Tim Pratt's Blog, page 22

My wife's been gone on a trip since Tuesday night, and though I've had heroic babysitting help from my mother-in-law the past couple of days, it's still been an exhausting week. Partly because I've been staying up late puttering around my empty house until well after midnight, even though the boy has been getting up at 6 or 6:30. As a result I've been tired, distracted, cranky, and generally out of sorts. (Which led to me being cranky in the comments threads of blogs, something I rarely do...

Broken Mirrors is now on sale for the Kindle! (And all those other devices that can read Kindle books. I'm working on other formats and venues. But it's a start.)

My lovely wife is off to New York, as she's in the wedding party of a certain World Fantasy Award nominated friend of ours (hi Susan!). Meanwhile, I'm here in California with the kid, enjoying this strange and brief window of actual summer weather. Solo parenting is rather more exhausting than team parenting, but the fact that my...

My son River's exam under anesthesia last Friday went beautifully. His glaucoma hasn't gotten worse at all, even though his last surgery was in 2008. Basically the best possible outcome. Yay! He wasn't under long, so he woke up quickly, and wasn't that groggy afterward. Apart from dilated pupils and light sensitivity, he was his old self again by late afternoon. He gets another check-up in 5 or 6 months, and they're going to see if they can check him without putting him under. He might be...

I hope all of you are out enjoying a wonderful weekend day, but if you happen to be looking at your computer instead, let me note: this is the last day to donate to my online serial Broken Mirrors if you want to get fundraiser prizes. You have until midnight Pacific time — so about 13 hours from now — to get goodies, or to have your name listed in the acknowledgments of the book.

In two weeks I start posting my SF adventure novel The Nex, which will run for 18 weeks. And if you head over...

The final chapter of Broken Mirrors has been published! The end is upon us. Thanks to everyone who read. (If you want to donate and get fundraiser prizes, you only have a week left to do so. After that, I stop dispensing goodies.) E-book version will follow soon, and the print version will be along in a month or so, I think (assuming I finish going over the page proofs in time!).

Onward to the next project: I'm serializing my science fantasy adventure novel The Nex, starting on September 6...

Science fiction and fantasy are still totally the genres I love the most, and I seem to be incapable of writing stories myself that don't involve monsters or ancient cults (who were actually really onto something) or weird gods or psychic powers or ghosts or shapechangers, but I've been majorly into reading crime fiction in the past year. Having read a couple hundred mystery/crime/etc. books I'm starting to figure out the stuff I like: nihilistic noir about loser criminals (James Cain! Jason ...

I'd catch you up on all the excitement in my life, but there's not much: spent most of last weekend either having a sick kid or being sick myself. Took Monday off work for a festival of sleeping and healing that was mostly successful. I thought I was still sick on Tuesday, until it dawned on me around noon that I hadn't actually eaten in about 24 hours. After consuming food I felt much better. Today I'm still kind of headachey and generally out-of-it, but I think that's mostly leftover...

I'm home sick, having been given a lovely cold by my son, who was sick on Friday. He promptly got his mom sick, too, though she's over her illness now as well… but I caught it last, and I'm still feeling it. At least I know I should be better in a day or so. I rose from bed to hydrate and eat something and figured I'd update here while I was temporarily vertical.

I just posted chapter 23 of Broken Mirrors, the penultimate chapter, which resolves the principle conflict between my main...

As I write this, I am enjoying a small slice of heaven:

A cup of freshly-brewed Blue Bottle coffee.

A fresh-baked sweet corn muffin (which my two-year-old helped me bake — he's good at stirring).

A dab of honey butter for the muffin.

Weekends are good.

Originally published at Tim Pratt. You can comment here or there.

It's been an extremely social week, especially by my hermitlike standards. Had a great afternoon out and then dinner on Tuesday with my wonderful agent Ginger, who took my wife Heather and I to Limon, one of our favorite restaurants. Truffle mac and cheese oh my yum.

On Wednesday Heather and my boss and I all went up to Sonoma to have dinner at the indescribably lovely home of a certain poet (and former head of a major arts institution) with whom I've corresponded for years but had never met...