Walter Jon WilliamsNovelist

Dispatches since 2005

The journal

Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 162 entries, all of them here in full.

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  1. August 15, 2017 · 43 words

    Stand By for Greatness

    So while I was in Finland, Orbit reverted the rights to all three of the Dagmar Shaw books. I’ll try to make those available as soon as I can. I can hardly do a worse job of promoting them than the original publisher.

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  2. August 11, 2017 · 20 words

    Native Speaker

    I am interviewed in Aamulehti, the second-largest newspaper in Finland. You will be amazed at how well I speak Finnish.

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  3. August 9, 2017 · 22 words

    At the Worldcon

    I am at the 75th Worldcon, and it is perfectly glorious. Also, the headline says I’m a “sci-fi great.” I won’t disagree.

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  4. August 7, 2017 · 128 words

    Founder

    Walking around Stockholm, I saw this statue, which I believe is that of Jean-Charles Bernadotte, the Gascon sergeant who rose to the rank of general during the French Revolution, and who then married Napoleon’s old girlfriend Desiree and went on to become King Karl XIV Johan of Sweden, founder of the present line of Sw

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  5. August 5, 2017 · 53 words

    Me, On Finnish Radio

    I am interviewed on a Swedish-language station on Finnish state radio! The analysis is in Swedish, but I’m speaking English. (No surprise there.) Just hit the Avsnitt for 5.8.2017. I think. And here’s a transcript of the interview, entirely in Swedish for those of you who want to puzzle it out.

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  6. August 4, 2017 · 83 words

    Gustaf Slept Here

    We are in lovely Stockholm. This involved 13 miserable hours on a ferry from Turku, though the misery was mitigated by glorious views of first the Finnish, and then the Swedish, archipelago. By the end I didn’t care about the archipelago, I just wanted to get off the damn boat. Stockholm’s series of islands is [&hellip

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  7. August 1, 2017 · 284 words

    Archipalego

    So a military attaché, a philosopher, and a couple writers went out on a boat . . . Sounds like the beginning of a joke, and maybe it was, but I assure you it actually happened. Friend of the blog Marcus Prest (author of Android, etc.) has been playing host to us in Turku for the […]

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  8. July 27, 2017 · 222 words

    Lakeland

    This week we’ve been looked after by my Finnish friend Kari Salo, who I’ve known since he came to stay with my family when we were both fifteen. Kari and his lovely wife Anneli invited us to her lakeside summer cottage, where we enjoyed kicking back with a beer and a sauna after our busy […]

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  9. July 24, 2017 · 26 words

    No niin

    For those of you planning on coming to the Helsinki Worldcon, or otherwise visiting Finland, here’s Ismo to tell you the single most important Finnish word.

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  10. July 23, 2017 · 50 words

    Drinking Your Beer in Finland

    We’ve left Russia behind and are back in Finland for the next week or so. Finland has some of the most complex rules in the world for alcohol consumption. Those of you coming to the Helsinki Worldcon might find them confusing, so here’s Ismo Leikola to give you a briefing.

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  11. July 22, 2017 · 271 words

    Nabokov’s Butterflies

    At one point in my life, the author and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov was my primary literary god. He’s still a major influence, for all that I don’t write anything like him. There is a museum devoted to him in St. Petersburg, in his family’s old mansion. (You can’t really describe it as “his” house, […]

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  12. July 19, 2017 · 601 words

    Scamming Scammers Scam Amazon With Scamming Scams

    Kindle Unlimited, for those of you who don’t know, is an Amazon service where (if you’re an author) you upload your book exclusively to KU. In return for this exclusivity, Amazon does . . . well, I’m not sure what they do for the author, but if you’re a reader, you can read, um, Unlimited numbers of […]

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