Matt Ruff's Blog, page 32

I’m 48 today

Still just .193 on Pluto.

Summer in Lovecraft Country

Yes, I’m still alive. Busy writing, and nearing the halfway point of the new novel, at least in terms of word count—because of the modular nature of the story I’ve been jumping back and forth a lot as I figure out various plot points. This week I’m focused on a section called “Hippolyta Disturbs the Universe,” in which one of my characters pokes around in an abandoned astronomical observatory that is neither abandoned nor (merely) an observatory; earlier this month I worked on “Abdullah’s Book,” in which the Prince Hall Freemasons try to keep an arcane text from falling into the wrong hands.

In other news:

* The Mirage is a finalist for the Sidewise Award for Best Long-Form Alternate History. The winner will be announced this Saturday. Wish me luck!

* I watched season one of Orange is the New Black, which is as good as you’ve heard. Also good: the first three seasons of Damages (some great performances and a really interesting story structure) and 42 (much better than I’d been expecting from the trailer).

* Wilton Barnhardt, the author of Emma Who Saved My Life and Gospel, two of my favorite novels, is back with his first new book in fifteen years. Aimee Bender has a new book out, too.

* A great-great-great-grandson of Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian died last month at age 77. His Times obituary makes for interesting reading. Pitcairn Island, where he lived, is looking for new residents. But.

* “Due to the sheer size of the sloths, you must be at least 50″ tall and 80 lbs to participate in the ‘Sloth Immersion’ experience.”

The Bad Monkeys movie & TV rights are back on the market

That kitchen-timer ding you may have heard from the direction of L.A. last month was the sound of the existing Bad Monkeys television option expiring. The film and TV rights have now reverted to me and are once again available. If you should find yourself at a dinner party with Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Jane Espenson, Marti Noxon, and/or whoever was responsible for the Hannah McKay subplot on season 7 of Dexter, feel free to drop this into the conversation.

As always, if you’re interested in acquiring the rights yourself, the person to contact is my CAA agent, Matthew Snyder.

Also:

* I’m curious whether all the New York Times ads for Carl Hiaason’s latest novel will give my Monkeys a free publicity bump.

* If you’re a fan of Looper or Brick, you should check out writer/director Rian Johnson’s other film, The Brothers Bloom. (I’d put Johnson on my list of dream adapters for Bad Monkeys but he apparently only does original material, which I can’t argue with.)

* What Would Phoebe Do has an interesting series of posts about why certain subjects are better explored as fiction than in first-person essays. (Parts I, II, III, and IV.)

* Last Thursday’s link to this guinea pig armor auction was one of my most retweeted tweets ever. No surprise there.

The Mirage $1.99 ebook sale is ending soon

Just a reminder: The Mirage ebook is available for $1.99 from Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google. The sale runs through next Monday, June 3.

Iron Man 3

Lisa and I saw Iron Man 3 over the holiday weekend. Some quick (and mildly spoilery) thoughts:

“Nothing’s been the same since New York.”

* It was a lot of fun—much better than Iron Man 2—and a good end to the series, assuming, as both he and Gwyneth Paltrow have been hinting, that this is Robert Downey Jr.’s last non-Avengers turn in the suit.

* Obviously Marvel is going to want to continue to mint money make sequels, but RDJ is so integral to the character of Tony Stark that I don’t think swapping in another actor would work. Better they have him hand the suit off to someone else. The obvious choice would be Rhodey Rhodes, and if I’m not more enthusiastic about that idea, it’s only because the character as written so far has been pretty much Generic Black Sidekick. Don Cheadle’s great, though (if you haven’t seen House of Lies yet, do), and if they give him an actual backstory to work with, a War Machine/Iron Patriot movie could work.

* Pepper in the suit—and later, as the girl who was on fire—was a nice bit. (Did she get to keep her regenerative powers at the end, or did Tony “cure” her? The film seemed unclear about that.) Like a lot of geeks who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, I am predisposed to want to see women in power armor, so the idea of a Rescue spin-off intrigues me, but I don’t know if Gwyneth or the money people would really go for that. (What I’d really like to see is Jenette Goldstein in power armor, but good luck pitching that movie: “She’s a fiftysomething ex-Marine who runs a custom bra shop in L.A. and designs military hardware as a hobby…”)

* I wish they’d done more with Rebecca Hall’s character, Maya Hansen. She struck me as more of a plot device than a person, and her last-minute change of heart seemed like a contrivance—a pointless one, since it accomplished nothing.

* Nice finesse on the Mandarin, though.

German edition of The Mirage coming März 2014

A heads-up for my German fans who’ve been emailing to ask if and when The Mirage would be available in translation: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag has officially set publication for March 2014. The novel will be available in both hardcover and ebook editions.

Also:

* The American ebook of The Mirage is still on sale for $1.99.

* Just finished watching season 2 of The Borgias. If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, this is like the non-fantasy version, with Charles VIII’s army replacing the ice zombies and Machiavelli’s The Prince serving as the tie-in book. Really well done.

* Last Saturday was the 2013 championships for the Rat City Rollergirls. Grave Danger beat the Sockit Wenches 202-167 in a close-fought bout. But the best moment of the evening came during the mid-bout break, when Method of Madness proposed to Jalapeño Business. Jalapeño said yes, and the crowd went wild. This tops the previous coolest thing to happen off-track this season, Nancy Pearl’s Feb. 9 halftime appearance where she did a live reading of Where the Wild Things Are. Mazel tov to the happy couple!

The regular derby season is over, but the post-season bouts start next month, with visiting Montreal and London teams going up against the Rat City all stars. Full schedule is here.

* Cat font!

Want

They’re a rare golden variation of the Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombat, and yes, they’re real. (via @paleofuture)

The Mirage ebook just $1.99 this month

Breaking radio silence for a quick heads-up: The Mirage ebook is on sale for $1.99 this month at Amazon (where it’s part of their “100 Kindle Books for $3.99 or less” promotion), the iTunes store, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

In other news:

* As you’ve probably guessed from the lack of recent posts, I’m hard at work on Lovecraft Country. Long way to go yet, but so far all is well.

* Lisa and I watched Lincoln the other night. Daniel Day-Lewis is phenomenal, and Sally Field is great too in the handful of scenes they gave her, but otherwise we were underwhelmed. Beyond the obvious criticism—this is a film about the end of slavery in which black people serve only as bit players—it felt like Spielberg was trying to have it both ways, portraying Lincoln as a flesh-and-blood politician, as willing to engage in corruption as any other, while still hanging to the notion of Lincoln as a sainted, larger-than-life figure who of course transcends the moral judgments that apply to lesser Republicans: “When Lincoln does it, it’s not a crime.”

* Django Unchained, on the other hand, was great. (Yes, Kerry Washington needed more to do.) And now I really want to see the remake of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter starring Daniel Day-Lewis and written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Though Tarantino’s version would probably be Frederick Douglass: Vampire Hunter. Which I’d also be up for.

* A cat, a shark suit, a Roomba, and a duck. The Internet just keeps getting better.

My next novel will be Lovecraft Country

Since last summer I’ve been working on a new novel. I’ve finished about a quarter of the manuscript and have a rough outline of the rest, and last month I decided it was time to send it to my editor and see whether HarperCollins would commit to publishing it. The answer was a resounding yes, so now I know what I’m going to be doing for the next year and a half.

The novel is called Lovecraft Country. It’s a supernatural historical drama set in the 1950s. The protagonist is Atticus Turner, an African-American soldier just back from the Korean War. He comes home to Chicago and takes a job as a researcher for The Safe Negro Travel Guide, which lists and reviews hotels and restaurants that accept black customers. Atticus is also a pulp-fiction fan, and the novel describes how he and the members of his extended family get drawn into a series of real-life weird tales. These individual episodes fit into a larger arc story about a white-supremacist secret society that wants to use Atticus in its scheming.

My deadline for delivering the book is October of next year, which means it likely will be published in 2015 or early 2016. That sounds like a long time, but I think it’ll be worth the wait.

Fool on the Hill is back in stock

After the last printing of Fool on the Hill sold out, a series of technical problems—ball lightning, pandas, etc.—disrupted what is usually a seamless reorder process and led to the book being unavailable for the past several months. The kinks in the supply chain have finally been worked out, so the book is once again available online and from your local indie bookstore.

Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, last week The Economist blog posted a nice profile of me and my novels, here. Seer and protector of small children, c’est moi.