Having said all that, the difference in the way I work with “junior” partners as opposed to well-established writers like Drake and Weber and Mackey is a continuum. There’s no Chinese wall involved. I do exactly the same things with all my partners. The only difference, really, is that working with someone like Misty or the various Daves – this includes Dave Freer and well as Weber and Drake – involves a lot less “fixing” on my part. Not surprisingly, there are fewer problems to begin with, because they’re much more experienced writers.
CO: You are probably most famous for your works in the series started by 1632 and you’ve since opened that world up to a lot of first time writers, care to talk about how that works?
EF: There’s a short answer and a long answer.
The short answer is: It works very well, as the excellent sales of both anthologies (Ring of Fire and Grantville Gazette) demonstrate. Based on that, my publisher has agreed to produce at least four more such anthologies.
The long answer is that it’s very complicated. To be honest, much too complicated to try to answer in a short interview like this.
CO: Any full length novels in the works either by yourself and one of the contributors to the 1632 universe, or by one or more of them solo?
EF: There are a number of novels under contract, one solo by me and the rest collaborations. As follows:
1634: The Baltic War, by me and Dave Weber. Dave and I also have contracts to do three more 1632 novels, but we haven’t settled on the subject matter of those yet.
Andrew Dennis and I have contracts to do three sequels to 1634: The Galileo Crisis. Andrew is about halfway done with the first draft of the first one. Our working title for that is 1635: The Pope Must Die, but that’s just a private joke. It’ll have a different title by the time it comes out.
There are two immediate sequels to 1634: The Baltic War. One is a solo by me, whose current working title is 1634: Escape From the Tower. That’ll change, however, because I’ve decided the actual escape will happen sometime in The Baltic War. Several of the characters involved, however – Julie Sims, for one – will continue to have adventures in the British isles and that’s what this novel will cover.
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
Great interview. I've already got my copy of Rivers of War on order. Flint is really doing some interesting and creative stuff, especially in the alternate history genre.
Dave
2 - Victor Plenty
Flint's gotta be good to get Dave and me agreeing, especially on any subject remotely related to politics or economics.
In recent months I've been reading everything by Flint I can legally read without having any money to spend, ever since I happened across 1632.
So definitely count me as another who's glad to see this interview here.
3 - SFC SKI
Baen.com has a lot of free books, including a few by Eric Flint. IIRC, he is the overseer of the site.
4 - Dave Nalle
They also do some cool things, like putting books on CD in the backs of other books. Usually something I've already read, but still interesting to see.
Dave
5 - theco
Eric can be found running rampant on the Baen message boards over at www.bar.baen.com:8080 although tRoW is a Del-Rey piece, Glad y'all enjoyed. Something else that he did with Dave Freer that is gut busting hilarious is "Pyramaid Scheme".
6 - Victor Plenty
Yes, Pyramid Scheme is excellent. Funny-hilarious, with a good cast of vivid sympathetic characters, roller-coaster action and battle scenes, and marvelous use of history and mythology. I especially loved their surprising but well-justified portrayal of Odysseus and his men.
Plus, peeking out from under all that entertainment, some profound political and philosophical messages aptly suited to the questions of our day. The authors don't belabor their points, but they're there for any readers who enjoy finding a more substantial meal tucked into all the popcorn.
7 - flintfan
trail-of-glory.com has the rivers of war snippets s-s-m-w-f
8 - Theco
I'll be working on a few more interviews this summer, and probably another one with Eric, the man simply knows to much for me not to want to pump his brain. My blog has a couple names listed, and i'll also be starting blogspectrum.blogspot.com back up next week.