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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
tim_pratt's LiveJournal:
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| Tuesday, May 14th, 2013 | | 10:11 am |
Things! Of! Note!
First, there is now an audiobook of The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl available for your listenings! Narrated by Marguerite Croft, and with a great cover by Jenn Reese. Go, download, listen, enjoy. (And go ahead and get some of my other audiobooks while you're at it.) I have begun a Tumblr to collect all the various Officebaby/Officeboy quotes that have appeared in scattered places online for years: The Officeboy Dialogues. I'll update it somewhat regularly with new and classic utterances until he stops saying cute things or gets old enough to be annoyed by the site, whichever comes first. My Pathfinder Tales novel City of the Fallen Sky is a finalist for the Scribe Awards in the Original Novel category. Very cool, especially since I'm writing another book about those characters this summer. In other news: I'm 65,000 words into Bride of Death, and expect to have a complete first draft by the end of the month. It's going really well now; I'd rather be writing it than doing most other things, including those actions necessary to maintain life. In June some other deadlines will begin racing rapidly toward me, so it will likely be September before I can revise the novel. Then there's copyediting and proofreading to do, so I'm planning for publication in November, most likely. The e-book at least will be out by year's end for sure, barring unforeseen catastrophes. Onward, ever onward! | | Monday, March 11th, 2013 | | 11:43 am |
Kickstarter Wrap-Up and FreemadeSF
Well. That Kickstarter I did went pretty okay, didn't it?Back in the day, Random House paid me $20K for each of the first four Marla Mason books. So... getting pretty close to that here. (Though not as close as it looks, once I deduct my costs for commissioning cover art and illustrations, shipping books to people, etc.) Plus, my single biggest backer (with a pledge that amounted to about 10% of my total) didn't actually fulfill their pledge, unfortunately, so my actual total is only a bit over $16,000 -- which doesn't change much, really. It just means I'll have a couple fewer interior illustrations than I'd expected. (The backer is apologetic and says they may be able to pay as promised in the near future; if that happens I'll add back the illos, but it's uncertain.) Still, though -- I've only sold one novel in the past few years that paid me more than this. It is a strange new world and I am living right in the middle of it. The writing of the book is going well, too, and that's the best part of this, for me -- getting to continue developing this world and these characters at length, in a way that would have been impossible for financial reasons under other circumstances. My hybrid approach to the business of writing -- small presses, big presses, weird passion projects, practical commercial projects, anthologies, short stories, crowdfunding, whatever else seems feasible and fun -- is working out. It keeps me busy, and I am seldom bored. And if you want to stave off your own boredom: I'll be reading at the FreemadeSF Launch Party tonight in San Francisco, along with Nick Mamatas and Mark Pantoja and Cliff Winnig. There will be music and other delights as well. Should be fun. Come on out. | | Tuesday, March 5th, 2013 | | 11:19 am |
Take It As Read
We're deep into the last day of my Kickstarter for Bride of Death, so if you were thinking of becoming a backer, now is the time. Every time I look at the Kickstarter page I am filled with joy and delight at the generosity of my readers -- and the power of crowdfunding to make art compatible with financial necessities. What I'm trying to say is, thank you, and hurray. The new issue of Apex Magazine is out today, with my looong story "The Fairy Library" free to read, and an interview with me (mostly about my new collection), and also many good things by people who are not me, like the awesome Rachel Swirsky and the equally but differently awesome Will Alexander. I am doing another Ask Me Anything at Reddit Fantasy this Thursday, with Richard Lee Byers -- we both write Pathfinder Tales fantasy novels, so I imagine there'll be a lot of questions and answers about those, but as the name implies, we can be Asked Anything. Do drop by. Speaking of Pathfinder Tales, here's a sample chapter for my new novel Liar's Blade, with a fantastic illustration of one of my favorite characters from the book. Life is very very busy, with readings to do and stories to write (with deadlines that are nearly upon me) and Life Stuff and a very full calendar... but it's good. I am happy and productive. | | Tuesday, February 26th, 2013 | | 8:54 am |
| | Tuesday, February 19th, 2013 | | 7:06 am |
| | Wednesday, February 13th, 2013 | | 9:58 am |
Regarding Certain Fictions
Here are some things: I sold a story! "Ghostreaper, or, Life after Revenge" will appear in a future issue of Eclipse Online. I've admired the stories editor Jonathan Strahan has published in the magazine (and in the anthology series before that), so I'm pleased to be part of it. The story is a novelette about a modern guy who gets a magical spear from a trickster figure of uncertain intentions and proceeds to mess up his life in interesting ways. I also sold a story, "Secret Storage," co-written with Greg van Eekhout, to a Lovecraftian anthology. About five years ago Greg wrote an opening and asked me if I could do anything with it. I added a bit, and we batted it back and forth, but it stalled out and never came to anything, sitting unloved and unread for years. Then, when I was asked to do a Lovecraftian story, I realize how Greg's opening could be a launching point for just such a piece, and dragged it out of cold storage, worked on it, made Greg make it better, and sent it off. A dead story, resurrected (but, of course, that is not dead which can eternal lie; that goes for old story fragments as well as elder gods). We're down to the last few days for the Glitter and Madness Kickstarter. Take a look! It would be a fun anthology. My story will be set in the abandoned ice skating rink in Berkeley, a bit of decaying real estate called Iceland (which is also a portal to a Hell of ice, a la The Inferno), at a monster skate party, of sorts. Give 'em a little if you can. They're still a bit short of hitting their goal. My own Kickstarter, for novel Bride of Death, is going beautifully -- it's nearly 150% funded with 20 days to go. Another $665 and we unlock original cover art by the great Lindsey Look, who did the cover for Grim Tides. And if it goes over that level, I'll come up with additional incentives. (And, you know, buy my kid extra souvenirs at Disneyland when we go for his spring break.) I'm reading Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic: The Thirteenth Rib by David J. Schwartz (one of my favorite writers; hell, one of my favorite people). It's a serialized novel, and you get all the installments for a mere one-time $1.99 payment. Pretty sweet deal. Lately I've ripped through the Spellman Files series by Lisa Lutz -- quirky mysteries (sort of) set in contemporary San Francisco. They're charming books, driven by a great narrative voice, that of thirtyish former juvenile delinquent Izzy Spellman, who works for the family business as a private investigator. The PI details are pretty realistic, which means the stakes are way lower than you find in most mysteries -- in reality, PIs don't investigate murders; mostly they follow cheating spouses and do background checks. So most of the drama comes from the interpersonal relationships, among a group of chronically nosy, secretive, suspicious people with boundary issues and a willingness to use blackmail and other means to achieve their goals -- but who nonetheless love one another very much. Not the sort of thing I usually read (I prefer my mysteries bleak and violent and hardboiled), but great comfort reading. | | Tuesday, February 12th, 2013 | | 8:12 am |
| | Tuesday, February 5th, 2013 | | 9:04 am |
| | Monday, February 4th, 2013 | | 9:50 am |
Bride of Death Kickstarter
The time has come! I have launched a Kickstarter for my new Marla Mason novel, Bride of Death. Please support it if you can, or spread the word, or both. All the details are at the link below. (Short form: a book of monsters, heads in birdcages, motorcycles, violence, botched redemption, etc.) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/timpratt/bride-of-death-a-marla-mason-novel I really want to write this one. (In fact I've already written about 10,000 words, because I couldn't help myself. I hope I get to finish it.) | | Monday, December 31st, 2012 | | 11:20 am |
2012 Was
The turning of the year has a lot of personal significance for me. I'm not what you'd call a spiritual person, but I do acknowledge and adore the power of ritual: looking back over the past year and contemplating what I'd like to change for the next one is an important part of how I organize my life. So: in terms of writing, last year was just fine. I produced about 320,000 words of fiction and non-fiction. (50K fewer than last year! I'm slipping! But that's okay.) For novels, I started the year finishing off The Constantine Affliction (writing the last 16K or so), then wrote a work-for-hire middle-grade spy novel (about 80K total) and my Pathfinder Tales novel Liar's Blade (about 90K). All that was in the first six months of the year -- and there were editorial revisions to do on novels during those months, too. The first half of 2012 was so brutal in terms of work that I took it easy for the rest of the year. (Of that 320K written? 230K were written by the end of June.) I wrote a few stories: "A Tomb of Winter's Plunder," "Right Turns," "Wishflowers," "The Cold Corner," "Snake and Mongoose," "A Cloak of Many Worlds," "The Fairy Library," "Cages," "Care and Feeding," and "Ghostreaper," and co-wrote (with Heather Shaw) "Postapocalypsmas" and "Catching the Spirit." All sold except "Care and Feeding" (which is in circulation) and "Ghostreaper" (which I just finished). I ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for my story collection Antiquities and Tangibles. Crowdfunding continues to be an interesting and exciting part of my writing life. In the back half of the year I put together that collection, and compiled and wrote story notes for the Kickstarter backer reward e-book of my Complete Stories (So Far). I also worked on the Rags and Bones anthology with Melissa Marr, wrote a novel outline (and sold it), and did a few book reviews. I published a gonzo-historical novel, The Constantine Affliction, and two roleplaying game tie-in novels, and the latest Marla Mason novel -- a record year for me in terms of book publications. I published an audiobook of Briarpatch via Audible's ACX program, with the narration assistance of Dave Thompson, and put the wheels in motion to produce an audiobook of my first novel Rangergirl. I sold a few other books, ensuring that my name will be on books appearing through 2014 at least. Did a couple of screenings of the short film based on my story "Impossible Dreams." It was a busy, cool year. I read somewhere upwards of 100 books (my record keeping got spotty in the last few months). Favorites include Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brody series (beginning with Case Histories), Bullettime by Nick Mamatas, Stephen King's The Wind Through the Keyhole (mostly for the standalone short novel at its heart), K.J. Parker's Purple and Black, N0S4A2 by Joe Hill, the Milkweed trilogy by Ian Tregillis (beginning with Bitter Seeds), Suddenly, A Knock on the Door by Etgar Keret, The Writing Class by Jincy Willett, We Learn Nothing by Tim Krieder, Every Day by David Levithan, and The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman. I didn't keep track of all the stories I read, but I really liked a couple of K.J. Parker's, especially "Let Maps to Others" and "One Little Room an Everywhere." Otherwise? I played a lot of video games (mostly Skyrim, though Dishonored and Arkham City were also good fun). I hung out with my kid (who is awesome -- he's five years old now! He's in public school! We play roleplaying games and video games and card games and board games together!). I drank many beers. I went down to Los Angeles for a week to stay with my friends Jenn and Chris, where I wrote most of one of those aforementioned books. Our dear friend D came out and stayed with us for a while in the summer. I went to a truly great party at poet Dana Gioia's place in Sonoma. I had a few dates (but not enough) with my wife. Hung out with some local friends pretty regularly, making this a more social year than I've had lately. All in all? I wouldn't mind if 2013 was more of the same. | | Monday, October 29th, 2012 | | 8:02 am |
| | Wednesday, October 10th, 2012 | | 8:17 am |
Words and Pictures (Note: No Pictures Included)
After a month of being lazy — er, that is, recharging creatively and refilling the wells of inspiration and suchlike — I have been writing again. Mostly working on a story called “The Fairy Library” which recently informed me it would like to be the start of a novel, please. I will finish a novelette version of it, though, for inclusion in my upcoming collection Antiquities and Tangibles. It’s about 10,000 words long already, and will need another five or six thousand words to be finished. It’s a rambling romantic oddball fantasy; basically the kind of story I most like to write, and do best.
I also wrote a review of Neal Barrett, Jr.’s Other Seasons for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Short form: Barrett’s an awesome short story writer with a crazy range, you oughta read him.
An interview with me will run in the November issue of Locus. I talk about The Constantine Affliction and Briarpatch and a bit about crowdfunding/self-publishing and a bit about other assorted things. I even got to do the traditional author photo shoot, which entailed standing on wobbly collapsing steps, leaning on a tree near some raccoon poop, falling off a wall (the scratches on my arm are nearly healed, thanks), getting spiderwebs in my hair, etc. The things I do for my art. Or, uh, the promotion of my art.
Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. | | Tuesday, October 9th, 2012 | | 11:57 am |
Six Strange Thursdays
My son has been in public school for about six weeks now. He likes it a lot, and is doing really well. His teacher seems great, and he’s even got electives (or “enrichment”) classes in his after-school program — science, tee-ball, art. (He loves science.)
The weirdest part for me has been having my Thursdays free.
Many years ago I went to four days a week at my day job so I could get more writing done. Then, after my son was born, that day off became our “River-Daddy day,” which we spent together every week. We’d go to playgrounds, run errands, hit the library, museums, day trips into San Francisco, and just generally have various adventures.
Now, of course, he’s in school on Thursdays, and it’s left a weird emptiness in my life and disrupted all my routines. Running errands alone is way easier, but also more boring. Some Thursdays Heather takes him to school and I don’t even have to get out of bed at any particular time. (Sleeping in until I feel like getting up is quite bizarre. To think, before I was a parent, I used to do it every weekend. Incredible.)
I have no real new routine yet. I spent a couple of those days off just doing absolutely nothing of note (in my defense, I was sick one week, and beating Arkham City was an epic accomplishment). I just wandered aimlessly in my house and yard, then went to pick River up from school early and went to the library and got ice cream, trying to claw back some of our old fun activities.
One week, there was a rare convergence of schedules that allowed me to have lunch with my wife (we ate at 900 Grayson, and I had the Demon Lover, which is fried chicken on top of a buttermilk waffle smothered in gravy; yum). Then I went over to a cafe we like, Uncommon Grounds, and did some writing.
One week I went into San Francisco and worked at the Borderlands Cafe (Yes, there are perfectly nice cafes walking distance from my house, and a 20-minute train ride into the city was hardly necessary. What can I say? I was drunk with freedom).
Last week I did a writing day with my friend Maggie, which helped overcome my general aimlessness; I was productive! And had someone to talk to other than the cats!
I have no idea what I’m doing this Thursday, beyond the fact that I should get a story revised.
So, there’s still no routine in sight, but I seem to be trending toward a day devoted to writing (and grocery shopping and maybe some housework), topped off with an ice cream cone with the kid. The upside of losing the day off with my son is that I can, in theory, get a lot of work done that day instead, freeing up my weekends to spend with him (instead of making his mom entertain him while I write for hours and hours). This may even work out to be a net win. If I can just find the right groove to settle into.
At least the boy is having epic weekends. Saturday he had swim class, then I took him to the Habitot children’s museum/playspace. Sunday we went down to Santa Cruz and hit the beach boardwalk (Santa Cruz in the month after Labor Day is so glorious; perfect weather, way less crowded than summer), had lunch at Cafe Brasil, and dinner at Saturn Cafe. Yesterday (being Indigenous People’s Day in Berkeley, and thus a school holiday), he went to a day camp and had a field trip to a pumpkin patch/petting zoo/hay maze in Half Moon Bay. So we’re making up for the lost time.
Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. | | Thursday, October 4th, 2012 | | 9:44 am |
In Our Stars
It’s National Poetry Day! (I mean, not in the nation I live in, but when it comes to poetry, I’m not picky.) The theme is stars, so here’s a poem with stars in it, previously published only in a small zine called Dark Illuminati, about ten years ago.
Holly Grove
She told me it was the oldest grove
of holly trees in the world, or
maybe just the country, I forget
which. "It's two days after midsummer,"
she said, "But close enough for a celebration."
All the mythic elements were there -- history
in the fiber of ancient live trees (like that poor girl
who ran from Apollo and, transformed into a laurel,
had to stand still forever just to get away), the stars
pinwheeling slowly through their elaborate
ballroom-dance courses, nude-girl naiads
splashing in the shallow water, and somewhere
a snorting bull roaming the darkness,
deep-chested and archetypal.
There aren't a lot of happily-ever-afters
in those old stories; the gods of the
Mediterranean were too human for those,
too firmly planted in the middle of the world,
for all their Olympian posturing. Love
affairs often ended with people turned
into trees or flowers or lonesome sounds.
(Orpheus was lucky. His lover died before
she could abandon him in a more prosaic
fashion)
(No, that's ridiculously bitter. He wasn't
lucky. He was smashed apart by grief
and furies)
I watched my ex-lover swim
in the moonlight, Psyche to my Cupid,
Helen to my -- well, say Faust. I thought
about all the things those long-ago
folk had to endure just to become
constellations.
Let her go, then. I don't want her
to transform herself to escape me,
to be a tree in my backyard. I don't
want her if I have to make bargains
with the lords of the underworld,
or even the dark things in my private
caverns. Let us both live on in the middle
of this earth, and the middle of our own
stories. You don't always have to fall
apart over love
falling
apart.
I sat on a log by the fire and looked
at the flames and the pale shapes
of the other girls nymphing away in
the two-days-after-midsummer dark,
watching night fall on one mythic time,
but aware always of later chances
to become part of a beautiful
future constellation.
Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. | | Monday, September 17th, 2012 | | 12:11 pm |
Booze, Bullets, and Books
How is it already mid-to-late September? This mystery is impenetrable.
I have not been doing much, apart from playing with my kid and generally hanging out and recovering from the previous eight months of endless work. Though because I’m terrible at not writing I started a novelette last week — I think it’s called “The Fairy Library” — and it’s going quite well, up to about 4,000 words now. It’ll be one of the originals in the new collection.
I did a reading last Saturday at Other Change of Hobbit with Nick Mamatas (I was his opening act; his book Bullettime is excellent, my favorite of his novels). There was booze that tasted like cough syrup (by design) and brownies and a surprisingly great turnout for a Saturday night. Nick and I have the smartest and most beautiful and discerning fans. Look, Nick posted photographic evidence!
Otherwise, I have been reading a lot. Mur Lafferty’s The Shambling Guide to New York City is fun and adorable; Salvage and Demolition by Tim Powers is as awesome as he always is at novella length; The Mark Inside is entertaining con-artist narrative non-fiction; Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis is dark and good and I’m eager to read the second in the series; Etgar Keret’s stories remind me of Donald Barthelme’s or Aimee Bender’s (which is a good thing).
I’ve played some Arkham City, and lots of Plants vs. Zombies and other casual games on my Fire. And I’ve been watching Revenge (it’s The O.C. meets The Count of Monte Cristo!). Playing lots of Candyland, War, and Connect Four with my kid, who already shows signs of being bitten by the gaming bug (when he’s a little older we are going to play all the games all the time).
I have also been eating less and exercising way more, after the horror of seeing my highest-ever weight on a scale back in July. I’m down 15 pounds since then. Let us hope this trend continues for another, oh, fifty pounds or so.
Autumn is coming. Soon it will be time to make the first chili of the season. Life is good.
Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. | | Wednesday, August 29th, 2012 | | 10:28 am |
Kickstarter funded!
My kickstarter for collection Antiquities and Tangibles has funded! (Not shocking, I know; it hit the goal a while back. But still, reasons for yay!)
I had 273 backers, plus two more who sent checks, for 275 total. By contrast, my kickstarter for Grim Tides last year had only 182 backers, plus five who sent checks, for a total of 187. Nearly 90 more this time!
Why? I suspect having a relatively low buy-in to get the e-book helped. For only $10, you actually get something useful and interesting! I personally don’t often have a ton of money to give to kickstarters, usually only $10-$20, so I like projects where I get something cool for not much money.
Then, once I hit the funding goal to do the Complete Stories e-book, I got a lot more $10 donors, presumably because that sounded like a pretty good deal to people.
I made more money from the Grim Tides kickstarter, but then, I asked for a lot more, too; I didn’t quite double my funding goal for that project, while this one got 442% funded. I also offered a lot more high-end backer rewards for Grim Tides, which was great — but which was also a lot more work on the fulfillment end. This project, by contrast, will be a lot less work to fulfill, since it doesn’t have limited editions and chapbooks and bookmarks and postcards and artwork and all the other stuff I had to create/commission/send out for Grim Tides: just books! (And a couple poems and one little single-copy story chapbook.)
So: I’d call this a success. Now I just have to write new stories and put the book(s) together.
Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. | | Monday, August 27th, 2012 | | 9:31 am |
| | Thursday, August 23rd, 2012 | | 8:03 am |
| | Tuesday, August 14th, 2012 | | 10:29 am |
The Couch of Transition
After much thought I figured out a new stretch goal for my collection Kickstarter: if I hit $7,000, I will create a Complete Stories e-book, containing all my published short fiction (minus a couple of work-for-hire things; but if I own the rights, it’ll be in the book). Everyone who donates enough to get the collection e-book (a mere $10) will also get the Complete Stories. And at least for the foreseeable future, the Complete Stories will be available only to Kickstarter backers. It would be a ton of work, but I think the end result — more than 100 stories! — would be pretty cool, so I hope it happens.
***
This is my son’s last week at his preschool. In a mere two weeks, he starts his new life at public school. It’s kind of mind-blowing. He’s super excited, though. He doesn’t quite grasp the melancholy aspects, yet.
We bought a new couch this weekend (our old one had busted springs for two-thirds of its width, so using it was like sitting on a melting marshmallow), and it came disassembled in several enormous boxes, so I created a vast outdoor box palace for the kid, dubbed his “houseroom.” It’s so nice to make that kid happy.
***
I haven’t quite finished all my work for the year. I’ve got a short story to write, and an anthology to finish up, and a review I promised to write, all due on September 1 — but after that, I don’t have any particular writing responsibilities (besides putting together the new collection), so I might start writing a new book, Heirs of Grace, just for my own enjoyment. I’ll have my Thursdays free, now, with the kid in school, and I can’t spend all those hours napping or getting daytime drunk. (Or rather, I could, but I wouldn’t enjoy it as much after the first few times.) I even came up with a name for my main character, so, hell, that’s the hard part taken care of.
Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. | | Friday, August 10th, 2012 | | 8:03 am |
More on the Constantine Affliction
My alter-ego T. Aaron Payton talks about The Constantine Affliction over at The Night Bazaar, and then he talks about it some more.
Y’all know I pretty much never post reviews anymore, but I did like these lines from one of the Amazon.com reviews (all 5-star so far; I’m enjoying that while it lasts):
What begins as a murder mystery in an odd steam punk London opens up into a fantastic world of Science Gone Wrong, and a love story too! This book has everything, Prostitutes, Robot Women, Tentacle Monsters, Transgender Disease, Lightning Swords, and a love sick Frankenstein.
I cannot dispute any of those characterizations. (Well, I wouldn’t call it a “transgender disease” really, and it’s more like Frankenstein’s monster, but I know what the reviewer means, and can’t dispute the flair of phrasing.)
Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there. |
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