Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in tim_pratt's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Thursday, May 24th, 2012
7:37 am	Ask Me Anything at Reddit Today Fantasy Reddit is hosting an Ask Me Anything with me today. (Not familiar with AMAs? Basically, you ask questions throughout the day, and for a couple of hours this evening I will answer as many as I can.) Now’s your chance to ask all those questions you’ve had burning deep in your brain. Or to baffle me with koans. Come play, and tell your friends, and so on. Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 14th, 2012
9:57 am	Curvaceous The Impossible Dreams screening on Saturday was good! Pretty well attended for a mid-afternoon weekend non-kid-related library function (meaning that, counting me and the librarian, there was an attendance into the double digits — nothing like the dozens of attendees the typical children’s program event gets. I should’ve added some basic clowning or magic to my act!). I showed the movie and did a Q&A (a good crowd, with lots of good questions). Pretty fun. Afterward I got a beer with a couple of friends, then came home. We’d anticipated nice weather, so Heather and I had a few people over for a cook out, but it turned out be cloudy and cool. (Curse you, weather shamans, and your flawed precognition!) Still: great mounds of grilled meat were prepared, and rare beers were consumed, and much conversation was held, lo deep into the evening. Sunday was mother’s day, so River and I let Heather sleep in, and then gave her gifts, and took her out for lunch. Then I gave Heather the greatest mother’s day gift of all: freedom from being a mother. I took the kid on a train ride into San Francisco to fulfill one of his great dreams: to ride all the curved escalators at the Westfield mall. (I know. One of his favorite things lately is watching youtube videos of people riding the world’s longest escalators.) So we rode a great many escalators numerous times, bought some legos, and played some video games at the arcade. (By which I mean, he sat in front of a video game and pushed buttons and turned the steering wheel. He’s four. He doesn’t care if he’s really playing, at this point.) A fun weekend… but I’m now even farther behind on my writing. Too much fun. I have to step things up this week. All play and no work makes for a blown deadline. Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
9:41 am	Impossible Dreams Screening This Saturday! There’s a screening of the short film version of Impossible Dreams this Saturday, at 3 p.m., at the Temescal branch of the Oakland Public Library. If you are local, please come — it’s a really cool film. (It’s different enough from my story that I can say that without any unsavory arrogance.) Here are some more details, and the library address, and all that. I’ll introduce the movie, show the movie, and then I’ll take questions, talk a little about writing and other East Bay writers, and so on. It’ll be fun. Here’s the trailer: It’s 21 minutes of romantic science-fictional weirdness; with kazoo. Don’t miss it! (And for those who attended the SF in SF screening, where we had technical difficulties: I’m 99% sure we won’t have any such difficulties this time. We are taking steps and having backup plans. It should be good.) Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
8:23 am	The Deep Woods Good news! I can now announce that my fantasy novella/short novel The Deep Woods will be published by the great British small press PS Publishing. I’ve been a fan of PS since I first read Geoff Ryman’s V.A.O. a decade ago, and have been hugely impressed by their publications over the years — especially their dedication to publishing novellas, which are one of my favorite forms in the genre, but hard to find homes for. I’ve wanted to work with them for ages, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity. This book is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written, and I’m glad it’s going to see print, especially since PS can be relied upon to produce beautiful editions. The book should be out in spring 2014. In other book news, the e-book of my science fantasy adventure The Nex is still free to download at Amazon, but this is the last day. Tell your friends. Unless they hate free stuff. Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. (Comment on this)
Friday, May 4th, 2012
9:17 am	The Nex: Now Free! Yes, I know, my novel The Nex (a weird short science fantasy where every chapter provides either a new spectacle or a new revelation) has been free, posted in its entirety on my website. But now you e-book readers can get it in handy Kindle format for free too, at least for the next few days. (It’s my lowest-selling e-book, which saddens me, as I love it. So I am experimenting with promotional possibilities.) Get The Nex for free! And if you like The Nex, you might consider the sort-of-a-sequel short story “We Go Back” (also free to read) with the same narrator, and a short story about supporting characters Howlaa and Wisp, “Dream Engine (likewise free!). Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 1st, 2012
8:07 am	The PrattShaw B&B Grim Tides is available in print! (Once I get copies from the publisher, I’ll sign and send them to the Kickstarter backers who donated at the appropriate levels.) *** I have been super social lately, which is odd for me, as I am a hermitlike recluse. It helped that many of the visitors came to my house, instead of requiring me to emerge from my shell. There was Jenn Reese’s visit a couple of weeks ago, when she stayed over with my family while doing Bay Area events for her new book Above World. That was awesome — we got to hang out a fair bit in my living room, have brunch, wander around Berkeley, play board games, go out to dinner after her reading, and so on. Truly marvelous. I don’t see her nearly enough. We tried to convince her to uproot her life and move to Berkeley, with inconclusive results. It will be an ongoing project of persuasion. Then this past weekend we had a whirlwind visit from my oldest friend Scott, his wife Lynne (also an old friend — I am startled to realize I’ve known her going on 12 years, though it’s nothing to the 27 or so years I’ve known Scott), and their adorable son Graham, who is a year younger than my own kid. They were visiting for a wedding, so they crashed at our place, and we entertained their kid while they attended the ceremony. We also managed to drink about four bottles of wine, to sit in the backyard enjoying the sunshine, to stay up too late, to have a nice brunch, and to hang out at a playground with them. But as good as it was to see the grown-ups, the best part was how amazingly well Graham and River hit it off. I’ve never seen my son take to another kid that quickly, and River’s a pretty friendly guy. They played together beautifully, and just seemed to endlessly delight one another. I’m so sad they live so far apart. I hope we can get them together more often in coming years. Scott and Lynne and Graham had to depart pre-dawn on Sunday to catch a flight back home. But that was not the end of my socializing! Oh no! Heather had a social engagement on Sunday afternoon, so River and I hopped in the car to visit my friends Chris and Maggie (and their houseguest An) at their place in Moss Beach. The drive was kind of boring for the boy at first (lots of traffic on the bridge, my iPod spontaneously erased itself so no good music), but once we got south of San Francisco and started going down Highway 1 he liked it — seeing the ocean and the cliffs. The visit was lovely. River was initially scared of their dog — as he will tell anyone and everyone, “I’m scared of big dogs, I only like little dogs” — but he warmed up to her later, and even got his fingers licked. We all hiked over to the beach, so River could look at tide pools, play in the sand, examine shells, wade in the surf, look at distant slumbering seals and express skepticism that they were seals, and throw rocks into holes in the sea cliffs. He was sufficiently entertained that the rest of us were able to exchange a few words of actual grown-up human conversation. It was very generous of them all to let their afternoon be shaped by the whims of a four-year-old. We went back for dinner, wonderful pasta and chicken with cream sauce, and fresh bread (a meal designed to be picky-preschooler-friendly; a very kind gesture). Also: very good sangria. I would have had a lot more than one glass if I hadn’t needed to drive home by River’s bedtime. And we talked! Largely about the books of Stephen King and, by extension, about writing. We had the ritual Exchange of Books that writers so often do when they visit one another, and an additional exchange of baked goods, before the boy and I had to depart. Alas! We got home, I transferred my sleeping son from the car to the bed, and Heather and I spent a wonderful rest of the night together. It’s been a fabulous couple of weeks. Normally being so social exhausts me, but it turns out, when it’s people I feel sufficiently comfortable around, it’s actually quite pleasant to interact with other humans! Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 19th, 2012
8:22 am	Jenn and Mary Deadline Season continues apace! But I get to take a little break from work this weekend to hang out with Jenn Reese, who’s going to be in Berkeley for her Above World book tour. She’ll be reading at Mrs. Dalloway’s on College Age. this Friday night at 7, and she’ll be at the “Celebration of Children’s Literature and Literacy” on the UC Berkeley campus on Saturday. (She will also spend a certain amount of time asleep on the couch in my house, but that part isn’t open to the public.) The wonderfully talented M.K. Hobson (Mary to her friends) is running a Kickstarter to publish her novel The Warlock’s Curse, third in her Veneficas Americana historical fantasy series (the first two were published by Spectra, which longtime readers may recall is the same imprint that dropped my fantasy series after four books — we had the same editor, too, so I feel a kinship). I’ve published Mary (back when I co-edited a ‘zine), and have admired her writing for years. Frankly I am disappointed in us, as a culture and a society, because this Kickstarter wasn’t funded a day after it went up, so go over and lend your support! Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 12th, 2012
8:36 am	Twofer Tuesday So it turns out that with the day job, fatherhood, husbandhood, and the busiest Deadline Season of my life, this journal is one of the things that gets left undone. (Other things include: basic hygiene, exercise, cleaning my house.) I am managing to twitter near-incessantly, so if you’re simply dying for my company, follow me at twitter.com/timpratt. I had a pretty great day on Tuesday. In the morning, I got word that I’d sold a short novel/long novella to a publisher I’ve wanted to work with forever. I don’t want to be more specific until I have a contract (lest it turn out to be a cruel, cruel joke), but I will say it’s a book I loooove and am so happy to send off to a good home. That means I have at least one book of fiction coming out in 2014, so that’s nice. Later on Tuesday, another of my editors got in touch to ask if I’d be interested in writing a sequel to one of my books, to which I replied, “Yes, please,” so that will also likely see print in 2014, assuming all goes to plan. I’ve sold two stories on the same day before, and I’ve sold two books to the same publisher on the same day before, but I’ve never sold two books to two different publishers on the same day before. One of those little achievements it never occurred to me to even wish for. (Granted, “sold” is a bit of a stretch for the second one, since it was more of a, “Hey, are you interested in doing this?” and won’t even see a contract for many a month, but I’m counting it anyway.) I celebrated with ice cream. Perhaps I should stop celebrating things with food. But it’s the habit of a lifetime. Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 26th, 2012
8:08 am	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. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012
10:43 am	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. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 6th, 2012
9:39 am	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. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 5th, 2012
11:43 am	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. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 1st, 2012
9:31 am	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. (Comment on this)
Friday, February 24th, 2012
8:00 am	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. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
9:43 am	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. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
9:09 am	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. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 9th, 2012
9:34 am	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. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 31st, 2011
8:00 am	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. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
10:23 am	Hark! Christmas Stories! I have two holiday stories for your holiday listenings! In audio even! The first, “The Ghost of Christmas Possible,” is co-written with my lovely wife Heather Shaw, and is online at PodCastle. This is our “A Christmas Carol”/Ghost-finder mash-up, in which Ebenezer Scrooge seeks the assistance of a young occultist to save him from the Three Spirits. The second is “A Fairy Tale of Oakland,” written solo, and online now at The Drabblecast. Technically, it is not a Xmas story. It’s actually a Krampusnacht story. Go, listen, may your hearts be merry and bright! Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, December 12th, 2011
11:03 am	Twelve! Twelve! I turned 35 today, thus falling out of the coveted 18-34 demographic age bracket, which means my opinions are no longer of interest. I expect video games, film, and all other media to begin sliding away from my preferences immediately. Drat. My wonderful wife took me out to Pizzaiolo, one of my favorite restaurants, on Friday night, and we feasted and made merry. And I drank bourbon. She made me a cherry pie last night, served with great heaping scoops of vanilla bean ice cream. Why pie? Because I looooove cherries, and I don’t really like cake. Carrot cake is okay, but mostly because of the cream cheese frosting. Cake is just… sweet bread. Eh. It’s not offensive or anything, but neither does it delight me. Generally speaking, creamy is my vice, not sweet — fat yay, sugar meh. So, yay for ice cream! Tonight, my actual birthday, I’ll open some presents and eat a cheeseburger and probably watch a horror movie. I’m a simple man of simple hedonic tastes. Saturday, while my wife and kid went to a party, I neglected fun in favor of work. I dove back into my half-written novel-in-progress, which stalled utterly while I was on vacation. (It was an intentional stall, but I found it difficult to get back on track.) I had, fortunately, figured out my plot while on vacation, though now I have to do some retrofitting to make that plot actually work out. I got to write an attempted murder scene, at least, so that was fun. And soon I get to write about tentacled river monsters. I’m still a bit panicked about getting it all done by the February 1 deadline, but I think it’ll work. I know where I’m going now, at least. Sunday was more fun. I took the boy out for about five hours in the morning, just wandering around Berkeley, doing some Christmas shopping, going to the playground, eating cinnamon rolls at the coffee shop, eating ice cream cones in the cold wind, and so on. I love spending time with that little guy. I did some work on the novel, too, figuring out how to hack apart the structure to insert a new section early on. For the rest of the night… I pretty much watched TV and played Skyrim. It was awesome. Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. (3 Comments |Comment on this)