Author: Tim Pratt

Rex Klaw, Agent of R.O.C.K.E.T.

Published by Tim Pratt on November 13, 2011

NaNo: 2001 words written yesterday. Zipping along nicely.

Otherwise, yesterday was pretty much All Party All The Time. We booked the Kindergym at the YMCA, so River and about a dozen of his friends (and some miscellaneous siblings) ran around madly climbing, building, jumping, giggling hysterically, and essentially bouncing off the (fortunately padded) walls. Then we retired to the party room for cake, freeform balloon bouncing, and some arts and crafts. River was beside himself with joy. Making your kid happy is a pretty good path to happiness for yourself, I find. Thanks to everyone who came! And special thanks to my awesome wife, who did pretty much everything in terms of planning and preparation, and made a beautiful cake besides.

The kid received an immense pile of gifts, and spent all afternoon and evening after we got home playing with them. One of the toys is a vast reconfigurable mass of interlocking machinery, so that you can make airplanes, rockets, helicopters with variable numbers of rotors, etc. It even has tiny spring-loaded missiles you can launch. But, best of all, it somewhat randomly comes with a big T-Rex that you can connect to the other parts too — so I created a missile-launching T-Rex with a jet-pack and helicopter blades (you know, for hovering). I also devised an elaborate mythology about his creation and goals. And, uh, River enjoyed playing with it too.

The kid and I were out in the yard until full dark playing with the “stomp rocket” one of his friends got him. (You know — a hose attached to a big air bladder you stomp on, fixed to a tripod, with little styrofoam rockets that get blown into the sky by the pressure of the expelled air.) Once he discovered he could get the rockets stuck in a tree, thus necessitating amusing antics on my part with a long stick to dislodge them, getting rockets stuck in the tree became the goal. Fortunately, his aim isn’t that good yet. I’ve promised him we’ll take the rockets to the park today… so I’d better do as I said.

Surf’s Up

Published by Tim Pratt on November 12, 2011

NaNo: 2138 words written yesterday. The book’s total stands at 33,411, of which 23,512 have been written since November 1. The goal is to get to 60,000 words by the end of the month. (The book is due in February. I could knock out the last 30-40K in December, and have January to revise. This plan may not survive impact with reality.)

Yesterday I went to work, and worked, mostly laying out World Fantasy Convention photo spreads. Drove home in the rainy black dark. Once home I played with the kid a bit, and otherwise… mostly wrote, as you may have gathered. I also read Ken Bruen’s Headstone, the latest Jack Taylor novel. Just as bleak and brutal as always.

Today is the boy’s fourth birthday party! We rented the Kindergym at the YMCA, so a bunch of his school friends and he can run around like crazy for an hour, then gorge themselves on cake in the party room. Heather outdid herself decorating the cake. The kid wanted a Mickey Mouse cake, and we’re going on a beach vacation later this month (a trip which looms large in his mind), so we got cake toppers including Mickey on a surfboard, Minnie laying on a beach towel, plastic palm trees, etc. Heather baked a cake, frosted it with blue icing artfully swirled to resemble ocean waves for Mickey to surf on, and then created a “sandy beach” of atomized vanilla wafers for Minnie to lounge on. The kid will love it.

Eleventy

Published by Tim Pratt on November 11, 2011

NaNo: A mere 1,079 words last night! But, since I didn’t write those until well after 11 p.m., when I’d already resigned myself to actually writing 0 words for the day, I consider it a victory snatched from the jaws of extreme lethargy. Next up I get to write a polite interrogation, with lovely subtextual threats of horrible violence.

For those of you embarking on a three-day-weekend today, enjoy; for those of you observing Veterans Day in a more serious way, may it give you comfort. For those of you like me who are at work today as usual — well, so it goes. And for those of you who have the shared cultural referent of making a wish whenever you happen to glance at a clock that says 11:11 — today, make a BIG wish, because, I mean, it totally has to count extra. And if you still hold to the old ways and observe Armistice Day, I hope the minute of silence at that time gives you peace. And for those of you who are going to play Skyrim all day or all night or both, know that you have my undying envy. I’m not allowing myself to buy it until I get the draft of this book done, so it’ll be Christmas before I can slay dragons, I’d wager.

That paragraph was an odd mixture of the sacred and the profane and the banal, wasn’t it?

Totland

Published by Tim Pratt on November 10, 2011

NaNo: Managed to write 3,295 words on Wednesday, about 800 on my lunch break, the rest in the evening. Nice to be back on track, even if I am still coughing disgustingly on an intermittent basis.

Sorry this update is so late. Thursday is my “day off” (AKA the busiest day of my week), so I had to do grocery shopping, hang a shelf, wash dishes, put away books, take the kid to the library, spend hours at Totland park in North Berkeley, walk a few miles in the interest of getting some exercise, etc. Any fiction writing I do today will have to happen after the boy goes to bed.

Make A Wish

Published by Tim Pratt on November 9, 2011

I am still sick. My coughs are more productive, and last night my writing was slightly more productive, too, but I’m still depressingly low-energy.

NaNo: 1715 words last night. Back on track, at least. The book is around 27,000 words long now. It’s going quite well. I’ll need to layer in some incidental weirdness and sensory detail and descriptions in revision, but I’m getting down the bones of the plot and the relationships, and the dialogue is good.

Life: The kid had a little family birthday party last night, just his parents and aunt and cousins. Cupcakes! Candles! Presents! He had a wonderful time, and was a little cherubic beaming smiling delight. (Of course, he went to bed late, and then woke up early, and was a giant mass of crankiness this morning as a result. Oh well. Everything balances.) He gets a party with his friends on Saturday. Birthdays are so fun at that age.

Now We Are Four

Published by Tim Pratt on November 8, 2011

NaNo: Only managed 1180 words yesterday, my lowest total since the month began. Not great, but I was sick, and actually expected to write nothing — my wife got a phone call, interrupting our Good Wife marathon, so I dragged myself to my chair and started typing. I’m still a few days ahead of schedule, so it’s not terrible, but I hope to get more done today.

Otherwise: it’s my son’s fourth birthday! This morning I asked him, “Do you want a birthday waffle?” He said, “Yeah!” I said, “It’s just like a regular waffle, but you eat it on your birthday!” (He did get to open a gift before school, though, and will get cupcakes and more presents tonight. We’re having a little family party for him this evening, and a party with his friends on Saturday.)

Not Quite Three/Very Nearly Four

Published by Tim Pratt on November 7, 2011

Happy Monday!

NaNo: 2900 words yesterday. I would’ve written more, but I had to do a bit of research. Sometimes I think the internet search histories of fiction writers and serial killers must be distressingly similar.

A few miscellaneous catchups:

My wife Heather Shaw and I sold a novelette collaboration to PodCastle — a Xmas story! We don’t have a final title yet, but it’s our “Christmas Carol/Ghost-Finder” mash-up. Basically, after Marley’s ghost departs, Ebenezer Scrooge goes out and wakes up a young occultist, and tells him, “Fix my spirit problem.” (It’s not really a “mash-up” in the usual sense — we only used a little bit of Dickens’s actual text, mostly in the dialogue from the spirits.) We couldn’t actually use William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki as a character (the timelines of the stories don’t mesh), but we named our character Hodgson in homage. Anyway, I really like it, and you’ll get to hear it in time for the holidays.

I’ve been asked to write a (shorter) Xmas story for another podcast too. And so I shall!

Richard A. Lupoff gave my new novel Briarpatch a fantastic review. “Briarpatch is pretty much sui generis. A couple of other novels do come to mind: Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness and Douglas Dorst’s Alive in Necropolis.” Not bad company.

It’s my son’s fourth birthday tomorrow. Four years ago today, I was extremely anxious. And tomorrow, instead of worry, exhaustion, and emergency surgery, we get singing and cake! (Though we don’t get to welcome a new family member or see our lives utterly transformed for the better, so I’d still give the edge to the day of his birth in terms of awesomeness. Still though: singing and cake!)

Fallback

Published by Tim Pratt on November 6, 2011

NaNo: 2450 words or so on Saturday, a few tapped out in the afternoon while the wife and kid ran errands (and after a lovely brunch), and a few in the evening. The novel sailed on past 21,000 words. It’s zoom zoom zooming along, and soon things start to get truly crazy in novel-land.

Daylight Saving Time ended. So my kid didn’t actually get me up at 6:50 am; he got me up at 5:50 am. And to think I once liked falling back, for that extra hour of sleep…

And on the Fourth Day

Published by Tim Pratt on November 5, 2011

NaNo: Wrote 2,060 words yesterday. My total for the month so far is about 8700 words (and since I already had 10K written… well. We’re looking at a fifth of a book done, more or less.) I would have written more, but good entertainment conspires against me. I’m reading the new King novel, and my wife and I are finishing off The Good Wife season 2 on DVD. So I read/watched instead of write-write-writing. But I exceeded my minimum for the day, so all’s well.

Nobody reads the internet much on weekends anyway, so I’ll leave it at that.

Dead Kennedys

Published by Tim Pratt on November 4, 2011

NaNo: I wrote another 2500 words or so yesterday, a tiny bit while my son was eating his lunch, most in the evening. Not bad considering I also grocery shopped, played Legos with my son for hours, spent a long time at the library avoiding the rain, cooked soup, baked banana bread, worked out, cleaned up my kid’s sleep-puke (sudden inexplicable sickness! oh boy! at least he didn’t really wake up as we changed him and his sheets), and watched a little TV.

It was tough to resist the urge to read King’s 11/22/63 all day. It’s fun, and has one of the most hilarious and sensible answers to concerns about a certain time travel paradox that I’ve ever read. Good food, good books, good work — what more could one want? (Oh, yeah — a kid who doesn’t get sick and throw up. That’d be nice. Poor boy. At least he felt fine and was cheerful all day.)