Tim Pratt's Blog, page 5

21 and Done. Or, Alternately, Sweet Sixteen.

Another Monday, another chapter of Grim Tides! Go read "Jaws" for more murderlicious funtimes.

I had a busy weekend. A pleasant one. Friday night our dear friend Susan, visiting from New York, came over for a few hours of conversation and take-out food. So nice to see her! It's been literally years.

Saturday, my wife and son took off for Tahoe so the kid could play in snow for the first time. I wish I could have gone! But I am in a world of deadlines. So I stayed home and wrote a large number of words instead. So many words. But I did not finish the draft of my novel in progress, and indeed, I soon realized I was writing a whole lot of words I would have to throw away, because my climax was stupid and terrible and all wrong. I could feel it, but I just kept on writing my way through, figuring I could get some of the falling action right, at least.

Sunday morning we all headed for Mama's Royal Cafe to have brunch with Susan and our friend David and his girlfriend Meredith (who impressed my boy with her origami skills). Yumminess and good talk ensued, and the kid was very well-behaved, which is impressive considering we had a long lingery meal. I took the boy away afterward so Heather and Susan could hang out.

The kid wanted to see a new playground, so I found one online we hadn't been to yet, and we drove up. It was a pretty decrepit old playground, really — swingsets with no swings, a nearly 80-year-old clubhouse all boarded up, blocked off, and in dire need of repair — but it had some really pretty trails, too, and nigh-infinite numbers of steps switchbacking along the path of a creek with lots of little waterfalls. We hiked up and down and all around until we got bored, then drove over to Codornices Park, home of a giant concrete slide. My kid has done the slide many times before, always with me, sliding down together. This time, he wanted to try it on his own. And, lo, he went down the slide a bazillion times! We also stomped through some creeks and went through the tunnel to the rose garden and so on. Good clean exhausting fun.

Once we got home, I wrote some more, completing the falling action and figuring out how to fix my crazy broken climax, then going back and writing that. So that's the draft of my 21st complete novel. It'll be my 16th published novel in seven years. (I've got four trunk books that will never see print, and another that's still out on submission. I have a few books under pseudonyms that aren't listed on my website. My bibliography is best described as "it's complicated.") It's been a busy almost-decade.

I also read Stephen King's The Wind Through the Keyhole, which is very enjoyable. It's The Dark Tower 4.5, an interstitial book that has no bearing whatsoever on the series as a whole, and it's actually a story-within-a-story-within-a-story. The most deeply-nested story is an awesome standalone short novel, and the rest of it is pretty pleasant too.

So that was my weekend. Not too bad at all.

Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there.

Reading in Berkeley this Sunday

I'll be reading and blathering at Other Change of Hobbit (my neighborhood bookstore, and one of the great specialty science fiction shops around) this Sunday, from 4-6 p.m., with Claude Lalumière and Camille Alexa. (Other people are reading from 2-4, as you can see if you go to the website — it's an all-afternoon extravaganza!)

Other Change has had some financial problems lately — they were closed for the past few months — so this event is meant to bring in some traffic and help them keep the doors open. Please come! Tell your friends. They have great books (new and used) and cute cats. What more can you ask?

Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there.

Venom In Her Veins Release Day

Happy Book Day to me! My Dungeons and Dragons/Forgotten Realms novel Venom In Her Veins is now available for sale.



Buy it at Powell's

Or Barnes & Noble

Or at Amazon

Or the indie store of your choice.

Just buy it! It's one of the best books I've written, I think, and has archery, dark caves, snake people, insane kidnappers, cool monsters, drug cartels, manipulative devil-folk, family bonding, big axes, magic armor, meddling gods, the question of nature vs. nurture, heroism, sacrifice, and a villain called the Slime King.

Grim Tides Cover Art

The week in Los Angeles was a rousing success. I wrote 42,000 words in six days. I'm not sure if that's a personal record or not, but it's definitely up there. (I didn't write on Saturday during the train ride home, confining myself to reading and watching cartoons and staring at the passing scenery. I needed a break.) Jenn Reese and Chris East are the best hosts ever.

But enough about the next novel! Let's talk about the last novel!

I just got the artwork for my Marla Mason novel Grim Tides, painted by Lindsey Look. This image will appear on the cover of the print version, and the audio versions from Audible (I think), and the e-book version, once I get some text on it. It'll likely be on the bookmarks too.

Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there.

La La La

I am in Los Angeles! (And have been here since around 8:30 on Sunday evening, when my train, the Coast Starlight, rolled into town.) I am safely and cozily ensconced in the home of my friends, writer supercouple Jenn Reese and Chris East. (Jenn's new book Above World is available for sale now, so go buy it!.)

They kindly agreed to let me hide out in their house for a week so I could obsessively focus on getting some words down on a work-for-hire novel I'm doing under a short deadline. I'm hoping to get the novel halfway drafted, which seems doable. Sunday through Wednesday I managed a total of just over 25,000 words, and I've got today, tomorrow, and Saturday on the train to produce more. It's going well, I'm having fun, and etc.

I can't write all the time, of course, so there's been a bit of socializing and reading and introducing Jenn to the wonders of Adventure Time. So far there's only been a single day where I stayed in the apartment without venturing outside. I've had a couple of nice meals with Jenn, and we might go see a movie, and I'll do dinner with both Jenn and Chris on Friday. (I catch the train back to Berkeley on Saturday morning.)

I'm more than halfway done with my writerly retreat. Sad! But also okay, since I miss my wife and kid terribly. This is Thursday, which is usually my day off to spend with my kid, and instead, he's in preschool. It'll be good to see my family again. Especially if I can have 30+ thousand words of a novel behind me.

Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there.

Epic! Journey!

Since I'm going to be gone for a week starting Sunday, I decided to give my son a more-than-usually-epic Thursday. Now, Thursday is generally my day off from the day job and my kid's day off from preschool, our "River-Daddy Day," but we usually content ourselves with hitting the library and the playground and running some errands — fun enough, but not fun enough to make up for a week of fatherlessness. So!

The boy loves boats. He's ridden on the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco exactly once, ages ago, and still talks about it. So after a morning spent sculpting with play doh, we got our things together and took the train over to downtown Oakland. From there we strolled down to the waterfront and looked at the water for fifteen minutes or so until the ferry arrived. The kid was an ecstatic bundle of grins.

The boat ride is really too short for his taste, only about half an hour, but he enjoyed it immensely. He'd been asking me that morning, rather randomly, if we could "Go to a playground with a big rocketship," and — what luck! — the Raygun Gothic Rocket Ship sculpture is in place right near the ferry building, so I took the kid over to check it out. (While he approved of the rocket, he was disappointed that he could not climb inside it or around on top of it.)

From there we wandered through the Farmer's Market (honey straws!), and over to the Vaillancourt Fountain (which to me always looked like a big giant heap o' tetanus, but River thought it was magical), where he got to walk on the stepping stones above the water, to his delight.

From there we wandered through a mall in vague search of food (no success — nothing the boy wanted to eat). He tired of vague perambulations and decided we needed more focus in our life, so we walked up to Columbus Ave and started going north, toward a playground and points beyond. We grabbed a couple slices of pizza at the little hole-in-the-wall pizza joint by City Lights Books. River marveled at the TransAmerica pyramid and (slightly less at) Coit Tower.

We dodged tourists for a while (I actually have nothing against tourists, as I am often a tourist myself, but they do tend to stand in bewildered clumps in the middle of sidewalks. Our stroller needs a cowcatcher), then found a playground. River insisted on playing, even though I knew there was a bigger more awesome playground a few blocks farther along — but it worked out, because he quickly bonded with a little girl, and they had a marvelous time running around together.

After he was playgrounded-out, we continued walking another mile or so up to Aquatic Park (not to be confused with the identically-named Aquatic Park in Berkeley, where we also go sometimes). River quickly divested himself of shoes and socks and got his pants rolled up so he could go wade in the bay surf.

Have I mentioned the weather was gorgeous? Temps in the '70s, gentle breezes, no ice wind, no fog, beautiful sun. I lounged on the steps and watched the kid dabble his toes in the water. (He met a couple of brothers from Seattle just a bit older than him, and they played together wonderfully for an hour.)

I could have stayed for another two hours, honestly, it was so pleasant… but wrestling the giant stroller onto a train in the crush of rush hour didn't appeal, so around 4 o'clock I changed him into dry clothes and we headed south again for a BART station. It wasn't too crowded, and we both got seats. River snuggled contentedly against me on the ride home.

Then I made asparagus-potato soup and drank a beer and collapsed and got up again so I could give him a bath and put him to bed and wrote this.

A good day, but wow, I'm tired. Then again, walking 5+ miles (much of it pushing a stroller) will tend to wear one out…

Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there.

Movie Night! Tonight!

The short film Impossible Dreams, based on my Hugo-winning story of the same name, is screening tonight in San Francisco as part of SF in SF! Here's where and when:

The Variety Preview Room

582 Market St. @ Montgomery

1st floor of The Hobart Bldg.

Doors Open 6:00PM

Film starts: 7:00PM

Free Popcorn!

Just take BART to Montgomery if you don't want the hassle of finding parking. I'll do a ten- or fifteen-minute intro about the story and the movie (which is itself only 20 minutes long). The short film will be followed by the Harlan Ellison documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth. I hope to see lots of you locals there. (And, you know, anyone farther away who feels like jumping on a plane.) There's a cash bar. Donations are welcome at the door ($5-$10 suggested), and benefit the Variety Children's Charity of Northern California.

My wife and I will likely slip out during the Ellison movie to get some dinner, since we won't have time to eat before the event, so if you want to talk to me, captivate me beforehand!

Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there.

Scientific Romance Redux

I wrote this poem for my wife on Valentine's Day two years ago. The problem is, I don't think I'll ever write a better Valentine's Day poem (though I'll keep trying). But for all you lovers (and lovers of science fiction) here it is again:

Scientific Romance

If starship travel from our

Earth to some far

star and back again

at velocities approaching the speed

of light made you younger than me

due to the relativistic effects

of time dilation,

I'd show up on your doorstep hoping

you'd developed a thing for older men,

and I'd ask you to show me everything you

learned to pass the time

out there in the endless void

of night.

If we were the sole survivors

of a zombie apocalypse

and you were bitten and transformed

into a walking corpse

I wouldn't even pick up my

assault shotgun,

I'd just let you take a bite

out of me, because I'd rather be

undead forever

with you

than alive alone

without you.

If I had a time machine, I'd go back

to the days of your youth

to see how you became the someone

I love so much today, and then

I'd return to the moment we first met

just so I could see my own face

when I saw your face

for the first time,

and okay,

I'd probably travel to the time

when we were a young couple

and try to get a three-way

going. I never understood

why more time travelers don't do

that sort of thing.

If the alien invaders come

and hover in stern judgment

over our cities, trying to decide

whether to invite us to the Galactic

Federation of Confederated

Galaxies or if instead

a little genocide is called for,

I think our love could be a powerful

argument for the continued preservation

of humanity in general, or at least,

of you and me

in particular.

If we were captives together

in an alien zoo, I'd try to make

the best of it, cultivate a streak

of xeno-exhibitionism,

waggle my eyebrows, and make jokes

about breeding in captivity.

If I became lost in

the multiverse, exploring

infinite parallel dimensions, my

only criterion for settling

down somewhere would be

whether or not I could find you:

and once I did, I'd stay there even

if it was a world ruled by giant spider-

priests, or one where killer

robots won the Civil War, or even

a world where sandwiches

were never invented, because

you'd make it the best

of all possible worlds anyway,

and plus

we could get rich

off inventing sandwiches.

If the Singularity comes

and we upload our minds into a vast

computer simulation of near-infinite

complexity and perfect resolution,

and become capable of experiencing any

fantasy, exploring worlds bound only

by our enhanced imaginations,

I'd still spend at least 1021 processing

cycles a month just sitting

on a virtual couch with you,

watching virtual TV,

eating virtual fajitas,

holding virtual hands,

and wishing

for the real thing.

Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there.

Start Your Morning with a Giant Eel

It's Monday, and that means: a new chapter of Grim Tides! Chapter 3: "A Conversation with Koona." It's about Marla and Rondeau visiting an oracle. I love oracles. Go, read, tell your friends if you like it, etc.

One nice thing about doing a serial novel is it encourages me to update here at least weekly.

In other linkages:

I tend to link mostly to book or magazine-related Kickstarter projects, but I do have other passions, like gourmet popsicles: so consider supporting the Little Bee Pops kickstarter. A delicious small business!

My wife Heather Shaw, who used to edit erotica magazine Fishnet, tells me that one of the authors she frequently published there has an erotica e-book collection for sale: Four Fantasies by Matthew Addison. (The cover features, like, stockings and part of a butt, so don't click if you're someplace where viewing such things is a problem.) Apparently it's hardcore and literary with some fantasy elements, so if that's your boat, go float it.

Writing:

I broke 75K on my current novel-in-progress on Sunday. (I can't tell you much about the book; it's pseudonymous, but I may be able to out myself as the author in the future.) Another eight (or maybe ten or twelve) thousand words will finish off the first draft, I think, so it should be a book this week! Of course, it's an unusually messy book, but I'll have the rest of the month to clean it up.

Life:

A wonderful weekend! Our friend Anne came over and hung out with us on Saturday, out in the back yard (the weather is essentially summer-like here, it's bizarre), then stayed for dinner. That was great fun. On Sunday morning, I took the kid out to a playground, where he rode his tricycle in furious Mister Toad style, and we played chase (which is like tag but less, uh, formal?) and played in the sandbox. Afterward we encountered some local kids with a lemonade stand. (Yeah, in January. See above re: summerlike.) The boy was just captivated by the notion of having a lemonade stand, so his mom helped him make lemonade in the afternoon, and we played lemonade stand in the kitchen. (Me: "Can I have some lemonade?" Him: "It costs money." Me: "Here's a nickel." Him: "No. 75 cents.")

Beautiful weather, good friends, time with my wife and kid, and about 9,000 words of writing. That's pretty much all I want out of any weekend ever.

Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there.

2011 Was

I am a great fan of the symbolic. For whatever reason, the symbolism of New Year's — an arbitrary moment chosen to begin anew — is profoundly powerful for me. A year is a good unit of time: short enough to be measurable and memorable, but long enough to get a sense of trends and developments. It's a time to make course-corrections, and to see if my life is where I'd like it to be — and, if not, to figure out what actions are within my power to bring my dream life into line with my real life. (Of course, there's no fighting the external and the unexpected, and conversely, no use fretting over such things: I do my best these days to worry about things I can, loosely speaking, actually control. Or at least influence.) It's also a time to celebrate achievements, assuming I had any.

So, as always, a look back at my past year, with a particular emphasis on writing stuff, because that's where most of my energy goes.

I wrote about 370,000 words of fiction and non-fiction (that doesn't count blog posts, e-mails, or the thousands of words I write monthly at my day job — just books, stories, articles, reviews, etc.).

Most of those words went toward novels. I completed a pseudonymous work-for-hire novel in the spring; wrote the entirety of my roleplaying game tie-in City of the Fallen Sky over the summer; completed my new Marla Mason novel Grim Tides this fall; and have written about 50,000 words of another pseudonymous book this winter (though this one is original, not a tie-in or work-for-hire). I didn't quite manage to write four entire novels this year, but it was a near thing. I also did revisions and copyedits and so on for various novels written previously, including Venom In Her Veins and Briarpatch.

I wrote some short stories which I subsequently sold: "The Carved Forest" (forthcoming in an anthology); "We Go Back" (an original commissioned by Escape Pod); "The Secret Beach" (published in Fantasy Magazine); "Ill Met in Ulthar" (forthcoming in an anthology); and "A Fairy Tale of Oakland" (an audio original commissioned by Drabblecast.) With my wife Heather Shaw I co-wrote "The Ghost of Christmas Possible" (audio original commissioned by Podcastle.) I also wrote "The Haunted Mech Suit," which isn't sold yet, but is out on submission.

I sold other books, too, most notably an anthology called Rags and Bones, co-edited with the marvelous Melissa Marr, which should be in bookstores in 2013. I also sold audio rights to my self-published novels Broken Mirrors and Bone Shop to Audible, which is awesome — especially since they commissioned original covers by Daniel Dos Santos! Also sold a couple of those work-for-hire books. Maybe my best year ever in terms of books sold. (I tell you, my career has really taken off ever since it crashed and burned after I got dumped by Random House. I've been really busy since I became a failure.)

I published a few things this year. The big one was my novel Briarpatch, which has been very well-received critically, to my great pleasure. (The book means a lot to me.) In addition to the stories mentioned above, I also published "A Void Wrapped in a Smile" in Basement Stories; "Antiquities and Tangibles" in Subterranean; "The Alphabet Quartet" (suite of 26 flash stories in collaboration with Jenn Reese, Heather Shaw, and Greg van Eekhout) in Daily Science Fiction, published one per week from January – June 2011; "Hell's Lottery" in Bull Spec; "Little Better than a Beast" in Those Who Fight Monsters; "Shark's Teeth" in Daily Science Fiction; and "Our Stars, Our Selves" in Welcome to Bordertown (that was kind of a dream come true, as I loved the Bordertown series as a teen). My poem "Lion Heart" appeared at Apex magazine — the first poem I've published in ages.

A bunch of my stories were reprinted (or rather published in audio form) at assorted podcasts — "Terrible Ones," "On a Blade of Grass," "Hart and Boot", "From Around Here"… others I'm forgetting, too, I suspect. Podcasts have become a huge part of my career, and many of them reach audiences larger than those of the major genre magazines. The future is an odd and wonderful place. I sold some print reprints, too, though not as many.

Remarkably, there were even developments at my day job (I'm senior editor at A Certain Magazine). I wrote a few book reviews, after a couple of years of not reading much SF/Fantasy at all. I conducted a couple of interviews for A Certain Magazine, solo, which I'd never done before — I sat down with Nick Mamatas, and with Sarah Pinborough. (You'll be able to read both interviews next year.)

I ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund my Marla Mason novel Grim Tides, with a goal of raising $6,000. I raised over $11,000. My fans are the greatest people in the world.

I got into self-publishing some more, putting up a bunch of single stories for sale in various e-book formats, mostly. Thanks to Jenn Reese of Tiger Bright Studios for doing a bunch of awesome e-book covers for me. Keep her in mind for your cover designing needs; she rocks. At my agent's prompting, I looked into the ACX audiobook exchange, where authors can connect with producers and narrators to create audiobooks, and we made a deal with the amazing Mary Robinette Kowal to narrate an audiobook of my debut novel The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl. With luck, it'll be available next year.

I got to see the first film adaptation of my work, a short film by Israeli director Shir Comay, based on my story "Impossible Dreams" (it's fantastic). I optioned my short story "Morris and the Machine" to an indie filmmaker. My beloved producer and friend Anne Rodman renewed her option on the Marla Mason series (and those wheels are still turning, though Hollywood is a strange and vast place full of dangers, so I expect nothing).

Okay, okay, non-writing things!

My three-year-old became a four-year-old. Fatherhood continues to be pretty awesome. His glaucoma is under control — and he's old enough now that he doesn't have to be anesthetized in order to have his eye pressures checked, which is huge and good. He got stitches for the first time, after getting a cut over his eye. (He's precocious; I was seven years old before I got stitches.) The kid swam with dolphins! He learned to count to 100! He can spell his name! He is generally fantastic. Such a great kid. One of the best parts of my life.

My wife started working full-time at A Certain Magazine (as a bookkeeper, mostly, though like everyone there, she does various things). Having her at my workplace is awesome, and our financial terror has gone from constant to intermittent (mostly around quarterly tax payment time), which is a nice change.

I did a bit of traveling. I went with my wife and kid to Southern California, as I was invited to be on a panel at the Literary Orange festival at UC Irvine. (The opportunity to take the boy to Disneyland, accompanied by our dear friend Jenn, may also have been a factor in our decision to make the trip.) I went to Worldcon in Reno, and later to the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, both with my wife and kid. I got to meet a few of my editors (James Sutter and Fleetwood Robbins and Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi) in person, which was great.

I took a week-long family vacation to the Big Island of Hawai'i (though it was partly a research trip for Grim Tides), and it was marvelous, except for my kid's ear infection and my wife's strep throat…. Other fun things that involved leaving my house: the Solano Stroll (my kid loves a street fair); the Eat Real Festival (my favorite annual excuse to wander around eating everything that looks yummy); reading at the LitCrawl portion of LitQuake; doing a talk about self-publishing and crowdfunding for a college class; a couple of memorable special occasion dinners with my adorable wife.

I sure like video games. I started the year playing a ton of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and the end of the year playing lots of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. It's pretty much the perfect series for my tastes as a gamer. Portal 2 was also super fun.

I got seriously into making popsicles over the summer. Both boozy popsicles and non-boozy. My chocolate popsicles are awesome. This is not arrogance; this is merely fact.

I read around 175 books (that's approximate — I lost my list of books read when my computer hard drive dramatically died. Didn't have a backup of that file for some reason, so I'm reconstructing from my library account history, etc.) That sounds like a lot, but it includes a ton of comic collections/graphic novels, which I read fast, and more re-reads than usual…. I had some nostalgia for old favorite books this year, and dipped back into some Stephen King and Terry Pratchett favorites.

All in all: a pretty great year. Too much work, and not enough play, but I'll keep adjusting the ratios.

Lately, my kid has been talking a lot about what he wants to be when he grows up. He's asked me what I wanted to be when I was a kid, and I told him: a writer. Which is what I am, despite taking a few knocks along the way. I really am living my dream life. Oh, there are bad particulars — I've had some unpleasant experiences this year in the publishing business (some at least partly my fault, some the fault of others), and there have been illnesses I could have done without, and certainly a fair share of simply bad days — but the overall arc of my life is moving in a good direction. My usual wish at the beginning of a new year is a line from that old Counting Crows song: "Maybe this year will be better than the last." But this time, I'd be happy if this year is merely as good as the last.

Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there.