This is a thrill — never thought I’d see my name on BoingBoing, but yes, I’m one of the writers tapped by editors by David Nickle and Madeline Ashby to write a story for License Expired: an unauthorized James Bond anthology, which will be published by the demented folks at ChiZine.
I’m already drafting my story, titled THE GLADIATOR LIE. I promise graphic sex, unceasing violence, and an unusual love story.
I’m taking a tip from Walter Jon Williams, genius writer and my teacher at Taos Toolbox. Walter says when he’s invited to an anthology, he always tries to figure out what all the other writers are going to do, and then do something completely different. (And no, this isn’t going to be historical Bond. It’s set in classic Bond era — the early 1960s.)
I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand—his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his droop’d head sinks gradually low—
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him—he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hail’d the wretch who won.from Lord Byron, Childe Harold