# To all writers on chrons.



## Ajid (Nov 15, 2016)

2017 will be my year of reading Works by the writers of the Chrons.

So Friends, Chronsman and writer folk. I have space in my diary for 28 of your works, maybe one or two more.

So place your arguments here. What should be on my list?

Edit: was meant to say all if a mod can change that I'd be full of gratitude.


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## Droflet (Nov 15, 2016)

I hear PJ Stebor's First Comes Duty is doing well.


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## ratsy (Nov 15, 2016)

I have read a lot of Chrons books. This group is quiet amazing. 

I have published two books, featuring a lot of Chrons writers too, if you have any interest in collections.

The Haunting of Lake Manor Hotel
Explorations: Through the Wormhole


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## Ajid (Nov 15, 2016)

Compilations are always welcome on my reading pile.


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## 2DaveWixon (Nov 15, 2016)

Ajid said:


> Compilations are always welcome on my reading pile.


What an interesting idea! (Have you given any consideration to the idea of maintaining some sort of list of books/stories written by Chronners, that all of us can consult if we'd like to read something by a colleague? ...just a thought...
Two books for me to mention; (1) an sf novel, *Antagonist*, officially listed as by myself and Gordon R. Dickson, it's the eleventh (and so far last) of Gordy's Childe Cycle (or "Dorsai") books; or (2) non-fiction on my part: the first volume of *The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak: vol. 1: I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories* -- edited by myself, it's mostly Cliff's work (14 volumes planned but not all out yet...), but it has many editorial intrusions by myself...


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## Ajid (Nov 15, 2016)

2DaveWixon said:


> Have you given any consideration to the idea of maintaining some sort of list of books/stories written by Chronners, that all of us can consult if we'd like to read something by a colleague?



Well I have now.


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## TheDustyZebra (Nov 15, 2016)

2DaveWixon said:


> (1) an sf novel, *Antagonist*, officially listed as by myself and Gordon R. Dickson, it's the eleventh (and so far last) of Gordy's Childe Cycle (or "Dorsai") books; or (2) non-fiction on my part: the first volume of *The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak: vol. 1: I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories* -- edited by myself, it's mostly Cliff's work (14 volumes planned but not all out yet...), but it has many editorial intrusions by myself...



Now that is an awesome thing I didn't know!


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## 2DaveWixon (Nov 15, 2016)

TheDustyZebra said:


> Now that is an awesome thing I didn't know!


Which? or what?


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## TheDustyZebra (Nov 15, 2016)

2DaveWixon said:


> Which? or what?



Both! That you have a book with Gordon R. Dickson, and that you've edited a Simak collection. How supremely cool is that!


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## Droflet (Nov 15, 2016)

A man of hidden talents. Tell us more, Dave.


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## Jo Zebedee (Nov 15, 2016)

I mentioned it on your other thread but I offered a free copy of Inish Carraig to Chronners a while ago and am happy to send you a copy if you'd like. I also have a well-regarded space opera trilogy (Abendau/TheInheritance Trilogy) knocking around.

But! In the interest of the spirit of the thread (which is, I think, to recommend, not plug myself) I've recently enjoyed Sue Boulton's Hand of Glory - a very unusual take on a fantasy book and I utterly adore @thaddeus6th Sir Edric series and @Toby Frost Space Captain Smith books. Both are comedy and Sir Edric, in particular, makes me giggle inanely.


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## Toby Frost (Nov 15, 2016)

That's pretty amazing, 2Dave.


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## Brian G Turner (Nov 15, 2016)

Well, I have an epic fantasy out - if you're into that type of thing. 
Gathering (Chronicles of Empire 1) is now available


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## thaddeus6th (Nov 15, 2016)

Thanks for the praise, Jo. On Sir Edric: check the first page. By the end of it you'll know whether you'll like the whole thing or not.

I've read a fair few of the books by Chronners. I rather like the Space Captain Smith series [sci-fi light-hearted comedy], the Abendau trilogy ]sci-fi grimshag], and Ralph Kern's Endeavour/Erebus (although I wish the titles started with different letters because I keep forgetting which one is first) [sci-fi unusual].

Oh, and I quite like The Empire Dance, which I think is more a novella series [sci-fi]. Which is odd, because I mostly read fantasy. 

Also, Kingdom Asunder (by me) comes out 24 November and has a lowered price from now until around 2 December.


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## Jo Zebedee (Nov 15, 2016)

That's my genre! #Grimshag! Roll up! Roll up!


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## Nick B (Nov 15, 2016)

Unfathomed by @ralphkern almost finished reading this and it is great. His (more) scifi books Endeavour and Erebus are almost as good.

@ratsy and woodbridge press, several anthologies, all really good.


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## Stewart Hotston (Nov 15, 2016)

I had my first novel out in May, called A Family War. Got some decent reviews and sold ok.


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## 2DaveWixon (Nov 16, 2016)

Toby Frost said:


> That's pretty amazing, 2Dave.


Thank you very much...I swear, it's even more amazing to be on this end of the situations!


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## 2DaveWixon (Nov 16, 2016)

TheDustyZebra said:


> Both! That you have a book with Gordon R. Dickson, and that you've edited a Simak collection. How supremely cool is that!


(...now where's the emoji for "blush"?)


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## TheDustyZebra (Nov 16, 2016)

2DaveWixon said:


> (...now where's the emoji for "blush"?)





Although that one is labeled as an "oops".


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## 2DaveWixon (Nov 16, 2016)

Droflet said:


> A man of hidden talents. Tell us more, Dave.



(You, sir, are about to regret asking...!)

Well, okay, I'll be succinct (_laughter_...)
Through various circumstances, forty-odd years ago I became friends with both Cliff Simak and Gordy Dickson in the same year. Right away, Gordy, having found out that I was in law school, asked if I would be willing to come out to his house and figure out how to put his files of publishing contracts in some sort of order that would be useful to him when he needed to look something up...
So, I came over to his house one Saturday afternoon and he took me over to a large file cabinet, indicating that this would be what I could do for him.
"But before that," he said, "how would you answer this letter I just got?"

And that was how things went with Gordy: always something new coming up -- it ended up taking more than ten years to actually produce for him a sort of summarization of the totality of his contracts -- and that even though within two years he asked me to work for him full-time. I did so for more than 20 years.
The job didn't pay much, but the glamour!

I ended up doing, as Gordy described it, everything I could that he would have lost writing time for if he'd had to do those jobs himself. I vetted contracts, arranged his travel, drafted some correspondence, gave mss. their first reading, with nit-picking -- even did his grocery shopping (that came after he learned that I knew how to pick a good cut of beef, the result of growing up in my parents' butcher shop...). (All this earned me the nickname of "Archie Goodwin.")

When Gordy died, his heir -- his only brother -- asked me to handle the probate of the estate; and, that done, to continue handling the business end of the estate: arranging reprints and so on. And as it happened, Gordy had died owing a new Dorsai book to a publisher...so I wrote it. (It was that or the Estate would have had to repay the advance...) (There was no one better to do so, if I say so myself -- Gordy had left a few notes and a few pages of manuscript, but in truth the book came because he and I had talked about it a great deal (as we had with others of his later books) -- I knew it! I was the place where his plans for the rest of the Childe Cycle were stored...
So, that was how *Antagonist* happened.

Now, even as all of the above was going on, I had also become heavily involved in MNSTF (the Twin Cities' SF club); and at one point my house was playing host to the club's library. I had met Cliff Simak here and there, we were friendly; but I was still surprised when, one day, he called me up. He said he had some books he wanted to donate to the club library, he had learned I had custody of the library -- and would I like to come over and get them?

So I went over to his house one Saturday afternoon (telling myself, as I drove: "Clifford D. Simak! Wow!...I should've brought a couple of books to be autographed...")

Cliff let me in and took me down to the room where he both wrote and stored his books. He showed me a couple of bags of books, all sf that publishers had sent me over the years -- and as I picked up the first bag to take it out to my car, he said: "How about a drink first?"
We ended up yarning the afternoon away, and when I left we were fast friends.
Cliff was getting on in years, so I would do things for him now and then -- type letters, do the grocery shopping, take him to appointments, correspond with his agents and publishers.... Frankly, I found that he was lonely -- his wife, although still alive, soon had to go into a nursing home, and his two kids lived out of state; so I would sometimes just go over and be with him...
We talked about favorite subjects -- SF, of course, and art, and politics, and the U.S. Civil War. We watched football and baseball games (after the Minnesota Twins won the World Series in 1987, Cliff turned to me with a big smile and said "I never thought I'd live to see this day!")(Alas, he did not live to see it when it happened again in 1991...)

When Cliff died, the attorney handling the probate of his estate asked me to produce an estimate that the IRS might accept as authoritative on the issue of the valuation of the literary rights in his Estate. I did, the lawyer was pleased, the IRS accepted the appraisal -- and Cliff's children, seeing this, asked me to manage those literary rights.
In that capacity, I had to rummage through all the boxes and files and papers -- and I found all those Simak stories (well, most of them; there were a few, I would come to find out, that even Cliff had no copy of...).
As you might imagine, many of them were only in their original (often: only) published form, in pulp magazines that were deteriorating. So I conceived the idea of transcribing all of those stories into my computer.
It took years. But in the process, I read them all over and over again -- and I came to see that there was a need to make them available again, to keep them from being forgotten. The Simak children wanted that, too.
It took more years, but after being turned down a lot, I found Betsy Mitchell, the sf editor at Open Road Media. (It helped that I had been, during those years, recovering the rights to the Simak novels -- the novels, there was usually someone who wanted to reprint them... -- but I was refusing to allow that; I was telling publishers that they could get rights to the novels if they'd agree to put out some collections of short stories.
As the years went by, I got more and more greedy, I guess you could say: and by the time Open Road came along, I wanted to reprint all of it.
And Betsy agreed! Wow!
As I write this, nine of the fourteen volumes that will make up the collection are in print (all of those in e-book form, the first three also in trade paperback form). I'm just finishing vols. 10-11-12...and then, just two to go...
What am I going to do then?
(Oh, wait! there's this novel I've been working on...)


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## Alex The G and T (Nov 16, 2016)

Jo Zebedee said:


> But! In the interest of the spirit of the thread (which is, I think, to recommend, not plug myself)



Well, then, Jo; I'll give you your plug.  I've read (I think...almost?) all of your novels and recommend them highly.


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## Gonk the Insane (Nov 16, 2016)

Wow, @2DaveWixon , that's awesome, thanks for sharing that with us.


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## Droflet (Nov 16, 2016)

Gonk beat me to the wow so I'll just say, in the words of Darth Vader: "Impressive. Most impressive."


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## HareBrain (Nov 16, 2016)

2DaveWixon said:


> You, sir, are about to regret asking...!



Well, _I_ don't regret him asking. That's amazing.

And I thought your sole interest was commenting on the US Election!


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## 2DaveWixon (Nov 16, 2016)

Gonk the Insane said:


> Wow, @2DaveWixon , that's awesome, thanks for sharing that with us.


Thank you, I say humbly.
It's weird, you know -- I never saw that kind of thing happening to me...I more or less fell into most of it...


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## 2DaveWixon (Nov 16, 2016)

HareBrain said:


> Well, _I_ don't regret him asking. That's amazing.
> 
> And I thought your sole interest was commenting on the US Election!



Fact is, I found Chronicles because I went out looking for a Simak discussion group -- I'd been getting the occasional query from people who wanted to know more about Cliff, and I thought maybe a discussion group would help me answer some of those questions and talk about Cliff and the big collection I was working on. (Open Road was committed to put all 14 volumes of the Collection into e-book form, but they would only do the first volume (*I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories*) in paper -- if they sell well, Betsy said, maybe we're put more in print: so I wanted to get out and (1) get books sold, and (2) encourage people to write Open Road and ask for print editions. (So far, Open Road has put vols. 2 and 3 into print -- I need to keep churning the fans!)
So: I stumbled on Bick's "rediscovery of Clifford D. Simak" thread, and joined Chrons to be able to take part in that...but I kept finding more interesting threads...!
I love it here (as witnessed by the number of postings I've put up).


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## Jo Zebedee (Nov 16, 2016)

2DaveWixon said:


> Fact is, I found Chronicles because I went out looking for a Simak discussion group -- I'd been getting the occasional query from people who wanted to know more about Cliff, and I thought maybe a discussion group would help me answer some of those questions and talk about Cliff and the big collection I was working on. (Open Road was committed to put all 14 volumes of the Collection into e-book form, but they would only do the first volume (*I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories*) in paper -- if they sell well, Betsy said, maybe we're put more in print: so I wanted to get out and (1) get books sold, and (2) encourage people to write Open Road and ask for print editions. (So far, Open Road has put vols. 2 and 3 into print -- I need to keep churning the fans!)
> So: I stumbled on Bick's "rediscovery of Clifford D. Simak" thread, and joined Chrons to be able to take part in that...but I kept finding more interesting threads...!
> I love it here (as witnessed by the number of postings I've put up).


don't worry. I came here to get to 30 posts and get a crit. 

Ahem.


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## ratsy (Nov 16, 2016)

2Dave, that was a great story. I see a book about it all in your future


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## Stephen Palmer (Nov 16, 2016)

This is a pretty special forum, no doubt of that.


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## Nick B (Nov 16, 2016)

I also wrote a book, Liberator. Apparently, it isn't too bad.


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## 2DaveWixon (Nov 16, 2016)

ratsy said:


> 2Dave, that was a great story. I see a book about it all in your future


A book written by me???
"In my copious spare time..." Right!
But thanks, ratsy!
(Or are you volunteering?)


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## JunkMonkey (Nov 16, 2016)

Ajid said:


> 2017 will be my year of reading Works by the writers of the Chrons.
> 
> So Friends, Chronsman and writer folk. I have space in my diary for 28 of your works, maybe one or two more.
> 
> So place your arguments here. What should be on my list?



Obviously my sometimes twice a week (sometimes not) Blog of Comic would be a quick and easy way of fulfilling your quota for the week.

GoshWowComics


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## crystal haven (Nov 17, 2016)

I suggest Inish Carraig by Jo Zebedee
And Jo’s Abendau Trilogy
Explorations: Through the Wormhole (partway through it and very much enjoying it)
Oracle by Susan Boulton (Enjoyed this a lot. I Will be buying her other book: Hand of Glory)
And one to be launched next year: HareBrain’s novel. I was a beta and can’t wait to buy the book. 
Thaddeus6th’s Sir Edric – my husband really enjoyed this.
There are others, of course, that I’ve either to buy or already bought, but not read yet. Writing my own does get in the way of reading. 
And my own will be out next year. Very excited. (and a little bit nervous)


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## ratsy (Nov 17, 2016)

Here is a list of the ones I've read from Chonners

Hairy London, Beautiful Intelligence  - Stephen Palmer
Inish Carraig, Abendau's Heir, Sunset over Abendau, Abendau's Legacy by Jo Zebedee
Endervour, Erebus, and Uncharted by Ralph Kern
Child of Saturn, Goblin Moon - Teresa Edgerton
Heir to the North - Steven Poore
Oracle - Susan Boulton
Uncommon Purpose - PJ Strebor
Liberator - Darren B and Nick B
Gathering - Brian G Turner
The Adventures of Sir Edric - Thaddeus White 
The Last War - Alex Davis

These are the ones that just pop into my head from the last couple years. I have also read all of Julia Knight/ Francis Knight who is also a member here, and I love her stuff. 

I know a bunch of you guys are getting books out next year, and I look forward to them!


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## Dennis E. Taylor (Nov 17, 2016)

Well, I have two:
Outland
We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

The second one seems to be doing even better on Audible.


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## pambaddeley (Nov 25, 2016)

The only one I've read so far is *Exile *by Martin Owton, a good pageturning read.


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## johnnyjet (Dec 2, 2016)

@2DaveWixon I've seen your Simak collections on Amazon and, being a big fan of Clifford Simak, I've started collecting the Kindle books.  Your Introductions to each volume have been fascinating to read.  Nice to have you here on the Chrons.


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## johnnyjet (Dec 2, 2016)

Other than a few short stories published online and elsewhere, I have had two books published:

*Roots of a Priest*, general fiction co-authored with Ken Bowers (2007)
*Large and Small Wonders*, small collection of science fiction and fantasy stories (2012)


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## 2DaveWixon (Dec 2, 2016)

johnnyjet said:


> @2DaveWixon I've seen your Simak collections on Amazon and, being a big fan of Clifford Simak, I've started collecting the Kindle books.  Your Introductions to each volume have been fascinating to read.  Nice to have you here on the Chrons.


Why, thank you!


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