In the Coolth

by wjw on July 10, 2025

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 catastrophic Ruidoso fire last year, along with 1400 other structures. We decided to repay Louy’s hospitality by treating her to a vacation in Cloudcroft.

We ate the first night at an excellent restaurant in a lodge in town (built 1899), but the rest of the time we cooked our own meals and drank our own wine.

I didn’t do much else. The altitude knocked me out for a day, and my usual mountain trekking is limited by the fact I that at present I have only one functioning limb. But I was fine with relaxing for a few days, and the Sacramentos provided their own entertainment.

One afternoon a herd of wild horses trotted past. A bull elk, a cow elk, and two youngsters paused for an hour to crop the grass, as seen in the photos above.

Groups of whitetail deer were common. The birds were delightful. Kathy saw a skunk trotting down the road.

I even got in a couple nights of writing, and I wrote good.

Our Fourth of July was low-energy. It felt off-key to celebrate a republic that’s on life support, where the Constitution and the Bill of Rights have become a historical curiosity and literally anyone can be branded a foreign terrorist and sent to a torture camp in El Salvador. So for a few days I tried to forget all that and enjoy the wildlife.

It was good to cool off for a while. But now I’m back in the Hot Zone.

Sunset

by wjw on July 9, 2025

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

Brekki

by wjw on July 9, 2025

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

Praxis For The Masses

by wjw on June 28, 2025

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 checked because I’m fiendishly busy.

Whereat I Have Been

by wjw on May 19, 2025

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 more drained and exhausted than when I left, and this week fit the bill precisely.

Pointed

May 3, 2025

The 9th issue of Nathan Toronto’s paperback magazine Bullet Points is now available, with a reprint story by yours truly (“Wolf Time”). Bullet Points “captures the complexity, tragedy, and hope of warfare and violence in human and nonhuman society,” and this issue has an AI theme. Bullet Points is generously sized, and packs a lot […]

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Living Genteel

April 22, 2025

The process of settling into new quarters continues. The living room, pictured here, is almost ready for actual living. The Berlin Wall of cardboard boxes that once blocked access to the bookshelves is gone. In the foreground is our elliptical trainer, which has finally emerged from its container. As the container took up about as […]

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The Citadel

April 16, 2025

It’s 2009, and I’m in Turkey to research my novel Deep State. Standing behind is Melinda Snodgrass, and Patricia Rogers is behind the camera. I’m in the smog-swathed capital of Ankara, the city known to the Hittites as Ankuwash, to the Romans as Ancyra, and to the Ottomans as Angora. Ankara is a modern, largely […]

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Storm Swathing

April 9, 2025

A storm swathes the Sandia mountains, as seen from our balcony.

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CoA

April 9, 2025

So we’ve made the big move, and we’ve sacrificed the joys of country living for the excitement of the big city. As you can see. Excitement everywhere you look. The move itself took 2 days, the first to pack everything, the second to transport it and unload the trucks. The movers finished at 9pm and […]

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