Author: Tim Pratt

Some years ago Greg van Eekhout and Heather Shaw and I started working on what we called our “alphabet collab,” conceived as 26 flash fiction pieces, one for each letter of the alphabet. (You know — “A is for Airport,” “B is for Banyan Tree,” “C is for Caltrops,” like that.) The vague plan was to compile the whole set and try to sell it somewhere, but that never quite happened, mostly because we never wrote all the letters. We did however perform some of the pieces often at readings, to general delight — they’re short, and often funny, which are good things to be at a reading. After a while we all ended up selling some of the individual stories — my own published ones include “Caltrops,” “Fiddle,” “Uchronia,” and “Incubus”. Greg even expanded some of his into longer stories.

Then, several weeks ago, something cool happened: Jonathan Laden, an editor at Daily Science Fiction, which published one of my flash pieces from the alphabet collab, asked if we’d be interested in letting him publish the whole set — assuming we could write new pieces to fill the gaps where we’d sold the original stories. About the same time — maybe a day later? — Dave Thompson of Escape Artists (which does the Escape Pod, Podcastle, and Pseudopod fiction podcasts, which have published many of the original alphabet collab pieces) asked us if we’d sell him the whole set, to offer as special downloadable content.

Greg and Heather and I were happy to oblige… except we needed to write new pieces. Lots of them, since most of the originals had been sold already. So we drafted Jenn Reese — who excels at flash fiction — to help us compose new letters. Then we talked and worked for about a month.

The result: The Alphabet Quartet, over 15,000 words of swift fictions, coming to you soon from Daily Science Fiction and Escape Artists. DSF will start publishing them, one per week, in January 2011, starting with the longest story in the bunch, “A is for Arthur”. The Escape Artists edition — which may be a paid download featuring audio versions of every story, or a subscriber gift, or something else — will probably be available a few months after that. EA is also planning to publish B-sides, variant letters, reprints of the original letters, and etc. as teasers and treats.

So there you go: half a year of stories by me, Greg, Jenn, and Heather. It’s awesome. I’m thrilled. This is one of the coolest projects I’ve ever been involved in.

Clarion, people. Clarion! They’re taking applications for next year’s session in San Diego. Here’s their pitch:

Clarion is widely recognized as a premier training ground for aspiring writers of fantasy and science fiction short stories. The 2011 writers in residence are Nina Kiriki Hoffman, John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, David Anthony Durham, John Kessel and Kij Johnson. Each year 18 students, ranging in age from late teens to those in mid-career, are selected from applicants who have the potential for highly successful writing careers. Students are expected to write several new short stories during the six-week workshop, and to give and receive constructive criticism. Instructors and students reside together in UCSD campus apartments throughout the intensive six-week program.

Application period: December 1 – March 1. Applicants must submit two short stories with their application.

Workshop: June 26 – August 6, 2011.

So go to their website and take a look.

It’s a great line-up of teachers. While I can’t speak specifically to the experience of doing Clarion in San Diego (I went to Clarion 11 years ago, in the East Lansing Michigan days), I can attest to the experience of Clarion generally, which is: life changing. I know you hear that phrase a lot — about books, movies, restaurants, mind-altering substances, etc., but with Clarion (for me anyway) it was literally true. I met people there who are still among my best friends. My professors were inspirations. I learned more about writing in six weeks than I’d learned in all the years previous. I discovered that awesome famous writers are people, too. It very literally changed my life — without Clarion, I wouldn’t have ended up working at Locus, where I’ve been working for nearly ten years now. (One of my instructors was friends with the boss, and basically got the job for me — plus, I first heard about Locus at Clarion!) I can’t promise it’ll have that big an impact on your life, of course… but it will give you six weeks to spend intensely focused on writing, surrounded by people who care as much about this stuff as you do. If you can carve out the time, it’s worth applying. (I desperately want to teach there some day, myself.)

I can also speak to the awesomeness of San Diego: it’s awesome. Great food, great beaches, Mysterious Galaxy bookstore — what more could you want? No offense to East Lansing, which has its charms, but I gotta think San Diego is more fun.

We put the boy — now no longer a toddler, technically, but a pre-schooler — to bed last night. While attempting to wrestle him into his jammies, he sang/yelled:

“If you’re happy and you know it, punch, hit!

If you’re happy and you know it, kick, hit!”

All punctuated with punching and kicking. When he finished singing he said, “Do you like that song? Do you? Do you like it? You like that song?” in an extremely manic way.

It was like watching an outtake from a Quentin Tarantino movie. Like Pulp Fiction: Babies.

(Bedtime is still an epic struggle, but it’s getting better, in general.)

My awesome wife Heather Shaw recently sat down and powered through revisions on her middle grade science fiction novel of gene-hacking mayhem and adventure. She finished it off and sent it to a couple of agents last week. I’m so proud of her!

My original short-short stories “D is for De Gustibus” and “Luminous” will be at Podcastle in the future, along with audio versions of my stories “Hart and Boot” and “Terrible Ones”. Oh, how I love the ‘pods! Especially when they send me acceptances for four stories in a single e-mail. Got a rejection from Asimov’s this week, too, though, so the sweet is balanced by the sour and etc.

(Speaking of Podcastle, they recently did “Skatouioannis” by Nick Mamatas, one of my favorite of Nick’s stories. The title monster even had a brief cameo in one of my Marla novels, as an homage…)

The Way of the Wizard anthology is out, including my story “Mommy Issues of the Dead” (featuring a young Marla Mason) and lots of other awesome tales. Check it out.

Here’s the first review I’ve seen of Welcome to Bordertown, and pleasantly enough it says nice things about my contribution, “Our Stars, Our Selves”. I’m so glad I got the opportunity to be part of that anthology.

My middle grade novel The Deep Woods has been revised and line-edited. I think it’s one of my strongest books yet. I’ll send it to my agent after Thanksgiving and hope she agrees. And that some publishers agree. And that readers agree. And so on.

All I have on my plate writing-wise at the moment is a few book reviews and a couple of stories (one a flash piece, one a Christmas story). Should be fun. I’m expecting to hear back about some longer projects in upcoming weeks, though, so life could potentially become more exciting soon.

Worked a 12+ hour day last week to finish up the December issue of A Certain Magazine. (We were on a short production schedule because of Thanksgiving.) Brutal, but at least it was followed by a three-day weekend. I read a bunch of comics, watched some TV, played with the kid, took walks, ate brunch, got fancy ice cream, etc. Wonderfully relaxing. And today… back to work. But I only have to work two days of the next seven, so it’s hardly a great trial.

Part 12 of The Nex is up. Not sure if anyone’s reading it; no one has commented in a couple of weeks, and no one has donated in many weeks. Maybe everyone who cared just bought the e-book version. I still like it, though, and am happy to have it out there.