Whatnot

January 18

Sorry so long with no update! It's been a floaty week of vast good fortune. First the poetry editorship, then the sale, and other nifty things percolating in the ether, and other sorts of general enjoyment... I've been working very hard at the day job, and haven't felt much like sitting down at the computer again in the evenings. But now the weekend is spread before me (not much at all like a patient etherised upon a table, but still), so I'm writing an entry, even though I feel a long way from eloquence tonight...

***

I've written about 2300 words on Rangergirl since I last posted here; it's going very well, the best it's been yet, I think. I'm concentrating on making every scene inherently cool and interesting, while still furthering the overall plot and character development and mood and all that lovely stuff that can't be compartmentalized, really, but exists all entangled, all of a piece. I'm working on a story, too, a dark one that I started in Indiana, that I'm having fun with, writing a few lines here and there. Also reading... The Merchant of Souls, still. I'm also reading Ken Wharton's Divine Intervention, which is really a lovely book. I'm not big into hard sf, but he writes with charm and sensitivity, and his love for the science comes through beautifully.

***

There's an interview with Tim Powers coming up in the February issue of A Certain Magazine; it's a good interview. Powers is so cool. His ideas about fantasy are wonderful...

There was a time when I wrote science fiction, too, and I suppose I might do so again... but the real attraction, for me, is to the field of fantasy. The realm of myth and metaphor, of dream images and those strange frissons, exploring the peculiar echo chambers of the heart and mind, where strange resonances are born. I love fantasy; not elves and dwarves and whatnot, particularly, but more peculiar magics... Jon Carroll, Tim Powers, Terry Windling, China Miéville, they all do work I love...

Nothing new here, I know. But sometimes it bears repeating.

***

I was reading one of Mike's entries, in which he lists various first lines from his novels. Which leads me to post the same (though it should be noted, as if it won't be obvious, that his are cool and mine suck), in order of their writing:

• Shannon McGuire saw a monster in the middle of the bright hallway, between her dorm room and the showers. (Shannon's God)

• Before black flies and white lizards, before the wrong stars and sleepless assassins, before the pockmarked moon and the singing dead, before the last autumn of the world she knew, Lucinda Brighton slept, and dreamed a pleasant dream. (Raveling)

• At first, Mary wasn't paying much attention to the television. (Infants and Tyrants, or, Kootchie-Kootchie-Coup) [This is the worst of a bad lot; it's negative information, a real no-no. Who cares what she's not doing; what's she doing? This is the 85,000 word novel I wrote in three weeks a few years ago... it's got giant robots, but otherwise, it's nothing special]

• I wake up this morning and Meredith is sitting at my desk.(Yet Another Way of Looking At A Blackbird) [unfinished, but it's surreal and semi-autobiographical, so who cares? It's a therapy book]

• Sarah rose from bed, stretching, enjoying the morning light coming in through the gauzy curtains. (The Genius of Deceit)

• Winter came down like a hammer that year, and Marla trudged through slushy gray mounds of snow, stepping over miniature mountain ranges of dirty ice. (Ferocious Dreamers) [unfinished, though perhaps not permanently so]

• Marzi leaned on the counter of the Genius Loci café, looking out the streaked glass window at Ash Street. (The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl) [In my defense, this line has never been revised, which cannot be said of the others]

What does this tell us, besides the fact that my protagonists tend to be female, and that I can't write first lines? Not much, I suppose. But perhaps that's enough.

I'm better with short stories. For example: "Even her bicycle was evil." From "The Witch's Bicycle", my first "pro" (by some criteria) sale.

Or "'I wish I could be a little goddess of cinnamon,' Emily says, closing her eyes and leaning in close to the spice aisle in the organic grocery store." From "Little Gods", which should appear in Strange Horizons soonish... Or "Marla carried a drawstring bag containing a dozen kidney stones recently passed by an elderly clairvoyant named Bainbridge." From "Pale Dog", forthcoming nowhere at the moment, but give it time...

***

It's peculiar. On one level, having made this sale to Realms, nothing's changed... it won't be out for ages, probably, and for now I still go on writing, reading, living, eating, loving as I always do. In another way... I mean, I just can't play the jaded writer-type. I think this is indescribably, amazingly cool! I sold this long story, this novelette that I sank my heart into, that I told with all the wit and passion I could muster, certainly the best work I'd done at the time that I wrote it, one of the best three or four stories I've done ever, and now people get to read it! Potentially thousands of people!

I mean, wow. It blows my mind, it really does.

I also feel strangely at rest. As if I've passed some mile-marker... I've been wanting to make a sale to a paper prozine since I was fourteen or fifteen, when I first started submitting stories (with "Chucky's Diner of the Dead" to Weird Tales (which may've been Worlds of Fantasy and Horror then), as near as I can recall). I've been striving at this more-or-less steadily for a decade... and now I'm there. I guess lots of writers seek validation. It may be silly, but I feel validated. I mean, obviously I go on, keep working, but for the moment it's a little less urgent, a little less tense. This peace will pass, and the cacoethes scribendi will seize me again, but for now, I feel good, I feel happy, I feel like I'm in the midst of a really rather wonderful life.

Tim Pratt
P.O. Box 13222
Berkeley, CA 94712-4222