SF and Fantasy Writer
The good people at ChiZine Publications sent me something wonderful last week: The cover Eric Mohr created for my novel Briarpatch! (Coming 9/15/11.)
It’s weird, dark, strange, and perfectly suited to the book. I’m so glad there are bridges on the cover, as this book has been referred to over the years mainly as “the Bridge novel.”
I finished that pseudonymous work-for-hire book on Saturday. I’m pretty pleased with it, though it’s going to need some cleanup and revision in the next week and a half, before I turn it in. It’s pretty sound structurally, though, so I think a few scenes added and tweaked here and there, and a vigorous line edit, should bring it up to code.
I’ve written 95,000 words of fiction since January 1. (And boy are my arms tired.) A whole book, and a novelette.
Next month, I have to write two or three commissioned stories, and will probably start work on my Pathfinder book, City of the Fallen Sky, which is due in August. Whee for gainful employment!
My story “Shark’s Teeth” is online at Daily Science Fiction (actually, it went up last Friday). It’s the latest Marla Mason story, both chronologically and in terms of composition, but it’s meant to stand alone even if you’ve never read a word about the character.
It could be an endpoint for the series, actually, though I’d like to write book 6 too. That might happen in 2012. I’ve been thinking about it, and have many ideas, but I also have A Thousand Deadlines between myself and the time required to serialize another novel. (And there’s another non-Marla novel I want to write first…)
The Nex e-book is still selling steadily since I dropped the price to 99 cents (you can buy at Amazon, or at Barnes & Noble). 77 copies at Amazon in just a few days. Pretty neat. I’m glad people are finally reading it.
I’ve sold about 50 copies of the 99-cent e-book of The Nex in the past couple of days, which is five times as many as it sells in an average month. Nice to be reaching a lot of new readers (though it needs to sell another 50 copies at this price point to match the royalties I made selling those ten copies at $4.99). I’ll be keeping my eye on it, but this is promising.
The Nex is now available for 99 cents at the B&N store, too, for you nook users.
If you bought it: thanks! Hope you like it!
It’s Wednesday, which means: A new story in the Alphabet Quartet! This time it’s “J is for Junk.” (And subscribers have already gotten “K is for Kinky” in their e-mail inboxes.)
Signed a couple of short story contracts this week. My horror piece “Hell’s Lottery” should be in the next issue of Bull Spec, due out in mid-April. This story has been sold twice before to magazines that folded before it could be published, so let’s hope the curse doesn’t continue, hmm? (And, yes: I told the editor about the story’s magazine-killing properties, and he boldly chose to accept it anyway.)
Wrote about 2600 words yesterday on the novel in progress. Total stands at around 85,000 words and the end is so very much in sight. And once it’s turned in, I won’t have another novel due until August! Why, that’s months away! In fact, that sounds like a problem for Future Tim.
I was going to take it easy in April to let my brain recharge, but I have about three short stories promised to people that I need to write, so I guess my brain will just have to switch to reserve power. (Actually, writing short stories is sufficiently different from writing a novel that it’ll feel like a refreshing change.)
The Kindle e-book of my science fantasy adventure novel The Nex is now 99 cents. (I’m continuing to experiment with price points. The book went from being my worst seller of the month so far to my bestseller of the month overnight. Though we’re still only talking a couple dozen sales. Most months I sell a couple hundred copies across all four titles I have for sale, the vast majority for the two Marla Mason books.)
I’m hoping the low low prices! will lead more people to try my work, and that some small percentage of them will become raging Pratt addicts. If you try it, and like it, tell your friends.
I went to bed last night well past midnight, after watching images of the horrible disaster in Japan, and was awakened at 6:30 by a robo-call about the west coast tsunami warning. Donating to the Red Cross is probably a good idea today, and you can give $10 by texting REDCROSS to 90999.
Everything else seems a bit trivial in comparison, but I may as well post the bits of this blog post I wrote yesterday.
My story “Shark’s Teeth” appeared in Daily Science Fiction today, for subscribers. It should be available for everyone to read on the website in a week. This is the chronologically-latest (so far) Marla Mason story, set after the events of Broken Mirrors. (But it should stand alone fine even if you’ve never read a word about Marla; in some ways, it’s a reboot for the series.) I sent the story as a chapbook to readers who donated to the serial of Broken Mirrors, but it should be new to most of you.
The Alphabet Quartet continues — we’re up to “I is for Inertia” on the website!
Looks like I’ll be going to Fogcon tonight. See some of you there. I might possibly drop in on the bar tomorrow as well, but I think I’ll just stay home and work on my novel instead, as the end is increasingly in sight. (I’d be more likely to go if the hotel were near a BART station, but since it requires transfers to get there on public transit and I hate driving, I probably won’t make the journey twice.)
Now it can be told: Last Call Pictures has an option to make a (probably short) film based on my story “Morris and the Machine”. (The story can be listened to at Drabblecast if you’re interested.) Indie filmmaker Johnny Priest is very passionate (and articulate in his passion) about making a film from this story, so I’m hopeful the project might actually make it to the screen. Check out the trailers for their other films.
Yesterday I wrote 10,200 words on my novel-in-progress. So, you know — a ninth of the novel in a single day. Not bad. (Clearly, this means I should be able to write a novel in nine days, right? I mean, that’s just MATH, people.)
I usually have one or two 8K or 10K days on any given novel, generally as the end approaches and I start to generate momentum. I’m still about 25 or 30K short of the end here, though. I’ve got 29 days before the book’s due. Should be doable, though it won’t be the most thoroughly revised book I’ve ever turned in. I can clean it up a bit in the editorial process as necessary, though. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m enjoying it, which is nice. The dominoes I’ve been setting up are all starting to topple.
Obviously with that much writing I didn’t do a lot else yesterday. Took a walk to the library. Did a bit of grocery shopping. Read the first couple of trade collections of the Scalped comic (how had I never heard of that series before?). Played some Oblivion, where I did a fair bit of thieving and murdering and pillaging. Had dinner with my wife and kid.
Pretty much a perfect day, really.
Another Wednesday — another Alphabet Quartet story! “H is for Horse” can be read at Daily Science Fiction today.
I’m taking a vacation day from A Certain Magazine today, so I can… work a lot. There’s just a month left before my deadline on the current novel, which is still a good 35 or 40K words short of being finished. I spent two days bogged down and unable to get through what seemed like a simple, straightforward scene, but while taking a walk with the kid yesterday, something clicked in my brain and I figured out why — the scene as planned was all wrong. Fortunately, my brain knew how to fix it. My subconscious was unwilling to let me move forward and write the wrong version of the scene. Very considerate, really. Wish the old undermind always kept me from doing stupid things, but I’ll take what I can get. I managed to get a couple thousand words done yesterday, and hope to get many more done today. Wish me luck. And coffee.
Got a bit of writing done over the weekend — a couple thousand words — but mostly enjoyed myself. I’m taking another vacation day (Wednesday) to do nothing but write, so I could afford a bit of goofing off. So goof I did.
Heather bought a jumbo fun ball at CostCo. (Wow, it gets crappy reviews there. Huh. Ours is fine so far, though most of the kids who played in it were well under the weight limit, which may be why.) It is essentially a giant hollow faceted spheroid you can cram full of children. We took it over to the park on Sunday and I spent half an hour or so pumping it up — it has a zillion different nozzles, which is annoying, but I guess it means if one cell pops, the structure doesn’t collapse. River looooved it, and rolled around inside for hours. It was like the pied piper for all the kids in the park, too, and for most of the afternoon he had a flock of insta-friends taking turns spinning around inside, helping to roll it, etc. (Mostly I ran alongside to make sure they didn’t run over any picnickers.) Pain in the ass to blow up, and equally a pain in the ass to deflate, but he enjoyed it enough to make the annoyance worthwhile.
Also: we had a picnic with good sodas and chips and mac & cheese and chicken fingers and such. Immensely pleasant.
I did a bit of reading, too — the Witches volume of Fables (good), and the Crown of Shadows trade of Locke and Key (awesome). I went to a comic shop — Dr. Comics, in our old neighborhood, since Comic Relief has closed and not yet been reborn in its new incarnation — and picked up the first few issues of the Keys to the Kingdom arc of Lock and Key, because I love it so madly. I’m almost through the wonderful A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files; can’t believe I waited so long to read it.
I played some Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (because the joy of getting an Xbox 360 years later than anyone else is having awesome older games available for cheap), and I like it a lot. I seem to be tending toward thievery and skullduggery in my play style, which comes as no surprise at all.
Life is good.
Yesterday I took a rather impromptu vacation day so I could get some work done on the current book project. (Also because the cable guy who came for our Tuesday appointment didn’t bring the necessary equipment, so I needed to be home to meet a different cable guy yesterday afternoon. Yes, we got cable again, after almost a year without it — not that we stopped watching TV, we just got by with network shows and streaming Netflix. There was a good, cheap special cable deal going, though, so we figured, why not. The Song of Ice and Fire series is coming in a couple of months after all, and we want to see that.)
Anyway, I didn’t do much yesterday but write, and I managed about 8,300 words. Not my best day ever, but in my top ten, and knocking out nearly a tenth of the novel in a day is certainly satisfying. I’m planning to take another vacation day next week (I have more vacation than my wife does, so I have some days to burn anyway), and if it’s just as good, I may even find a couple of weeks to revise the novel before the April 1 deadline. The book stands at around 48,000 words. Halfway home.
Also, I went out for lunch and had a cheeseburger with a fried egg on top. Oh the deliciousness! And I didn’t write in the evening, which was a rare treat. I’ve often wondered what it must be like to just have one job, leaving me with evenings and weekends free for fun and chores and errands and such. Seems incredibly decadent. Don’t suppose I’ll ever know firsthand though.
Read a couple of books on, hmm, Tuesday night: The Burglar in the Library by Block, which was fun, though I never quite love Block’s work — the obligatory funny banter between his characters never seems all that funny to me, and in truth I find it kind of grating. Which is a shame, because I like the characters well enough, banter aside. I enjoy his Keller hitman novels, and keep wanting to get into the Burglar series — there are so many of them, and so highly praised! — but this is the first one I’ve made it through. (The one series of his that doesn’t seem to have funny banter, the Matthew Scudder books, is by contrast too grim for me, based on the book or two I read. I guess I’m hard to please.) I may make another run at the earlier books in the series.
Also read Quarry in the Middle by Max Allan Collins, the only Quarry book I’ve read. (Indeed, I’d never heard of the character until I picked up a copy off the paperback mystery spinner at the library. It was under the aegis of Hard Case Crime, which is generally all I need to at least try a book.) Anyway: good gritty occasionally funny hitman novel. The protagonist really objectifies women, which isn’t that uncommon with such books, but it did make it harder to like him. Then again, he’s a professional killer, so who’s to say he should be likable? He did have some chivalrous moments, though it can be argued that chivalry is just another side of sexism…
