Summer Sketches [Hardcover]

Dan Simmons (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Lord John Pr; Dlx Sgd edition (May 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0935716629
• ISBN-13: 978-0935716627
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,416,228 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dan Simmons was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1948, and grew up in various cities and small towns in the Midwest, including Brimfield, Illinois, which was the source of his fictional "Elm Haven" in 1991's SUMMER OF NIGHT and 2002's A WINTER HAUNTING. Dan received a B.A. in English from Wabash College in 1970, winning a national Phi Beta Kappa Award during his senior year for excellence in fiction, journalism and art.
Dan received his Masters in Education from Washington University in St. Louis in 1971. He then worked in elementary education for 18 years -- 2 years in Missouri, 2 years in Buffalo, New York -- one year as a specially trained BOCES "resource teacher" and another as a sixth-grade teacher -- and 14 years in Colorado.

His last four years in teaching were spent creating, coordinating, and teaching in APEX, an extensive gifted/talented program serving 19 elementary schools and some 15,000 potential students. During his years of teaching, he won awards from the Colorado Education Association and was a finalist for the Colorado Teacher of the Year. He also worked as a national language-arts consultant, sharing his own "Writing Well" curriculum which he had created for his own classroom. Eleven and twelve-year-old students in Simmons' regular 6th-grade class averaged junior-year in high school writing ability according to annual standardized and holistic writing assessments. Whenever someone says "writing can't be taught," Dan begs to differ and has the track record to prove it. Since becoming a full-time writer, Dan likes to visit college writing classes, has taught in New Hampshire's Odyssey writing program for adults, and is considering hosting his own Windwalker Writers' Workshop.
Dan's first published story appeared on Feb. 15, 1982, the day his daughter, Jane Kathryn, was born. He's always attributed that coincidence to "helping in keeping things in perspective when it comes to the relative importance of writing and life."
Dan has been a full-time writer since 1987 and lives along the Front Range of Colorado -- in the same town where he taught for 14 years -- with his wife, Karen. He sometimes writes at Windwalker -- their mountain property and cabin at 8,400 feet of altitude at the base of the Continental Divide, just south of Rocky Mountain National Park. An 8-ft.-tall sculpture of the Shrike -- a thorned and frightening character from the four Hyperion/Endymion novels -- was sculpted by an ex-student and friend, Clee Richeson, and the sculpture now stands guard near the isolated cabin.
Dan is one of the few novelists whose work spans the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror, suspense, historical fiction, noir crime fiction, and mainstream literary fiction . His books are published in 27 foreign counties as well as the U.S. and Canada.
Many of Dan's books and stories have been optioned for film, including SONG OF KALI, DROOD, THE CROOK FACTORY, and others. Some, such as the four HYPERION novels and single Hyperion-universe novella "Orphans of the Helix", and CARRION COMFORT have been purchased (the Hyperion books by Warner Brothers and Graham King Films, CARRION COMFORT by European filmmaker Casta Gavras's company) and are in pre-production. Director Scott Derrickson ("The Day the Earth Stood Stood Still") has been announced as the director for the Hyperion movie and Casta Gavras's son has been put at the helm of the French production of Carrion Comfort. Current discussions for other possible options include THE TERROR. Dan's hardboiled Joe Kurtz novels are currently being looked as the basis for a possible cable TV series.
In 1995, Dan's alma mater, Wabash College, awarded him an honorary doctorate for his contributions in education and writing.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simmons' hidden talents, January 8, 1999

By 

Peter Orullian - See all my reviews

This review is from: Summer Sketches (Hardcover)

This book is a small peek into the process Simmons uses to create his magic. We see his wonderful hand rendered sketches, discover outlines for past novels, and observations that became grist for his local-color mill in the settings of some of his work. A fun book to read and own. Most interesting, probably, to great Simmons fans and writers.

Peter Orullian

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 Stars if you write and are amazed by Dan SImmons, February 2, 2002

By 

C. Little (Newbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Summer Sketches (Hardcover)

I have been amazed by Simmons since first being recommended Hyperion. A long-time SF enthusiast, I loved the whole series. In fact, he had kind of slipped by me somehow so it was an absolute delight to discover such a wonderfully good FOUR book series LOL.

Being a heavy reader, I checked out his other books and discovered a very rare writer indeed: able to span genres quite ably, thank you very much. An amazing writer -- someone who can span the world-scale horror dimensions of Carrion Comfort to the Hyperion series to the comic-Darwin-Award-relief of Darwin's Blade. I was and am amazed. Even the books that I had great difficulty with in starting, like The Crook Factory -- a historically accurate fictional tale about Hemingway -- I have come to have a deep and abiding love for (I will never forget Hemingway character's explanation of effective writing).

So this book is about his writer's insights and process. If you aspire to write full-time but haven't achieved that, are delighted by the ability of Dan Simmons' works to take you on journeys and are curious as to how he goes about it... and, lastly, won't get bankrupted by the price, buy this book. If the price makes you gasp, buy more blank paper, study his published works and keep writing.

The book is *very* short and expensively priced but, trust me, you'll reread it. The foreward alone is captivating -- I had to reread it several times at the get-go. This is an intimite view into the writer's mind.