Blogomancer

Rich Horton has a nice review of Poison Sleep at SF Site.

The cover for Dead Reign. Art by Dan Dos Santos, design by Jamie Warren-Youll.

Click the image above for the big pretty -- including wraparound art!

I'm so so so happy with this.

Gahhhh thud am done.

The fourth Marla Mason novel -- which is probably being called Shell Games, unless we go with one of the other shortlisted choices, which who the hell knows, we might -- is all revised-up and polished and shiny and zooming through the ether toward my editor's inbox.

Yesterday I did the big changes. The novel got a whole extra chapter. New scenes scattered here and there. Etc.

Yesterday, I did not leave the house.

Today I line-edited. Did some in the morning, then took a long walk around the lake, because it's a gorgeous weekend, and if I hadn't gone outside at all, I would have gone crazy. Of course, as a result, I had to work work work all afternoon. Sigh. But the book is finished -- unless and until my editor wants big changes, and then there's copyediting and proofreading, but I can stop thinking about it for a little while, which is nice. (Because now I can work on my YA proposal, whee.)

Thanks to all my diligent and brilliant and wonderful first readers, who saved me from continuity errors, pointed out sloppy and nonsensical character motivations, chastised me for writing some flimsy pointless bits, and explained to me that birds don't have sphincter control. (That last bit from Jay Lake.) You'll all be lauded in the acknowledgments.

Fly away, little book!

I kept forgetting to post this, and now it's the proverbial short notice, but what the hell: I'm doing a reading and signing for Poison Sleep this Saturday at 1 p.m. at Borderlands Books in San Francisco.

Directions and details and suchlike here: www.borderlands-books.com.

Come out! Hear me read! See my new haircut!

I finished the fourth Marla Mason novel last night. Only took a few thousand words. I suspect the ending is a bit rushed, and the overall word count came in a tad shorter than I expected (it's about 81,000 words -- the others hover just above or below 85K apiece), but it'll get longer in revision, since I can already think of a couple of scenes that need to be expanded. I've got about three weeks to fix it before turning it in, which should be doable.

Still, hey: it's a draft! Now I get a day of pure exultation at having the hard part done, followed by days of vaguely directionless frustrated ennui and the persistent sense that I should be working. (At least, that's what Heather says my post-novel pattern is, and she should know.)

The new working title is Burning the Lot, but it probably won't be called that ultimately. I'll figure something out.

My editor sent a preliminary sketch of the artwork for Dead Reign, and though I can't share it, I can say: it kicks ass. Marla, looking hot and badass, wielding a big sword. How you gonna beat that?

As some of you know, my first love is poetry. It's what I studied in college, and I wrote a collection of poems as the senior honors thesis for my creative writing degree (a degree roughly as useful as a cowcatcher on a fencepost). I taught poetry workshops, I published in little magazines, and I did more readings than I could count.

Alas, the need to keep body and soul together have increasingly led me to forsake poetry in favor of prose, simply because prose pays so very much better. But, in honor of National Poetry Month, and in light of the fact that so many books of poetry have lately topped bestseller lists (not to mention the flurry of recent film rights sales -- who else can't wait for David Fincher's adaptation of Margaret Atwood's Morning in the Burned House? Or to see what kind of twist M. Night Shyamalan can put on the end of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"? Maybe he'll take the road more traveled by!), I've convinced my publisher to let me do something novel -- only, ha, as you'll see, also decidedly not novel -- for the fourth book in my Marla Mason urban fantasy series, which comes out next April, just in time for the 2009 National Poetry Month.

That book, currently titled Untitled Book Four, will be composed entirely of haiku.

Herewith, a few excerpts, from the Heroic Prologue:

As you can see, I owe a great debt of influence to the poems of Basho, for his willingness to subvert traditional haiku subject matter, and to Allen Ginsberg's innovative American Sentences for some of the syllabic playfulness. I think you'll find the book a quick read. Like all the previous books, it comes in a bit over 300 pages in paperback -- but there's a lot more white space in Untitled Book Four than the others.

Enjoy April. Do something poetic.

My publisher, Bantam Spectra, has posted a chunk of the first chapter of Poison Sleep -- you can read it here. (And, no, I'm not sure why it ends halfway through a sentence, but it's a hell of a cliffhanger that way, I guess!)

Greg van Eekhout sends the first picture of Poison Sleep in the wild! Doesn't it look nifty next to Blood Engines? (Amazon.com suggests you buy BOTH, and provides a handy button for clicking to make that happen. I applaud this plan!)

(Click the cover to buy from Amazon. Or click here to buy from Powell's.)

There's a lovely review of Poison Sleep up at Fantasy Book Critic. The novel (Buy it!) is coming out very very soon (actually, it's probably in stores already, and Amazon starts shipping copies on Tuesday the 25th -- so, er, tomorrow!). Most people who've reviewed it say it's better than Blood Engines (I tend to agree), so if you liked the first one, pick it up -- and if you didn't like the first one, give me another chance?

My story "Pale Dog" has been offered up as a free download on the Bantam Spectra Facebook page. Go, befriend Spectra, and read the story.

Poison Sleep will be available for sale next Tuesday, so pre-order and it'll arrive lickety-split. I'm currently reading through page proofs of book 3, Dead Reign, and I'm about two-thirds of the way through writing the fourth book. So there's your State of the Marlaverse!

How strange. I just came across a spam blog that includes a chunk of text about Poison Sleep... but it appears to be the publisher's description, run through a machine translator, and then translated back into English. Or something. It's... interesting:

The intense blackamoor of the magical underworld is backwards and badder than ever. Someone wants Marla Mason dead. Usually that's not news. As honcho necromancer of Felport, someone always wants her dead. But this instance she's the direct of a baulk murderer who specializes in ending his victims over days, months, or modify years. Not to name a occult knife-wielding dolphin in black who pops up in the most unheralded places. To attain matters worse, an patient has busted discover of the Blackwing Institute for criminally unstable sorcerers—a harassed knowledge who crapper literally reweave the artifact of actuality to correct her possess harmful past. With her wisecracking relation Rondeau reluctantly in tow, Marla teams up with a "love-talker" whose chanceful sexy spells not modify she crapper resist. Together they're intelligent the apace transforming streets of Felport for a blackamoor who's embellish the Typhoid Jewess of nightmares, infecting everything—and everyone—she touches with a confusion worsened than modification itself.

How the hell does "Typhoid Mary" become "Typhoid Jewess"? And I really should write a book about an occult knife-wielding dolphin in black who pops up in the most unheralded places. "The artifact of actuality" is actually a rather potent phrase, though, and I may use it sometime.

My forthcoming Poison Sleep (due out in about six weeks!) got a good review in Publishers Weekly, and since it's appeared on the Amazon page for the novel (click through to preorder), I'll quote it in its entirety:

From Publishers Weekly
Marla Mason, guardian mage of the east coast city of Felport, returns in her second major magical challenge (after Blood Engines): catching a psycho, and psychic, dream "reweaver" before the psycho turns into an endless nightmare. Genevieve Kelley, a former apprentice sorcerer, vanishes from the Blackwing Institute for Criminally Insane Sorcerers after laying catatonic for 15 years, having put herself into a protective deep sleep after being raped. With the ability to "reweave" physical reality, the terrified psychic is trying to escape Reave, king of nightmares, the avatar of her rapist. Marla, drawn in and out of Genevieve's dream reality, hires Ted, a former street bum turned skeptical personal assistant, and Joshua, a delectable "lovetalker," to help her put a lid on Genevieve as an important sorcerer assembly approaches. A rival sorcerer, Gregor, also seeks to eliminate the marvelous Marla by hiring Zealand, a "slow assassin." Pratt keeps the action lively in this wonderfully whimsical urban fantasy as the adventure of Genevieve takes some wonderfully imaginative twists and turns. (Apr.)

Just got word this morning that Blood Engines is going back to press for a second printing. Can I get a woo-hoo? (Do jump on the bandwagon and go buy it.)

Did I mention that my fabulous cover artist Dan Dos Santos sent me a nice big print of the cover art for Poison Sleep? Inscribed, signed, and gorgeous. It'll have a place of honor in our new apartment. He also told me he's planning to do poster-sized prints of the piece for Comic-Con! How awesome is that? I can't wait to see what he does for the cover of Dead Reign...

The producer who optioned Blood Engines is coming to visit next week, and now that the writers' strike is over, we can engage in wild speculation about the possibility of a movie or TV series based on the book(s)! We can also drink wine. Should be fun.

Blood Engines is this month's book for the Kelley Armstrong Book Club, which is cool. Go over and join the discussion (but I'm staying out of it, and haven't even read the thread, because then I might be tempted to respond, and nothing kills a discussion like having an author drop in, mucking up the place!).

And I can finally announce that Phoenix Pictures has optioned TV and film rights for the whole Marla Mason series. (This does not mean there will actually be a movie or TV show made from the books. But it does mean a production company likes the series enough that they're willing to pay me a little and take a shot at stirring up interest for such projects!)

My Marlaverse story "Grander than the Sea" from The Solaris Book of New Fantasy will be reprinted in David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer's Year's Best Fantasy 8, coming out in June 2008. This is Marla's first appearance in a Year's Best!

Blood Engines made the Locus bestseller list in the January issue. At #10, but hey, I'll take what I can get! (Huh, that's the first time I've looked at the Amazon page in a while. Lots of reviews there I hadn't seen before. Most of the really positive ones seem to dig the fact that Marla isn't the typical urban fantasy bombshell/badass combo, but is instead cranky and amoral. That's good to know, because she continues that way!)

I'm cranking away at Grift Sense, the fourth Marla Mason novel. (Turns out there's a mystery novel called Grift Sense that came out a few years ago -- from the same conglom that publishes me, actually -- which is unfortunate. I may change the title. "Grift Know" is another phrase that means the same thing, but it just doesn't have the right ring.) I'm about 20,000 words in, and getting toward the dreaded middle. I really need to make an outline. There are pretty much three plot threads: about the Big Con (where Rondeau is the viewpoint character), about Bradley Bowman's ongoing apprenticeship (with Marla and Bradley switching off viewpoints), and about the crazy fungus magician Vaillant (with his perpetually-hallucinating slave/factotum as a very odd viewpoint character). Now, all three plots will trainwreck together nicely later on, but I'm having a bitch of a time juggling them now, giving them each enough weight, handling pacing and suspense, etc. I think I need to outline each plot thread separately, then figure out how to mesh them together in order to make all the dominos fall properly. It's a challenge -- the kind of challenge I love! -- but tough to do currently, with a new baby in the house and a distinct lack of sleep. But I'll manage. It's not due for another (eep) four months and change...

Hurray! Poison Sleep advance reader copies are here! Which means they should be going out to reviewers soon. It's gorgeous. It looks like a real book!

I made some minor changes to MarlaMason.net, adding brief descriptions of all the books in the series, a cover image and ordering links for Poison Sleep, etc.

But I couldn't help myself.

Here's an e-mail I received today:

While you’ve a small talent for writing it lacks any life, style or long-lasting appeal. The main character Marla Mason holds no interest and I really must draw the line at cannibals who eat only the willing, or for that matter any cannibal. What a disappointment. The only thing I can do is never buy anything from you, or the other writers who gave you the positive reviews. What a hoax, and a waste of 7.99.

[Name and e-mail address redacted to protect the socially-challenged]

And my reply:

Oh, hey, you caught me on my day off, when I actually have a minute to respond. Goodie! I don't usually reply to reviews, good or bad... but since this isn't a review, and is instead a sort of mirror-image of the fan letters I usually get, I'll reply.

Wow. You go to [Ivy-league university e-mail came from]? I guess you're one of those people who has good test scores, but fails on the whole "social learning" continuum? Or do you just mop floors there or something? (Ouch. Too personal?)

What an insanely rude thing to send to an author. Do you go up to people in the grocery store and tell them their babies are ugly, too? I don't really care if you hated my book -- de gustibus non est disputandum and all that, and as long as tens of thousands of other people like my work, my career can handle those others who quite reasonably don't enjoy them -- but what on Earth would possess you to send me a private note containing such vitriol? You should save stuff like that for your blog, dear. I'll certainly be posting your e-mail on my own, along with this response. Thanks for providing me with some content! I was wondering what I was going to post about this week. (Don't worry, I'll redact your name and e-mail address to spare you from having scores of people write e-mails mocking you. See, I have some modicum of social grace!)

You can "draw the line" at cannibals who eat the willing all you like, but google "meiwes cannibal" and you can read about the actual criminal case that inspired that section of the book. Write to Arwin Meiewes and tell him about your line-drawing prowess. I hear he's gone vegetarian and joined the Green party since he got to prison. Reality is *so* much stranger than fiction, don't you think?

And now, though I must make a real effort to overcome my customary sunny disposition, let me sign off in a spirit inspired by your own: eat shit and die, and happy holidays.

yours sincerely,

T.A. Pratt

Slag my work in reviews, on blogs, in your 'zine, or whatever, and it's totally cool. But send a note to my e-mail? Well. I do make a point of responding to all letters from my fans...

(Update: She wrote back, apologized for being rude and harsh, said she'd give some of my other work a try, and also said she didn't realize she was writing to my personal e-mail. Who knew rudeness + rudeness = reconciliation?!)

I'm reading page proofs for Poison Sleep, which is, astonishingly, due to be published in less than four and a half months. (Look! The cover art is online at Amazon.com! Hurray!) I'm supposed to be looking for typos, but it's also my last chance to correct infelicitous turns of phrase, etc., within reason -- if I change too much, the publisher will get understandably cranky, so I try to keep stylistic corrections to a minimum, which isn't too hard, since by this point, I've read the book many many many times before. I mostly have a hard time reading my own work, as the words tend to clang and clank and clatter in my head, but I came across one bit I like very much, early in the book:

Genevieve could have gone to... lots of places. There were plenty of folds in this world, and lots of other worlds entirely. Some of them didn't even exist until you entered them. Which didn't mean they were otherwise uninhabited.

Not bad, eh?

In other news, my Marla & Rondeau vs. A Crazy Guy story, "Grander than the Sea", got a nice review on this blog. I'm especially pleased the reviewer liked the story so much even though they'd never read any other Marla stories... it means the story probably works on its own terms, which is gratifying to hear. So pick up a copy of The Solaris Book of New Fantasy and give the story a read.