know, it’s so hard.  I used to have all these friends, and we talked all the time, but now I can’t keep track of them all. ME:  I think I may have a solution. HIM:  ?? ME:  You know that device in your pocket?  The one you use for texting and browsing the Internet? HIM:  Yes? ME:  I found out that it has another function.  You can use it to telephone someone, and then you can have an actual conversation! HIM:  Really?  You intrigue me.  What is this tel-le-phone of which you spea...

Award Season

This is the time of year in which hopeful authors post a list of their publications in the fond belief that their readers will nominate them for awards.  It’s never worked for me, but then there’s always a first time. My list this time is short and simple: the only publication I had in 2016 was the novel Impersonations (Tor, Oct 2016), the latest in my Dread Empire’s Fall series, also known as the Praxis series. This means not only that the book is eligible for the Novel category, but in the...

Can’t Escape the Damn Eagles

So I went with my gracious hosts to the aptly-named Todos Santos over on the Pacific side of Baja, and I found myself visiting this hotel, which allegedly inspired the Eagles song.  Which song I’ve been unable to get out of my head for days now, so thanks a lot. Jimmy Buffet was supposed to have visited the same day I was there, but I must have missed him. Troubadors aside, Todos Santos is not only a charming village, and reminiscent of the Cabo San Lucas of thirty years ago, but there is a l...

Spot The Fish In This Picture

Here amid the scattered wreckage of the lost German freighterLunderberglies a highly toxic fish. You don’t want to touch it or step on it lest it inject neurotoxin through its spines, which are designed like little pressure mines, the more the weight, the more the venom. Lunderberg went down in 1954, surrounded by the towering pinnacles of Lands End. (Not the one in England, or the catalog store, or for that matter Finisterre in France, but the spectacular formation off Cabo San Lucas.) I met...

Good Numbers

So my 99-cent sale onThe Rifthas generated good numbers, and it is now officially an Amazon bestseller, or as they call it, Best Seller. Its Amazon number was 28 this morning, and they’d probably declined overnight from an even better number. (For some reason these sales seem to generate their best numbers in the early hours of the morning.) I’m also #9 on the Barnes & Noble list, and if I didn’t know how few sales that actually means, I’d be deeply impressed with myself. The sale is by no me...

I Am In Cabo

I have rather unexpectedly found myself in a Mexican resort. I’m sure this is the sort of thing that happens toyou all the time, right? So over thirty years ago I visited Cabo San Lucas with some friends, and had a very pleasant time in a small seaside village with all of four hotels. A few weeks ago one of the friends contacted me and said, in essence, “Hey, wanna do this again?” I did, but Kathy had just had had surgery, and I didn’t think I would be free. But then Kathy recovered splendidl...

Post-Apocalypse

In an apocalyptic mood for some reason? (I can’t imagine what that reason might be.) In that case you should take advantage of the 99-cent sale on my bestselling ebook, The Rift.The Rift was intended as a breakout book, in which a larger-than-usual audience would be exposed to my Walter-y goodness. In the event, the publisher deliberately sabotaged the book’s release, and the sales figures, while okay, were sufficiently unspectacular to assure that I wouldn’t sell another novel for five long...

Burning It Down

Sulawesi

A little over two years ago, I was right at this spot, seeing these exact creatures. I set the climax ofImpersonations here, thinking perhaps of camouflage and how to maintain it.

New Year, New Career

I just want to remind everyone that the submission period for Taos Toolbox, the master class for writers of science fiction and fantasy, is far from over. There are still places available, and if you take your writing seriously and want to move in the direction of having a writing career, sending in your application will be a first step. Principal instructors this year will be Nancy Kress and myself, with special lecturers George R.R. Martin, Steven Gould, and Emily Mah Tippetts. You want to...