Last month, I posted about Yours, Isaac Asimov, a collection of letters from one of my biggest influences. I loved to read correspondence from people I admired, even though I am definitely not a letter writer myself, although it makes me kind of wish I was…
Today, I’m posting about another letter collection. This one from another huge influence, Robert A. Heinlein. I loved reading Heinlein as a kid, and even if I thought some of his later stuff got a little strange, when I found out there was a collection of his letters, I had to get it. And that was how I found Grumbles from the Grave. Although the organization of the book can be a bit jarring, you get a look at what he thought being a writer meant, as well as many of his personal views (not all of which I agree with, but then we shouldn’t all agree anyway.) He also gives a look at his relationship with his agent…those you’ll just have to read for yourself to see exactly how he felt.
If you’re a Heinlein fan, and you enjoy reading letter collections, this one is a must have. Order today from Amazon at https://amzn.to/3KYoWWa.
As always, I have numerous projects going on…short stories, a novel, RPG supplements, yeah, just my typical workload, but one project that I haven’t mentioned is that I’m currently working on rewriting James Baker’s novel Goatherds and Gods.
For those of you unfamiliar with the name James Baker, let me give you the backstory. Jim, as I knew him, was one of the pioneers of the science fiction and fantasy small presses. He helped to launch the careers of many small press writers, myself included, and a few of his early authors have also gone on to bigger things in the large press. Jim ran a small press publishing company, ProMart Publishing, out of his apartment in California. His early publications were, about what you’d expect from an older gentleman working at Taco Bell, they were photocopied and comb bound magazines. And, yes, sometimes you’d even find a page that the copier hadn’t fed properly. Although the magazines weren’t the glossy zines you saw from the major publishers at the time, or even that you see from the small press publishers now, there was a high quality of work in those magazines.
Some of the names of those magazines…Star*Anthology, Just Because, The Fifth Di…, and The Martian Wave. Yes, anyone that has followed my career probably knows that I continued to edit those last two magazines up until a few years ago. And even now, those magazines are still alive at Hiraeth Publishing. I can’t think of any other zines from that time that are still around today. And why are they still alive? Because of Jim.
He kept a stable of authors, poets, and artists around to him that in many ways he took care of and nurtured, and even though Jim could be cantankerous (his word for himself), he took care of those that worked for him. Through emails and phone calls, Jim would help authors nurture their stories. I always thought of it as a small press version of what John Campbell created during the Gold Era of science fiction. Jim referred to us as his ProMartins.
When Jim passed away in 2002, I became the steward of his work. His novel The Poet, was released by Nomadic Delirium Press, and I put together a collection of his short stories, poems and essays that I titled Just Because, in honor of one of those old magazines. His second novel, Goatherds and Gods was never re-released however. I always loved this book, but I didn’t want to release it in the format that it was in. As Jim liked to say, he loved to write, but he hated to rewrite, and the book clearly showed that. It also showed that I had a lot to learn about editing…
So, the book has sat waiting, and now, I’ve finally decided that it’s time to rework the book. Jim was good about having talking heads in his stories…lots of dialogue with no attribution, and he also had a tendency to drop large amounts of information…telling, rather than showing. So, this is my task now. I’m rewriting the book, and hopefully making it relevant to readers 20 years later.
If you’d like to get a taste of Jim’s work, please check out Just Because. It gives a great taste of who he was, and it also features some notes from those of us that knew him. I will warn you that much of the work is raw, as some of it was just drafts that I had on file.
And if you read the last story, “Doppleganger,” which could have been a third novel for him, you might get an idea of what I might be rewriting in the future…
This is the last week of our RPG sale at DriveThruRPG and Smashwords. So, this is your last chance to save 50% off of all of our RPG titles. This includes core rulebooks, adventures, and supplements…so it’s now time for you to stock up on everything you need for those gaming nights!
For the next 24 hours, you can pick up the re-release of my collection Marionettes on the Moon for just $2.
Do Humans control their destiny, or are they merely victims of the circumstances that surround them?
A collection of short stories from prize winning SF author J Alan Erwine examines whether we have freedom of choice, or are merely puppets on strings subject to the whims of the universe.
This newly reworked version of Marionettes on the Moon features the original 13 short stories, plus two recent releases.
Do Humans control their destiny, or are they merely victims of the circumstances that surround them?
A collection of short stories from prize winning SF author J Alan Erwine examines whether we have freedom of choice, or are merely puppets on strings subject to the whims of the universe.
This newly reworked version of Marionettes on the Moon features the original 13 short stories, plus two recent releases.
So, people think all I do now is write stories for the Solar Federation collection and Divided States of America series? Oh, so not true. Now you can check out my latest stand-alone story “Danger on the Spectrum.”
Richard doesn’t see the world like most people, and for the most part, he’d like to avoid people as much as he can, but once he reaches Foster’s Planet, he finds that even with a small population, he has to interact with people more than he’d like…and he also finds that the thing that makes him so different from everyone else might be the only thing that can save everyone on the planet…
For decades, J Alan Erwine has been writing stories about space exploration and discovery…now all of those stories are gathered into one massive tome. Travel the far reaches of space, or explore the solar system with him. Some of the stories are dark, some are optimistic, but all of them are uniquely his. This collection also features the first four stories in Erwine’s Solar Federation Series.
Humanity’s first contact with an alien species, the Lemec, is complicated by the fact that the aliens don’t use an entirely verbal language…not only that, but the other aliens in their “domain” seem to worship the Lemec as some type of gods, and as they seem to anticipate every move that Captain Shiro Takahashi and his crew make, humanity begins to think that maybe the other aliens know something that they don’t.
Erik Singer is an environmental warrior overwhelmed by the battle before him. When he loses his brother, his vision starts to become focused, but he can’t overcome the overwhelming grief of the loss. But then a Native America activist named Charlie Chases Crows comes into his life, and Erik has no idea what that single event will do to his life.Troubled by wild dreams of his brother and bizarre Native American imagery, Erik suddenly finds himself on a quest to take down the corporation that he feels killed his brother, and ultimately change the world for the better…but can he fight the powers of corporate America?
The U.S. government has been overthrown! After a near-miss of a giant comet, the American people fall under the control of a radical right-wing fundamentalist Christian government, ruled by the Grand Patriarchs, that slowly strips away their freedoms and establishes a rule of law that even Hitler couldn’t have dreamed up. Forced into virtual seclusion, Edward Silverberg, a former professor, finds himself on a path that will lead to either his destruction, or the destruction of the Grand Patriarchs…or maybe both.
SF Author J Alan Erwine's Blog 