Being a Better Writer: Ancient Jobs and Ancient Life · 9:17pm Jul 18th, 2022
Welcome back readers.
Things feel a little subdued this morning. That’s because the writing world lost a legend this weekend. Eric Flint passed away on Sunday.
If you aren’t familiar with Eric Flint, he’s been around since … Well, from my perspective, forever. I was seeing books with his name on them when I was a child at the grocery story paperback section. He wrote a phenomenal amount of alternative history, to the point that at least in the circles I’ve hung out in, he was one of the two names that came up whenever anyone spoke about alternate history.
The writing community has grown a little smaller with this news. There is a GoFundMe raising funds for a memorial service.
What scattered new I have is practically unremarkable by comparison, so that’s all I think needs to be said for today’s news segment.
However, today’s topic? It was chosen as a sort of tribute to Eric Flint and his contributions to the literary world. A deviation from what was planned, but I think there’d be no better topic for today than to look at the genre that Flint loved to write and talk about it for a bit.
Well, one aspect of it, at least. We won’t be talking alternative history specifically, but we will be talking about a narrow slice of it. A slice that’s been sitting on Topic List #20 for some time now, waiting for its moment.
Today, we’re going to talk about ancient jobs and ancient life. Stick around, because it’s not what you think.
Well, hell.
I was sad to hear about Eric Flint. He wrote a lot of good stuff. A lot of it is available for free on the old Baen Free CDs. Maybe go take a look, and if you find something you like, "pay" the GoFundMe for a book or two.
Well, that's a bit of shit news to read, he's been one of my favorite authors for about 15 years now. In fact, it was reading his stuff (along with David Weber's) from my local library that got me hooked on Baen as the source of most of my personal library.