Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,173 entries, all of them here in full.
August 9, 2025 · 337 words
I Invent the Influencer
Every so often I realize that I’ve predicted the future in one of my stories, which is what SF writers are ideally supposed to do, for all that we do it accidentally. (If we actually try to predict the future, we end up looking stupid when we fail.) I was signing The Green Leopard Plague […]
Read entry →August 8, 2025 · 83 words
Skulls, Flags, Space
A couple weeks ago I was on a Zoom panel with several colleagues. It seems the Center for Space Crime, Piracy, and Governance thought that science fiction writers might be useful in contributing to their ongoing discussions. James Cambias was enlisted to wrangle Allen Steele, Geoff Landis, Laura Montgomery, and My Owns
Read entry →August 2, 2025 · 442 words
Heaven in Flames Watch
July 24, 2025 I was rolling along on a new scene when I remembered I was making a Zoom presentation in the morning, and I needed to get my notes in order. So I put my notes in order. Made the presentation. Had a good time. And now it’s back to the novel. July 25 […]
Read entry →July 24, 2025 · 432 words
Day by Day, Play by Play
[July 19] I’m pleased to report that I have only a few scenes to write in my long-delayed project, “Heaven in Flames,” the third book in my Metropolitan sequence. It’s taken me three and a half years to get this far. This is by far the longest amount of time I’ve ever taken to write […]
Read entry →July 10, 2025 · 336 words
In the Coolth
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 […]
Read entry →June 28, 2025 · 89 words
Praxis For The Masses
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&
Read entry →May 19, 2025 · 98 words
Whereat I Have Been
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 Zimrin
Read entry →May 3, 2025 · 66 words
Pointed
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
Read entry →April 22, 2025 · 152 words
Living Genteel
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
Read entry →April 16, 2025 · 225 words
The Citadel
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 [&helli
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