My writing time lately – as I guess I’ve already told you – is devoted to getting my books, previously only available in e-book form, into paperback on Amazon. All my Erling books have been done now, except for two. One is The Baldur Game, the last, still waiting for its cover art. The other is The Year of the Warrior. TYOTW is still published electronically by Baen Books (my toehold on legitimacy). And I’ve also been having the book printed privately (with Baen’s agreement) for hand sale at Viking events and lectures. But I’ve decided it’ll be a better deal – and cheaper – to get it done by Amazon like the others.

No doubt there will be last-minute technical problems explaining the dual publication to the Amazon people. But I’ll cross that cognitive bridge when I get to it.

So here I am, reading the book pretty much for the first time in a quarter of a century.

Am I a great writer? One likes to think so. I like to imagine I’ll be discovered by posterity, even posthumously.

Some parts I like very much. I think that when I’m on my game I’m very good. I think I do a good job at high dramatic scenes – I actually sometimes give myself the shivers, which is a little like tickling yourself.

And sometimes I do dialogue pretty well. When I’m not being preachy – though I’m not as preachy as I feared. Most of the time.

Plotting is my weakness, as far as I can tell. Sometimes I think my plot points are kind of contrived.

And I made one large historical error – I had Erling hold his local Thing at his own farm, which (I’ve learned since) was never done. Things were always held at a distance from the chieftain’s home, to prevent undue influence on his part (which in fact occurs in the scene as I wrote it).

Nothing to be done about that now. Another discussion point for future Walker scholars.

Greetings, fans of the future. I greet you from Eternity.