Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,179 entries, all of them here in full.
April 16, 2023 · 429 words
Terran Prize Awarded!
The Terran Prize for 2023, sponsored by George R.R. Martin and awarded by Walter Jon Williams and Nancy Kress, has been awarded to Santiago Márquez Ramos. The prize consists of tuition and lodging at this year’s Taos Toolbox workshop, and is awarded to applicants coming from a non English-speaking background. Santiago
Read entry →April 11, 2023 · 167 words
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 […]
Read entry →March 31, 2023 · 526 words
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 [&hel
Read entry →March 29, 2023 · 156 words
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, […]
Read entry →March 14, 2023 · 42 words
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?
Read entry →March 11, 2023 · 59 words
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
Read entry →March 4, 2023 · 244 words
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 t
Read entry →March 4, 2023 · 72 words
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 […]
Read entry →March 1, 2023 · 230 words
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 […]
Read entry →February 26, 2023 · 61 words
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 […]
Read entry →February 26, 2023 · 103 words
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 reflec
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