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Month: June 2011

The Onrushing D

Published by Tim Pratt on June 21, 2011

My dear friend Dawson (AKA “D,” “D-Lite,” “Commander D”, “Vitamin D,” “The D-Fenestrator,” “Freelance Spiritual Adviser and Minister of War,” etc.) is visiting soon, for the first time in, what, 18 months? He’s arriving late Thursday (if the travel gods are kind) and staying with us for a week. It will be a week of awesome. For complex and boring issues related to the magazine production schedule at my day job, I can’t take any vacation days while he’s here, but I’m juggling my schedule around to maximize free time, aligning my usual days off into a glorious four-day run of freedom. I’m sure for portions of it I’ll even be sober.

D is our kid’s godfather (don’t worry, our kid also has a sciencefather), and the boy is very excited to see his “Uncle D” again. We’ve already promised River that D will read him Sandra Boynton’s Barnyard Dance and act out all the dance moves. (We haven’t told D this yet, but he’ll roll with it. He’s good like that.)

Dawson is the world’s greatest houseguest. (Well, I guess maybe there are houseguests who fill your cupboards with golden coins and delicious ham, leaving you fabulously wealthy and sated by pork during their visit? But other than such hypothetical houseguests, yeah, D is the best.) The house is actually *cleaner* when he leaves. He decreases entropy by his very existence. (Except the fun kinds of entropy.) It’s like: who needs a vacation, when D is visiting? His mere presence is a vacation.

Friends like that are a treasure to be treasured by any and all who treasure treasure.

(Anyway, if you don’t hear from me much in the next week, that’s why. I’ll be busy discussing the finer points of Stephen King trivia, watching D and my wife do Aikido in the yard, listening to my kid giggle uncontrollably, and stealing D’s french fries. Is there anything better than a friend who never finishes his fries?)

Impossible Dreams: The (Short) Movie

Published by Tim Pratt on June 20, 2011

Behold! The trailer for a short film by Shir Comay based on my Hugo Award-winning story “Impossible Dreams.”

(If that embedded video doesn’t play for you, try this link instead.)

I’ve seen a not-quite-final cut of the whole film, and it’s really lovely, retaining much that I love about my own story without being a literal or slavish adaptation, and with the director’s personal vision shining through.

So: how cool! The first film inspired by my work! And it’s a movie of a story that’s all about movies. (So meta.)

A couple of years ago the director got in touch and asked if he could make a short, non-commercial Hebrew-language film, and my agents and I said, sure. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much — I figured it would be a couple of the director’s college roommates as actors, mumbling their lines into the camera. Instead he got the marvelous Ayala Zilberman and Ori Yaniv, who do an awesome job. It’s going to be in the Jerusalem Film Festival, and the director plans to submit it to some international festivals as well.

I’ve been full of “Whee!” about this for a week. Hope you all enjoy the trailer, and if and when it’s possible to point you toward the full film, I will.

So Many Things To See And Buy!

Published by Tim Pratt on June 15, 2011

Linky times y’all.

First, check out Tiger Bright Studios, Jenn Reese’s new design company specializing in e-book covers. Jenn’s work is made of ten kinds of awesome, and her prices are quite competitive.

Shadow Unit just concluded their 3rd season of awesomeness. Go give the writers some money so they can do season 4 without going broke. And if you haven’t read it, and you like serial killer / behavioral analysis / forensic profiling / supernatural / police procedural stuff, you’ve got some wonderful stories ahead of you.

Get Michael Canfield’s awesomely weird e-book collection 419 Memoirs & Other Strange Stories at Amazon.com in Kindle format or at B&N.com for the Nook. I wrote the introduction. Mike’s one of my favorite writers of weird fiction, and this is a book of his weirdest.

(Yes, I used a variant of “awesome” in all those paragraphs; this is not bad writing, but an indication that awesomeness is my THEME.)

What Needs Doing

Published by Tim Pratt on June 14, 2011

I have a to-do list. Maybe it’s of interest as a list of things writers have to do that don’t involve spinning fanciful tales of might-have-been and never-could-be (with optional monsters and explosions)? Or maybe I’m just posting it so I’ll stop forgetting things and putting them off. You may never know!


  • Write and record a brief piece about Welcome to Bordertown for a podcast (must happen tonight!)

  • Look over a proofreader’s comments and see if I want to make any more changes to Briarpatch (by Thursday morning!)

  • Finish this Conrad Williams novel so I can review it

  • Write a review of Eutopia by David Nickle

  • Create covers and format more short stories for sale as e-books

This is in addition to doing the edits for my Wizards of the Coast novel, which should be appearing in my inbox shortly. And of course writing the remaining 50,000 words of City of the Fallen Sky by the August 1 due date. Then I have two stories to write in August, and one story to write in September, and of course another novel due in February 2012, and there are a couple of other projects percolating that might actually happen…

Plus, you know. Full-time job at a magazine. Marriage. Fatherhood. Etc.

It’s good to keep busy. And, actually, the back half of this year is comparatively leisurely compared to, say, last year. I’m not feeling too terribly overwhelmed, yet. Though I do dream someday of taking vacation time for reasons other than finishing work on a novel…

Vámonos!

Published by Tim Pratt on June 8, 2011

It’s another Wednesday, and that means, another installment in The Alphabet Quartet is up at Daily Science Fiction! This week it’s one of my favorites, “V is for Vámonos.” (Yes, we’re aiming for the huge demographic of people who like Dora the Explorer and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.Though ideally it’s an interesting weird story even if you haven’t seen/read those.) I can’t believe we’ve hit V already. The end is near. It’s been a fun six months!

The good people at Escape Artists, home of the leading SF/Fantasy/Horror podcasts, are also releasing audio versions of the stories, plus some extras, as a fundraiser prize. But they’ve giving away free samples to entice you, so listen to them at Podcastle; and at Escape Pod; and at Pseudopod.