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

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Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
7:46 am	Grass Fire There was a fire in the apartment house across the street from us, night before last. The considerable commotion woke Heather up, and an hour later it woke me up (so we both attempted to tell the other about the fire in the morning, which was funny). It was in the building right across the street -- I could throw a tennis ball onto their fire escape from our balcony, and I could have jumped down onto the roof of the fire engine (though I would've probably broken a leg in the process, as it's four floors down. So I guess it's good I didn't.). It didn't look like a bad fire, and I couldn't figure out why hordes and hordes of cops hung out for like six hours after it was put out... but it turns out there were two pot farms in the building, on the sixth and seventh floors. Illegal wiring for the grow lights probably caused the fire. The growers, naturally, fled when they couldn't put the fire out themselves. Crazy shit, yo. I especially love how contemptuous the cops are of the pot-growing operations in the article I linked -- basically they say, "Eh, we've seen better." Life in the big city! *** It's my day off from A Certain Magazine (whee) and it's a fairly light work day... I have to take Flytrap 9 to be printed, and write some porn reviews, but that's it. I'll post a cover image and an order page for Flytrap sometime in the next couple of weeks. It's a pretty awesome issue. My agent likes my revised YA chapters, so the book is being sent off into the world to seek its fortune. Be good, little book! Call when you get work! I participated in the latest SF Mind Meld, about YA Books That Adults Will Like, Too. Check it out -- there are a lot of people who are way more knowledgeable than me answering the question, too. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 12th, 2008
2:56 pm	In the Grass Mother's Day Weekend was pretty fantastic! Saturday morning we rose and got brunch at the Blackberry Bistro. (A Mother's Day brunch for Heather... but a day early so we'd actually, you know, get seated in less than an hour.) We sat outside, sipped blackberry bellinis, ate good food (I had challah french toast with carmelized bananas...), and enjoyed the lovely weather. The Bistro is still pretty good, though it's gone downhill in the last few years -- I think there was a change in management or something. The food used to be perfect, and now there's always something wrong (I had a pretty severely underdone piece of bacon, this time, but it's always something), and there's a vague air of sloppiness that used to be absent -- dirty silverware, disorganized waitstaff, etc. Ah, well. Still yummy. After that we took River for his next swimming lesson, and I got in the pool with him and Heather this time. He seemed to enjoy it a lot, though he got a little grumpy at the end (he was hungry). He likes making bubbles by blowing in the water. It's so cute! Otherwise Saturday was pretty mellow. I did some grocery shopping and wrote an article for the Spectra Pulse magazine called "Heroines I Have Known" about inspirations for strong female characters. Otherwise it was just playing-with-baby, watching-TV, cooking-dinner type stuff. Sunday (after I wrote a couple-thousand-word short story called "On a Blade of Grass" about parasites and slow interstellar warfare -- my first story written this year) we had a Mother's Day picnic! Loaded up our basket with sandwiches and potato salad and macaroni salad and juice and potato chips and went to the little park across the street. We spread our blanket under a tree and had a nice lazy afternoon of eating and playing with the baby and watching boats on the lake. River tasted avocado for the first time, and sat on a tree branch (with support, of course), and rolled around. We got some awesome photos we'll post later this week. Eventually River fell asleep and Heather and I lounged about reading. A very sweet life. We're still working on Flytrap #9 layout -- Heather posted the table of contents, and it's an awesome issue. Just got the last piece of non-fiction I was waiting on, so it should be off to the printer in a couple days, and in our hands in time for Wiscon. Whee! (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 4th, 2008
4:47 pm	Riverboat Rich Horton has a nice review of Poison Sleep at SF Site. I'm quoted a bit in an article about writing and roleplaying at Clarkesworld: "Of Dice and Men". Yesterday, we took River for his first swimming lesson! Admittedly, as a six month old, it wasn't so much actually swimming as getting used to being in the water, but he totally loved it. He's a little froglet! We also wandered around the Berkeley Farmer's Market, ate ice cream, and strolled about. (Heather went dancing, too, Saturday night, but she can blog about that -- I stayed home with the baby and watched romantic comedies and read a novel manuscript by a friend.) Jenn came to visit today! She met the kid, and we all ambled around the lake to the Coffee Mill for brunch, then ambled back. An immensely pleasant morning/afternoon, and I only wish she could have stayed longer! (At least we'll see her again soon, at Wiscon.) I'm mostly better now, though my stomach is still very touchy. At least I got my appetite back. Heather's also feeling ill, so I suspect my horrendous bout of soul-destroying food poisoning was followed by whatever (far less dramatic, but still unpleasant) bug she's got, since at this point our symptoms are identical. Not a lucky week for the gastrointestinal integrity of the PrattShaw household. River seems okay so far, at least. I realize that I often post something like, "I have good news, but I cannot tell you what it is yet!" on this journal. I suspect that's probably annoying. So, um, I'm not going to do that this time. Admire my restraint! (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
1:09 pm	Home sick Food poisoning. (I think, since Heather isn't sick, and I'm the only one who ate the surf & turf burrito. Never again.) I cannot remember a time when I have been more miserable or wished more earnestly for the sweet release of death. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
2:15 pm	Behold The Pretty The cover for Dead Reign. Art by Dan Dos Santos, design by Jamie Warren-Youll. Click the image above for the big pretty -- including wraparound art! I'm so so so happy with this. (17 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 28th, 2008
11:00 am	Lottery When presented with a list of titles, the Powers That Be at Bantam liked Spell Games best, so that's the name of the fourth Marla Mason novel. (Thanks to Greg van Eekhout for suggesting it!) Yesterday was a good news day -- not only did I finish my book, but I sold a story, "Hell's Lottery," to Mort Castle's magazine Doorways. "Hell's Lottery" is a very weird horror(ish) story featuring games in the afterlife, a dead protagonist, and one of my favorite recurring villains, the demon Cosmocrator. Really devout readers will remember him from my story "Bleeding West," and he's also a big player in the YA novel I'm hoping to write. (Really devout Valentian Gnostics should be warned that I just liked the name Cosmocrator, and it's not the same entity who appears in your traditions under that name.) I did a phone interview with Jon Armstrong on Saturday (in my bathroom with the door shut, because there was some hideous loud machinery noise on the street that made it impossible to hear anywhere else in the house). Jon didn't hit me with the usual sort of questions, which was refreshing, and I hope it's interesting. Check out the interview at his podcast, "If You're Just Joining Us." (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
6:23 pm	Shelled Gahhhh thud am done. The fourth Marla Mason novel -- which is probably being called Shell Games, unless we go with one of the other shortlisted choices, which who the hell knows, we might -- is all revised-up and polished and shiny and zooming through the ether toward my editor's inbox. Yesterday I did the big changes. The novel got a whole extra chapter. New scenes scattered here and there. Etc. Yesterday, I did not leave the house. Today I line-edited. Did some in the morning, then took a long walk with wife and son around the lake, because it's a gorgeous weekend, and if I hadn't gone outside at all, I would have gone crazy. Of course, as a result, I had to work work work all afternoon while wife and son went off to join sister-in-law and nephew for goodtime fun. Sigh. But the book is finished -- unless and until my editor wants big changes, and then there's copyediting and proofreading, but I can stop thinking about it for a little while, which is nice. (Because now I can work on my YA proposal, whee.) Thanks to all my diligent and brilliant and wonderful first readers, who saved me from continuity errors, pointed out sloppy and nonsensical character motivations, chastised me for writing some flimsy pointless bits, and explained to me that birds don't have sphincter control. (That last bit from Jay Lake.) You'll all be lauded in the acknowledgments. Fly away, little book! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
8:03 am	Check Baby Jeff VanderMeer interviewed me for Amazon.com's Omnivoracious blog: "T.A. Pratt's Poison Sleep Might Just Infiltrate Your Dreams". Jeff asks good questions! Also got a good review from Romantic Times. I'm glad she mentioned Marla's sensible monster-fighting attire! Still working on my YA proposal, following some good feedback from my agent. It's gonna be cool. I'm very excited about it. Though this weekend the focus is revising Grift Sense (we're trying to figure out a new title for it -- it's narrowed down to a few good options!). The book is due May 1, but I'll try to turn it in on Monday. We shall see. Found out today that somebody has been passing fraudulent checks on my bank account. Sigh. Because of the Wonders of Technology I can even see images of the checks online -- which bear somebody else's name, address, and a stupid motorcycle background image, but have my account number. So now the account has been frozen, I'm getting new checks in 7-10 business days, yadda yadda yadda. Very frustrating, especially since I have to change all my online bill pay thingies, figure out a way to pay rent with no checks, etc. Fortunately, my checks to the IRS for taxes already cleared. Still, a pain in the ass. What's weird? Two bad checks were passed, both for under a hundred bucks, both used at grocery stores. Somebody made fake checks to buy groceries? I can't decide if that's sad, pathetic, or merely unambitious... I'm also resisting the urge to call up the phone number on the checks. The name and address and such are probably fake -- and if they're not, he's getting a visit from the cops soon anyway. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 24th, 2008
4:10 pm	In Which Things Are Great Let's see. Eric Marin is reprinting my story "The Frozen One" in his print anthology, The Lone Star Stories Reader, so that's cool. There's a great review of Poison Sleep up at The Green Man Review. Uh... I'm sure there other internettish things I was going to mention, but they've flown from my mind. Ah well. River's appointment/probable surgery has been postponed, so no doctor visit tomorrow. He had a cold last week, and they like to wait three weeks after a cough before they're willing to put a baby under anesthesia (can't intubate a coughing baby). This isn't as urgent an appointment as the others have been -- we were told it needed to be "a month or two" after his last surgery -- so we're trying to reschedule and not stressing about it too much. I've done a few phone and e-mail interviews lately, which will be popping up in Blog-o-pod-o-land at some point. One for Media Blvd. magazine a week or two ago, one for Mur Lafferty's I Should Be Writing podcast a couple nights ago, one with Jeff VanderMeer that will be appearing on his Amazon.com blog at some point. And I'm scheduled to chat this weekend with Jon Armstrong (author of stylishly weird SF novel Grey) for his podcast If You're Just Joining Us. I'll let you guys know when all that stuff appears online -- in the meantime, if you're looking for good stuff to read/listen to, you could do worse than to follow those links. I sure do talk about myself a lot lately. The phone interviews are fun. I sit on the balcony and look at the lake and blather. Not a bad life. I read Karen Joy Fowler's Wit's End, which was very cool. A Santa Cruz book! Makes me want to get back down there for a visit (even more so than usual). Wow. I'm in an awesome mood today. Don't even know why. Just good brain chemistry. Plus sunshine and the company of a happy baby. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
2:18 pm	Technopeasantry It's free fiction day again. Here's an old one, published in 2002 in Kinships, never collected or reprinted. The Man Who Loved the Moon ( Read on ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, April 21st, 2008
11:05 am	Eyes On The reading Saturday went well. River came along with Heather, and he was altogether adorable, as usual. I read the first chapter of Poison Sleep and a fight scene from Dead Reign (Marla vs. Death!) and answered some questions and signed some books. Afterward I met Ray Garton, who had a reading after mine, so that was cool! Even cooler: Heather and I got to go out on a date! Heather's mom babysat River while we went out for sushi and a movie. We ordered way too much fish, and actually had two little rolls left over that we physically couldn't finish. It was a fantastic meal. Then we went to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was cute and vulgar and funny (if, well, ultimately rather forgettable). Life chugs along. I've gotten a couple of responses to Grift Sense (or whatever it's called) from first readers, and the gist seems to be that the structure holds together pretty well but has a few rotten or splintered or squeaky planks that need to be repaired. Not as bad as I'd feared! The biggest thing is that one subplot is a little underpowered, and I need to make it have more bearing on the main plot if possible -- fortunately, I think I see a way to do that. I'm waiting to hear from a few more readers, and I'll revise it next weekend, and turn it in, and that'll be that. (Unless my editor wants big changes, which is always possible.) River gets a physical today, and if he checks out, he goes to the hospital on Friday for another bout of anesthesia and an eye pressure check. It's hard not to get depressed about that -- he gets so groggy and out of sorts for a day or two afterward, and it's sad to lose our happy bouncy baby, even for a little while. I just hate doing it to him. Plus, if his eyes still look bad, they'll probably operate again, which is too depressing to even contemplate. You'd think I'd be used to this by now... but I'm not. Don't know if I ever will be. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 20th, 2008
10:31 pm	Eight Is(n't) Enough Eight years ago today I wrote my first journal entry for Tropism. And here I am, still going strong, or at least limping along. A lot has changed in eight years. I moved from North Carolina to California. Met my wife and got married. Sold a few books. Started working for A Certain Magazine. Won some awards. Had a son. If I could go back in time eight years, to see myself and tell him what to expect, if I could, I would say, "Just you wait. Just you wait and see. It's really going to be something." (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 17th, 2008
9:06 pm	Reading on Saturday I kept forgetting to post this, and now it's the proverbial short notice, but what the hell: I'm doing a reading and signing for Poison Sleep this Saturday at 1 p.m. at Borderlands Books in San Francisco. Directions and details and suchlike here: www.borderlands-books.com. Come out! Hear me read! See my new haircut! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 14th, 2008
12:01 pm	Pure Genius Monday again. They do roll around quickly, don't they? The weekend was a nice balance of fun and work, perhaps tilting a little too far toward the latter on Sunday. On Saturday we went for a walk to the Farmer's Market in the morning, and hung out with Heather's mom and sister and our nephew. It was warm -- summery, even, and hot in direct sunlight -- and River sat in the grass for the first time, I think, ever. Later Susan and Matt came over, bringing their Wii, for an afternoon and evening of games, french fries, chili cheeseburgers, and other delightful things. That night Heather and I watched some episodes of The Unit and ate ice cream and, lo, life was fine. Sunday, though, I pretty much worked straight through. The end result is the first five chapters (about 11,000 words) of a YA, plus little thumbnail paragraphs about possible sequels (I did the outline for book 1 last week). I sent the whole package off to my agent, and now wait on tenterhooks with bated breath, etc., to see what she thinks. That 11K word day isn't as impressive as it seems. The process felt much more like revising than drafting, honestly, as I'm adapting my adult novel The Genius of Deceit into a different form. Now, it's essentially a page-one rewrite, since it's set in a different location, with a substantially rearranged plot, and because the main protagonist is the same only in name (and supernatural affliction). And yet, I know exactly how the book will end, I know what events to foreshadow, I know all the characters very well -- it doesn't feel like drafting because there isn't much of that sense of uncertainty and wild discovery that I experience when writing something new. But I'm enjoying the process -- at some point in the past few years I've started enjoying revising. It's just... different. If drafting is jazz improvisation, revising is carefully crafting a scale model of Mt. Rushmore with popsicle sticks. I'm also remembering how very much I love this story -- the antagonists, the cool shit, the neat reversals and revelations... I hope I sell the thing, because I'd love to finish this rewrite, and I'm even getting excited about my incredibly vague ideas for future books in the series! I'm taking a few days off from fiction. Maybe as much as two weeks, unless I get the itch to do a story. Between cranking away on Grift Sense and cranking away on this YA proposal, I'm feeling a little stretched thin. Time for a break -- at least until I have to revise Grift Sense near the end of the month. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
10:11 am	Books What Have Been Writ Haven't I done the all-the-books-I've-written meme before? Seems familiar, but perhaps t'was only in my head... Anyway, it's going around, so here we go. (Now with bonus unfinished juvenilia.) The Weirdo Zone, which I thought was a novel when I was in fourth grade, upon reflection, is a novelette at best. Oh, well. I was nine, what do you expect? (It had an unfinished sequel, The Time Lords , which is funny, since I never even heard of Doctor Who until years later). Still, it was my first "book," filling a wide-ruled yellow spiral-bound composition book. The Squad. I wrote probably 50,000 words of this in junior high, and it was, improbably, a war novel. I have no idea what possessed me to do such a thing, but I remember researching (read: looking at encyclopedia articles) about asymmetrical warfare and guerilla fighters (and watching John Wayne WWII movies on TV). It was about a Suicide Squad-esque group of misfits, special forces soldiers with severe mental problems -- MPD, psychogenic fugues, schizophrenia, pathological lying, etc. I think I was trying to write a version of the A-Team that consisted entirely of Howling Mad Murdocks. Shannon's God (1997). I took a hiatus of several years after junior high, focusing on short stories instead. The summer after my sophomore year in college I wrote Shannon's God, a contemporary fantasy about a college student who starts seeing monsters in her town and falls into a feud between two sorcerers (one of whom has delusions of grandeur and thinks he's actually God -- and he's the good wizard). Featured an assassin character named Walker who I'm rather fond of, though I pretty much rolled his best characteristics into my character Mr. Zealand from "Life in Stone" and Poison Sleep. Unsold, though I might recast the book as a young adult novel at some point, though it'll require a page one rewrite. The plot is pretty solid, and I like the antagonist and her toadies a lot. Raveling (1998). The summer after junior year I wrote this contemporary fantasy, a long, multiple-viewpoint novel about the daughters of a crazy god -- or, at least, a powerful entity from another universe which may as well be a god. He fathered half-human daughters, who have weird problems and fucked-up personal lives, and he wants to use them to take over the world. Some of his daughters are down with this. Some are opposed. Unsold, and it's written badly and the plot is a wreck, but I love the characters, and always think I'll return to the book sometime. We'll see. Infants and Tyrants (1998/99). Written over Christmas break in my senior year, it was a superhero novel, and the villain was a six-month old telekinetic genius (incredible intelligence, but the utter self-centeredness of an infant). His mother, a third-rate superheroine, has to stop him. It's wacky. The novel took place in the world of my story "Captain Fantasy and the Secret Masters," but set about fifty years earlier. I decided it's better as backstory than as a book of its own. The Genius of Deceit (1999). Contemporary fantasy with a basis in Hindu mythology. I wrote it in the fall after my senior year, right after Clarion, mostly to dispel any chance of a post-Clarion writing slump. Currently being rewritten as a young adult novel, which is going amazingly well, though I'm throwing out pretty much all the original words, of course. Ferocious Dreamers (2000). My first attempt at a novel about Marla Mason. Went completely off the rails about 55,000 words in. Unfinished, never will be finished. The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl (2001/02). I moved to Santa Cruz, fell in love with the place, and wrote a book about it. Also about cowboys, comics, art, and friendship. My first sold novel. Blood Engines (2003/04). The first Marla Mason urban fantasy novel, and the second novel I sold. The Light of a Better World (2005/06). Contemporary fantasy about bridges, suicidal ideation, cars, obsession, despair, bears, and the quest for transcendence. Unsold -- but, for various contractual reasons, I haven't tried to sell it yet. Hoping to place it this year. Poison Sleep (2006). Sequel to Blood Engines. I took all the good ideas from Ferocious Dreamers and put them into this book -- which amounted to, um, about three ideas. Ah, well. Third novel I sold, first book I ever sold on the basis of an outline and sample chapters (as opposed to a finished manuscript). Dead Reign (2007). Fourth novel I sold, sold on just an outline. Third in the Marla Mason series. Movie-style tagline: Marla vs. Death! Coming this November. Grift Sense (2007/08). Fifth novel sold. Marla's con artist brother comes to town. Coming in less than a year. There you have it. 13 books, only not really, since the first was not even remotely a book, and a couple of the others were never finished, so it's 10 books actually completed, five of them sold so far. Next project is.... unknown. If I sell the Genius of Deceit YA, I'll write that. If I sell more Marla books, I'll write those. If I don't sell anything, I'll write short stories, or another spec book. So we'll see. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
7:13 am	Incontinuity I sent The Novel Formerly Known As Grift Sense off to some first readers, then started reading it myself. Oof, the continuity errors. So many of them. It's like the book was written by somebody with short-term memory loss. I found one sentence that has a continuity error in it -- at the beginning I say a pair of boots are black, but by the end of the sentence, they're green. That's a symptom of writing the book mostly in 15-minute snippets, I think. Life continues to be... challenging. Due to a banking mishap (actually not even remotely my fault, for once), some money I should have access to now won't be available for withdrawal until the 16th of the month... which is great, except I'm sending a giant check to the US government on the 15th. Assuming all goes well, the funds will appear in my account on the 16th, before the government deposits the check... but it makes me antsy. I'm expecting about six or seven other checks for various story and article and freelance and reprint sales, but there's no telling when they'll arrive. Every day I check my mailbox with hope, and every day my hopes are dashed. Etc. And, of course, our insurance company is giving us hell about paying for River's surgeries. Heather spent ages on the phone yesterday and we *think* it's getting straightened out, but it's stressful. Apart from that, though, things are all right! I'm doing good work on a proposal for a YA novel (and possible sequel), and River is a cheerful lovely kid, and my wife is awesome, and Heather's mom is in town so there's some occasional babysitting help to be had (Heather and I are contemplating an actual date at some point). Granted, the kid woke me up briefly at 3 a.m. hollering for a bottle, and then woke up again for good at 6 in the morning, but I went to bed early last night, so I'm not dying of exhaustion. We'll go to the Farmer's Market this morning. See some friends. Enjoy the springlike weather. All will be well. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
11:43 am	Draft! I finished the fourth Marla Mason novel last night. Only took a few thousand words. I suspect the ending is a bit rushed, and the overall word count came in a tad shorter than I expected (it's about 81,000 words -- the others hover just above or below 85K apiece), but it'll get longer in revision, since I can already think of a couple of scenes that need to be expanded. I've got about three weeks to fix it before turning it in, which should be doable. Still, hey: it's a draft! Now I get a day of pure exultation at having the hard part done, followed by days of vaguely directionless frustrated ennui and the persistent sense that I should be working. (At least, that's what Heather says my post-novel pattern is, and she should know.) The new working title is Burning the Lot, but it probably won't be called that ultimately. I'll figure something out. My editor sent a preliminary sketch of the artwork for Dead Reign, and though I can't share it, I can say: it kicks ass. Marla, looking hot and badass, wielding a big sword. How you gonna beat that? (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 7th, 2008
11:09 am	Domo Arigato! New River pictures! His second follow-up appointment went great. The doctor says his eyes look fantastic, and maybe he won't need any more surgeries for a while. (We'll know better when he has his next appointment to check the eye pressure under anesthesia, in six weeks or so.) Cool thing: Late last night via SF Awards Watch I discovered that "Impossible Dreams" is a Seiun Award finalist. (That's the Japanese equivalent of the Hugos.) A nice surprise! Last week I got a bug up my ass (um, metaphorically) to finish my book, and dove in this weekend. I figured I had about 20,000 words to go... and I wrote around 14,000 of them this weekend. All that's left is climax and coda, and there are only five scenes (four short, one long) between me and The End. I could've finished the novel yesterday, but I wouldn't have had much fun, and decided my time was better spent taking a walk with my wife and son, playing some games, and watching TV. Net result: I'm cheerful and well-rested, and I'll finish my novel off in the next day or two. Once it's done, I'll work on a proposal I promised my agent and write a story I promised an editor. In a couple of weeks, I'll give the book a read-through, fix any big screw-ups, clean up the prose, and send it off to its fate in the hands of my editor by the first of May. It's so nice to see the end of this book rapidly approaching. This has been a much harder novel-writing experience than usual, not so much because of the novel itself, but because of all the life stuff that came up during the course of the writing. But, hey. Our old landlord just gave us back our security deposit (with no deductions, and he even paid us interest); thus I'm no longer so poor I'm rolling pennies for gas money, which improves my outlook greatly. Why, we might even be able to order in food for dinner tonight! Which we haven't done yet at our new place, due to shortness of cash. Though, in truth, I've enjoyed doing so much cooking, poverty-driven though it was. I made gumbo again last week, and a couple of yummy batches of cornbread, and last night I made chicken katsudon, which I've made once or twice before, but never so successfully. Life is pretty good. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
4:20 pm	But seriously, folks... My essay "Not Now, Sweetie, Daddy's Worldbuilding" is online at Clarkesworld (along with great fiction by Jeff Ford and Jeremiah Sturgill). My latest collaboration with Nick "Don't Call Me Nicky the Greek" Mamatas, titled "The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft," is online at Chizine. Go read -- it's in the spirit of Robert Bloch's "The Man Who Collected Poe" and Kim Newman's "The Man Who Collected Barker," but it stands alone, assuming you have at least some vague notion of who Lovecraft was. Thanks to the kindness of Amelia Beamer, who came over on Saturday to watch River so Heather and I could get some work done, I've made awesome progress on the fourth Marla book -- did about 8,000 words that day, two and a half chapters, and got my momentum back. (Sunday was less good -- I wrote, like, two pages. But River was having a fussy day. I did manage to bake muffins, so it wasn't a total loss!) The book is really ramping up now, with only 20,000 words or so to go. I have a single-spaced sheet of paper outlining the events, in sequence, that are still to come, and it doesn't even fill an entire page. I should be able to finish this book by May after all. Last night we took River to Baby Brigade at the Parkway and saw Juno (finally), which was really cute. Also: good pizza and quesadillas, and a baby who was cheerful through the whole film, practically! Though he didn't sleep. He mostly just babbled. Almost no screaming, though, so it's a win. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
8:55 am	Urban Haiku As some of you know, my first love is poetry. It's what I studied in college, and I wrote a collection of poems as the senior honors thesis for my creative writing degree (a degree roughly as useful as a cowcatcher on a fencepost). I taught poetry workshops, I published in little magazines, and I did more readings than I could count. Alas, the need to keep body and soul together have increasingly led me to forsake poetry in favor of prose, simply because prose pays so very much better. But, in honor of National Poetry Month, and in light of the fact that so many books of poetry have lately topped bestseller lists (not to mention the flurry of recent film rights sales -- who else can't wait for David Fincher's adaptation of Margaret Atwood's Morning in the Burned House? Or to see what kind of twist M. Night Shyamalan can put on the end of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"? Maybe he'll take the road more traveled by!), I've convinced my publisher to let me do something novel -- only, ha, as you'll see, also decidedly not novel -- for the fourth book in my Marla Mason urban fantasy series, which comes out next April, just in time for the 2009 National Poetry Month. That book, currently titled Untitled Book Four, will be composed entirely of haiku. Herewith, a few excerpts, from the Heroic Prologue: Marla Mason will kick your ass if you screw with her town. Your ass: Kicked. For real, she'll straight up punch you in the face. With fists hard as adamant. What, you think because you're a monster or some shit she won't kick your ass? She'll kick your monster ass. Her boots are covered in monster ass. Trust me. She once turned a guy inside out just for asking her what time it was. He wasn't even a monster or nothing. She had low blood sugar. So if you come to her town, you'd best bring her a muffin or something. (Also there are three books before this one. Help a brother out and buy.) As you can see, I owe a great debt of influence to the poems of Basho, for his willingness to subvert traditional haiku subject matter, and to Allen Ginsberg's innovative American Sentences for some of the syllabic playfulness. I think you'll find the book a quick read. Like all the previous books, it comes in a bit over 300 pages in paperback -- but there's a lot more white space in Untitled Book Four than the others. Enjoy April. Do something poetic. (9 Comments |Comment on this)