Patrick Rothfuss's Blog, page 16

It’s been kinda quiet here on the blog lately. Part of the reason for that is because I’ve been recovering from the fundraiser, trying to catch up on my e-mail, and spending more time with my family because they got pretty short shrift while Worldbuilders was going on.

And I’ve been working on other things too. Dreaming dreams. Scheming schemes. Occasionally machinating.

The things I’ve been working will be showing up over the course of the year, some of them sooner rather than later. Many of...

As many of you know, I have a profile on Goodreads. These days, when I talk about books, I usually do it over there.

Here’s a link to my profile if you’re interested.

I don’t really review books so much as I share my thoughts about books that I’ve read. Sometimes what I talk about reading with my kids. Sometimes I talk about story structure or the craft of writing.

It’s really all over the place.

Recently, I re-read a book that I read more than 20 years ago. Rendezvous with Rama.

I liked it...

Back around 95 or so, in my early college years, I went over to a friend’s house and sat down on the couch next to him. He was watching a documentary about David Bowie.

I didn’t listen to much music as a kid, and I grew into an adult that doesn’t listen to much music, either. Back then, I didn’t have the slightest idea who Bowie was. After watching this documentary for about 45 seconds, I made some sort of snide comment about this person on the screen. Just shooting my mouth off. I probably s...

As I write this, Worldbuilders has raised more than $1,200,000. Making this far-and-away our most successful fundraiser ever.

Simply said, it’s been an amazing year. Together we’ve raised enough money to change tens of thousands of lives forever. We are responsible for hundreds of families getting goats and sheep and pigs. We’ve raised enough money for hundreds of wells, thousands of chickens, millions of bees. We are planting forests full of trees. We are helping bring medicine and light and...

Since Monday, when we announced we had a donor willing to match $200,000 worth of donations on our page, we’ve raised more than $100,000. This is delightful news. In addition to showing that we are all manner of awesome, it means a net gain of $200,000 for Heifer International.

The only downside is that we still have around $100,000 dollars of matching money left, but we’ve burned through all of our stretch goals.

So. To celebrate our continued success, I’m going to put some books from my per...

Hey everyone, Worldbuilders Team here! With the surprise extension to the fundraiser, we thought we’d throw our metaphorical hats in to help out with blogs for the week, so Pat can catch up on some rest.

One of the things we really want to be sure you’ve seen is all of the amazing stretch goals we’ve had this year.

Of course, you can click around and see all of them in our cool Stretch Goal Slider.

We had a lot of people step up this year. We had people attempt to read Fox in Socks without m...

Hey there everybody,

As I sit down to write this, it’s 12:47 AM here in Wisconsin. It’s officially December 14th, the last day of our yearly fundraiser.

I had an easy blog planned today. A blog full of touching stories. A feel-good blog. A simple blog.

But something has happened. Now I have to change my plans and share some information about the fundraiser. The information is good. But this is no longer and easy blog to write. I am in disarray.

I really wish I could write a beautiful blog for...

One of the great things about Heifer International is that they work hard to partner with groups local to the areas they’re working in. For example, in Guatemala they partnered with Green Mountain Coffee to help support families who were building sustainable, self-reliant coffee farms.

And the best way to do that was to provide honey bees to pollinate the coffee, as well as to produce delicious, sellable honey.

There are a fair number of small-scale coffee farmers in Guatemala, but the harve...

Today we’ve got some lovely games from Fantasy Flight to add to our prize lottery. But before I show them off, I’m going to tell you a story. Because that’s what I do.

I’d like to introduce you to a family of refugees.

If they seem pretty happy for a family of refugees, well… that’s because they’re farmers now. But that’s the end of the story. I should start closer to the beginning….

Uganda has been struggling with war for decades. The history of the area is too complicated for me to get int...

One of the Worldbuilders Team’s favorite gifts you can buy from Heifer is chickens.

In some ways, it’s an obvious choice. Chickens produce eggs, and eggs produce chickens. In parts of the world where poverty is high and meat is scarce, protein-packed eggs from even a single chicken can have a huge impact on a child’s nutrition.A good hen can lay between 200 and 300 eggs a year – that means a flock provides enough eggs for an entire family to eat, with plenty left to sell.

Twenty bucks is eno...