Autoresponse, last revised 1/6/2003
Thanks for your email, in which you -- or somebody pretending to be
you; sorry -- used the magic word, "shazam" in the Subject: line. The
fact that you're getting an autoresponse *doesn't* mean that I'm not
going to see the email. In fact, it's quite the opposite -- using the
magic word bypassed all of my spam filters (90% or more of the email I
get is spam), and guaranteed that your message has made it into my
inbox.
Most people who use the magic word want the latest FAQ -- which is why
it's here. Doesn't mean that I ignore questions -- it's just that I
like instant gratification, whether giving or receiving.
I also like plugging Dave Baker's Not Quite Official But Definitely
Blessed Joel Rosenberg fan website, http://www.slovotskys-laws.com, so
I just did.
The News:
January 18, 2003: It's out.
The first Baen Guardians omnibus, containing The Sleeping Dragon, The
Sword and the Chain, and The Silver Crown, is now in bookstores, and
shipping from Amazon.com.
And, of course, your copy is available, should you want one, from,
among other places:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743435893/qid=1035922807/JRosenbergA
As of this writing, we're about four weeks before Home Front is out.
See: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0765304988/qid=1035922918/JRosenbergA
January 10, 2003
As of this writing, it's been about thirty minutes since UPS dropped
me off two boxes filled with the first Baen Guardians omnibus.
Objectively, the production seems to be of high quality -- about what
you'd expect from Simon and Schuster (Baen uses the same printer).
Subjectively, they look just gorgeous . . .
Newer Older News: The Sleeping Dragon joins the Baen Free Library
Eric Flint, the librarian of Baen books, informs me that, as we'd
agreed, The Sleeping Dragon -- all of it; uncut -- will join the Baen
Free Library (http://www.baen.com/library) shortly. It had been
planned for December 2002, but there's been some
administrative/technical issues. It'll be there.
Older Newer News: The Sleeping Dragon online -- well 18/19ths of it.
Baen books has almost all of The Sleeping Dragon online, free for
reading. (The last chapter is missing; that should be added shortly,
when The Sleeping Dragon becomes available in the very cool Baen Free
Library at http://www.baen.com/library.)
see http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200302/0743435893.htm?blurb
The latest FAQ: The Last Jihad . . .
. . . is by Joel C. Rosenberg, not me. Ironically, I was toying with
the idea of titling the third book in my new series (see below) just
that; I've reconsidered, for obvious reasons.
I know nothing about the book, but I do hope that it's good, and will
do well, for both the obvious reasons, and the self-centered one that,
perhaps, some of his readers will accidentally pick up my books.
Onward . . .
The formerly latest FAQ: The Next Hidden Ways
Over the past few months, I've been getting a lot of folks asking
about when the next Hidden Ways book is going to be.
Short answer: I dunno.
Longer answer: the three books are in print, and seem to be
consistently going back to press, which is all to the good. As soon
as the folks at Harper are ready to make an offer for the next book or
cycle in the series, I'd be happy to look at it. The only bad part
about the books being in print is that it means, in practice, that the
only folks I could sell the next books to are the folks at Harper, and
until they show a fair amount of interest in the next one, my time can
be more profitably, in more ways than one, spent working on other
things.
The other latest FAQ: What Am I Working on?
The two projects that are in the queue right now are Recall, and
Paladins, both set in what I'm calling the Mordred's Heirs world,
several centuries after Mordred the Great defeated Arthur the Tyrant
and safeguarded the Pendragon dynasty, which subsequently split with
Rome. I'm working on them on spec right now -- which means that
there's no contract, although my agent is talking to some folks -- so
I can't begin to guess at pubdate, although Paladins will be finished
by around the end of the year.
Paladins is definitely at the front of the queue, and has been cooking
along at a satisfying -- to me, anyway -- pace.
There are sample available at http://www.slovotskys-laws.com, and
those who are interested in reading the book in first draft should
email me, asking to be put on the mailing list. No obligations, but
if you do want to join the list, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me
know how the story's working for you.
Answers to Some Frequently Asked Questions
Still, after all these years, the same answer to the most
common question:
* He's dead. Honest. No kidding. I mean it. Really. Pinky swear. No,
sh -- I mean: no, surely, he is dead. Not just pining for the
fjords -- he's dead.
New Books
* My most recent new novel out is Murder in Lamut, a collaboration
with Ray Feist. We cloned Pirojil, Kethol, and Durine from the
Not... books, and gave them a noble to protect and a murder to
solve. It's not available in the US, but it is available from
Amazon.uk. See http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0002247208
if you're interested.
* My next new book is Home Front, due out from Tor in March
2003. It's a mainstream murder mystery, set in the same town of
Hardwood, North Dakota, from the Hidden Ways books, although
there's no fantasy elements in it. I'm real, real proud of it; the
first chapter is appended.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0765304988/qid=1035922918/JRosenbergA
* The next new Guardians book is Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda,
due out from Tor in June 2003. Sorry about the wait; it's not my
fault, honest.
* Guardians Reprints (yay!): Baen Books is bringing out ALL of the
out-of-print Guardians books, from The Sleeping Dragon through The
Road Home, starting in February 2003. More news on that should be
available, shortly, on the Baen website -- http://www.baen.com.
*Update*: the first omnibus, containing The Sleeping Dragon, The
Sword and the Chain, and The Silver Crown will be published, as The
Guardians of the Flame, in February 2003, and is now available for
preorder at Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743435893/qid=1035922807/JRosenbergA
* More reprints! Baen has also picked up my two Metzada books, Hero
and Not for Glory, *and* Emile and the Dutchman. More about when
they'll be out when I know more.
Onward...
* Okay, fine; let's talk about the scene in The Silver Crown where
Karl and Deighton meet in what could be a dream sequence, but isn't
-- I'm not copping out. The short answer is that Deighton meant
just what he said, but that he was wrong. As to his intentions
were/are, I'm not going to tell you -- yet -- except to say that I
know that you have enough information to figure out what it is that
he is up to, as at least two people have written me with the
answer. But, it will be a while until that one gets answered --
there's quite a bit of story before that. Further, deponent sayeth
not...
* Yes, there are other D'Shai books planned -- the next one will
probably be The Last Assassin , if and when -- but nothing's in the
queue at present. Ditto for more Metzada stuff, and possible Emile
and the Dutchman and Ties of Blood and Silver sequels. Anybody
interested in that or, for that matter, any other business is
invited to contact my agent, Eleanor Wood. See
http://www.spectrumliteraryagency.com
* Yup, I think that several of my books would make great movies. I've
even figured out how to do a real neat special effect for a
Sleeping Dragon movie. All rights are available, if anybody's
interested; again, contact my agent, Eleanor Wood, Spectrum
Literary Agency.
* Copies of most of my books are available (all those in print and
some of the out of print ones) from Uncle Hugo's in Minneapolis --
2864 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis MN 55407 (612)
824-6347. They do mailorder, take Visa and MC, and they'll be happy
to call me up and ask me to autograph something before they send it
out, and I'll be happy to do that, the next time I'm in the
shop. Tell them I sent you.
* No, I very much don't mind getting fan mail, either electronically
or via snailmail. In fact, I like it. I don't, unfortunately, have
as much time to engage in correspondence as I'd like -- there's
these books, and this wife and kids, and these cats and those fish,
and we've gotten those occasional surprise visits from the Ministry
of Joy, and there's also this dog, and . . . well, you get the
idea. But I do answer everybody, or at least try to.
And, with that, thanks for writing, and I'll be getting back
to you.
Best,
jr
********
As promised, the opening chapter from Home Front:
Chapter 1
Thirty years later, the phone rang.
I put down my red pencil and picked it up.
"What?"
I don't like to be interrupted, and my neighbors have the
good sense and better manners not to bother me when I'm
working. The worst I get during the day is little Tommy
Olson knocking quietly on the front door, then equally
quietly going away.
That's why I have my phone under my real name -- the phone
company won't let you do anything else -- but keep it
unlisted. I don't use my real name much; particularly in my
business, it's a source of much idle amusement by people who
are too easily idly amused.
It's also why I try to avoid getting stopped for speeding;
all cops have senses of humor, but almost all of them seem
to have stupid senses of humor.
There was a long pause on the other end, and I thought about
hanging up. People have no manners; you'd think that when
somebody got a wrong number, the first thing they'd do would
be to apologize, or if they didn't have the ordinary decency
to do that, they'd just hang up.
"Mr. Hemingway?" She sounded black -- yes, I know, voices
have no color, but people do, and she sounded black -- and
young. Two strikes against her, in this world.
"Yes." I just let it hang there.
"Ernest Hemingway?"
"Not the Ernest Hemingway. He's dead. He stuck his
father's shotgun in his mouth and blew his brains out before
you were born." Don't let anybody tell you there's no value
to a classical education. "Yes, my name is Ernest
Hemingway. What do you want?"
It was her turn to pause. "My . . . father said I should
call you."
I would have hung up on her -- I don't happen to have any
black friends; I don't, in fact, have many friends at all --
and I certainly couldn't recall any friend, black or
otherwise, with a teenage daughter, but while I hate to be
interrupted when working, I hate getting back to work even
more.
What I do for a living is very dull when it's not
irritating, but it pays the bills. Which, I guess, makes me
an ordinary sort of guy, after all.
"My father is George Washington. Bubba Washington, they
call him. He said you used to call him Prez."
As far as I can tell, the Personnel Division of the
Department of the Army was filled with practical jokers.
Whoever found four guys with famous names and put them in
the same company probably got an oak leaf cluster for his
Creative Assignment badge. I'm not sure whether Captain
Black ended up putting the four of us in the same tank for
the humor value -- he never did seem to have much of a sense
of humor -- or because he wanted to put all his bad apples
in one metal barrel, but it amounted to the same thing.
I leaned back in my chair and took a sip of coffee from the
I Love My Mommy mug that I'd bought at a garage sale in the
spring. It was cold and bitter instead of hot and bitter.
I like hot and bitter better.
"How is Prez?" When you get to be my age, you usually don't
like the answer to that question, but it has to be asked.
Usually it's "he died of cancer last year" or "he had a
heart attack" or "he killed himself" or other equally jovial
response.
"He's dead, Mr. Hemingway. They shot him."
I guess I guess I could've asked her who They were, but I
didn't. It wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway.
It certainly wouldn't have made a difference to Prez, after
all, him being dead and all.
So I asked anyway: "They? Who are they?"
"Bangers."
"Bangers?"
"Gangbangers. Crips."
"And the police?"
"Police? Shit."
"And he said you should call me."
"Yes. He said that if anything ever happened to him, I
should call you."
"And what did he say you should do when you called me? Just
tell me that he's dead, or do you have something else on
your mind?"
"You don't have to be so . . . mean."
"Little girl, you don't begin to know the first thing about
what I do and don't have to be."
There was a quiet sound of crying on the other end of the
line.
I sipped some more coffee. It hadn't gotten any warmer.
It'd been a decade since I'd made a woman cry -- when
Jennifer had left, she had left mad, and dry-eyed -- and it
didn't feel any different: a combination of a distant
pleasure that I actually had an effect on another human
being, and a sense of disgust with myself that this was the
only effect I could have on anybody else.
She hung up, leaving me alone with my cloudy and distant
pleasure, and my clear and present disgust.
Snake stalked in from the living room; he'd heard me moving
around.
"Rrruff?" he asked, his huge head tilted to one side.
"Later, Snake," I said.
Strange dog. He'd wander around town, looking for cats to
chase -- but not catch them; he was a good dog -- but
somewhere along the way I'd apparently unintentionally
taught him that he wasn't to piss or crap without me as a
witness, and he would wait nearby with simulated patience
until hydraulic pressure forced him to whine at the door.
A couple of years before, I'd cut a doggie entrance in the
back door, but he had never used it except for the couple of
times I pushed him through, and I'd sealed it back up again
after the weekend I was up north deer hunting with Jeff
Bjerke and Bob Aarsted, and a family of raccoons broke in
and had themselves what, in retrospect, must have been one
hell of a fun party.
Snake just stood and looked at me, waiting to be told what
to do, or something.
"It's nothing, Snake. Later."
He lay down in front of the fridge -- he liked the warm air
blowing out the bottom of it -- and settled in for a nap.
I got up and made another pot of coffee. No point in
getting back to work.
She'd call again, and soon.
#
The water was boiling in the coffee maker when the phone
rang again.
"What?"
"Mr. Hemingway . . . ?"
"No, I haven't changed my name in the past five minutes."
"My dad -- my father, he said I should call you."
"And you called me. Thank you very much. Is there anything
else?"
"Mr. Hemingway, I'm in trouble."
Well, abortions are cheap. So I'm told. "How much?"
"I don't need no money. Any money." I could hear Prez in
that; he was always one for correct grammar. "Probably do
need money, but that's not the problem. I'm in real
trouble, Mr. Hemingway."
"Define 'real trouble.'"
"They're going to kill me, too."
A sensible man would have hung up, but I'd been a sensible
man since I'd come back from New York, almost twenty years
before, and it was getting old.
Besides, I was done with the damn manuscript. I really
should have been starting on the new one that Claire Eddy
had just sent me from New York, and I was just going through
this one a third time to see if I could add another dozen
queries to annoy the writer. There are few enough joys in a
copyeditor's life, after all. As I say, it pays the bills,
but the only other satisfactions are sadistic.
"Where are you?"
With any luck, she'd be far enough away that I could just
write this off.
At least, that's what I thought, then. Later it occurred to
me that there was no such thing as a physical distance that
would erase the debt, not if thirty years hadn't. And
thirty years hadn't.
"Minneapolis." She sobbed quietly. "I can't go home, and
they'll be watching the airport and the bus station."
Damn. Five hours away, if I obeyed the speed limit. Figure
four hours and change. Fuck.
Well, you do what you have to.
"I haven't been in Minneapolis for a couple of years. They
still have a public library downtown?"
If you don't ask, you'll never know, and cities have the
habit of cutting back on marginal fripperies like libraries,
schools, sewers, and roads, in favor of much-needed sports
stadiums for needy multimillionaire football team owners.
"Yes."
"Be there." I thought about it for a moment. "I'll be at
least four, five hours, assuming the car doesn't break down.
If they're open, be in the history section. If they're
closed, be standing on the north side of the library. If
something happens and you can't be there, call here and
leave a message. You got enough money for a hotel room for
the night?"
"I, I . . . yes, I can -- "
"If it gets too late, take a room, and call me, here." I
thought about it for a moment. "I may not be there today;
but if not, I'll be there tomorrow."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me, unless I do something. And if this is some
sort of sick, juvenile practical joke, don't let me find
you."
That sounded threatening enough, although I didn't have the
slightest idea what I'd actually do if this was some sort of
gag, and I didn't spend any time trying to figure it out.
The trouble was, I believed her. I didn't know what kind of
trouble she was in, and I didn't know what I could do about
it, or if I wanted to do anything about it, but, shit, I
owed Prez a few hours driving.
At least.
--------------------