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.
September 5, 2022 · 86 words
Amuse-Bouche
Tesla’s Egg. The first course at Next restaurant, with a menu inspired by the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Nikola Tesla lit the entire fair with electricity, the first time electricity had been used on such a scale. Among the wonders on display was a copper egg suspended above a magnetic field. Here we find a […]
Read entry →August 28, 2022 · 86 words
Chicon Schedule
In a couple days I’ll be flying to Chicago for Chicon 8, this year’s world science fiction convention. Here are my program items: Autographing – Walter Jon Williams, Thursday, 1 September 2022, 14:30 CDT, Autographing Table Talk – Walter Jon Williams, Thursday, 1 September 2022, 17:30 CDT, Crystal FoyerTitl
Read entry →August 23, 2022 · 88 words
To the New City
Here’s the cover of the City on Fire re-issue, again by Hugo-winning artist Elizabeth Leggett. (And I just this minute noticed a problem with it. Anyone else see it?) There have been a number of my books that were difficult to illustrate. I was never satisfied with the covers on the original hardbacks or on […]
Read entry →August 23, 2022 · 137 words
Fashion Statement
So here’s the new addition to my wardrobe, a plastic brace that straps around my leg. This is intended to help my achilles tendon heal. I tore the tendon back in January, and what with one thing and another (including my black belt test) it never healed, and I kept re-injuring it. This is intended […]
Read entry →August 19, 2022 · 861 words
Onward Into the Past
Back in April Kathy and I drove the three and a half hours to Portales for the 45th Jack Williamson Lecture, and had to figure out how we were going to entertain ourselves for the long drive across the Llano Estecado. Kathy suggested we listen to the audio book of To Glory Arise, the first […]
Read entry →August 15, 2022 · 208 words
Exterminator Wanted
At 5:30am I was awakened by a spider biting me on the haunch. I was somewhat familiar with the sensation, since last year I was bitten twice, on two successive nights, by a large centipede that had taken up residence in my easy chair. After the second bite, I jumped up, turned on the light, […]
Read entry →August 6, 2022 · 849 words
Props
I stumbled across a review of Hilary G. Hallett’s Inventing the It Girl, a biography of the potboiler novelist Elinor Glyn, who is credited with inventing the form and style of the Hot Romance in the early 20th century. You’d likely recognize the image of a person in a sleek gown of silk velvet, languidly […]
Read entry →July 24, 2022 · 148 words
Fully Housed
A new Wild Cards volume— #30!!!— has been released with a story of mine in it. There are also stories by Daniel Abraham, Victor Milan, Caroline Spector, Carrie Vaughn, David D. Levine, Paul Cornell, Melinda Snodgrass, Stephen Leigh, and Marko Kloos. A powerful group of writers to set loose in the wilds of J
Read entry →July 21, 2022 · 107 words
Available or Not
Audiobooks of The Macedonian and Cat Island, the final two books (of three) about Favian Markham, USN, have been released, narrated by Bronson Pinchot, who is very fine indeed. The problem is that I can’t seem to find The Macedonian anywhere but on Audible’s own site, and there I had to go to some effort […]
Read entry →July 15, 2022 · 156 words
Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist
From the archives, a photo of me dating from 1980. I’m a brand-new writer, with a three-book deal but nothing yet in print. In this photo I’m in England, researching the Privateer books. (The librarian at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich was a great help.) In another year or two I’d ditch the spectacles and […
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