Category Archives: Interviews

Published: March 27, 2011

A Chat with Brandon Sanderson (And… um… more)

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, I had a fun little conversation with Brandon Sanderson a couple of weeks ago.

And when I say ‘little conversation’ of course I mean ‘absolutely huge conversation.’ What was supposed to be a small interview between the two of us ended up being more than 6500 words long.

But really, what do you expect when you get two epic fantasy writers together to talk about writing?

Here’s the link. Share and enjoy….

pat

*     *     *

Edit: Someone in the comments below pointed out to me that I already linked to that interview earlier this month.

At first I didn’t believe them. Then I clicked back on the blog a few times… and there it was.

Honestly, I don’t have any memory of writing that blog at all. After seven days on the road, I was pretty much an exhausted mess.

Still, as I meant to post up a new interview today. Let me offer you a few different links instead.

Here’s a shorter interview that I haven’t mentioned on the blog yet.

And, just because, here’s an article from the Philidelphia Inquirer. (Don’t miss the fact that there are two pages.)

There you go. New stuff. That’s what I meant to post.

Also posted in the craft of writing
|posted by Pat 66 Comments
Published: March 26, 2011

Fanmail and Hummus

I have just now managed to get through the last of my e-mail backlog that built up while I was on tour. Who ever knew that it would take so long to work my way through a mere 2000 messages.

Next on my list is going through the 600 or so pieces of fanmail that have built up while I was gone. These are mostly e-mail too, though I do have a couple dozen old-fashioned envelopey messages too.

I used to respond personally to every message. But those days are long gone. I just don’t have the time anymore. But I do read them all. I don’t have anyone filter or pre-sort them for me.

On the home front, I’m having a good time hanging out with my baby. Little Oot is 18 months now, and he’s picking up words like crazy. When I came home on the 7th, after a week of touring, I found out that he had learned how to say “Monkey.” I was impressed, but also kinda sad that I hadn’t been the one to teach him this word. Because… y’know… monkey.

I’d been home for about 10 minutes when Sarah said, “What did we eat for the first time today?”

Oot gave her a look that wasn’t exactly blank, but let her know that he needed a little more help.

“Did we eat hummus?” Sarah prompted.

“Hummus,” Oot said. He said the word with a particular intensity. It wasn’t: “Hummus!” Not an exclamation. But it really wasn’t just “hummus,” either. It said it with emphasis. “Hummus.”

He pronounced it “haahmis.” With a tiny bit of a lisp on the s. It was, quite possibly, the cutest thing I’d ever heard.

“Haahmis….” he said again. “Haahmis.” A two-second pause. “Haahmis.” Another pause. “Hummus nummus,” he said. Expressing the opinion that hummus was, in fact, delicious. (Yummy = Nummy. Nummy ~ Nummus.)

I quickly had to revise my cuteness scale. “Hummus Nummus” was now top of the cuteness chart.

He then proceeded to say nothing but “hummus” for the next ten minutes.

And you know what? It never stopped being cute. Why? Because my baby is fucking adorable.

(Click to encutenate.)

In other news, (for those of you who have been asking) I’ve made my first tentative steps into playing Dragon Age II. I’ve only played 6-7 hours or so, and thus far my feelings are mixed.

More soon, including news of a few more signings, and stories from the tour.

pat

Also posted in Oot, fanmail
|posted by Pat 72 Comments
Published: March 8, 2011

First editions, a conversation, and another interview…

Heya everybody.

I’ve been on tour for a week now, and this is one of the few times when I’ve had enough time to get online.

I’ve got a bunch of stories from the first week of the tour, and a few pictures too. Hopefully I’ll be able to post them up in a blog in a day or two.

How would I briefly describe the tour so far?

Madness. Absolute madness.

I’ll go into more detail later.

One question people keep asking is this: “How can I tell if my copy of The Wise Man’s Fear is a first edition?”

I answered this question before on the blog a long time ago. So if you’re looking for a detailed answer, you should look over there.

The short answer is that you can tell if you have a first edition/first printing by looking at the number line of the book that’s located on the copyright page.

The problem is this: due to a printing error, some copies of The Wise Man’s Fear don’t have a number line. The copyright pages of those books look like this:

(That’s not my thumb, obviously.)

However, that printing error only occurred on the first printing of the book. That means if you see a book with no number line, it’s a first printing.

Surprisingly, The Wise Man’s Fear has been selling well enough that it’s already in its fourth printing even though it’s only been out for a week.  Personally, I’m going to be picking up a few extra firsts this time around. It’s something I didn’t think to do with The Name of the Wind, and now they’re being sold for truly stupid amounts of money. If I had a few boxes of those in the basement, I could use them to pay off my mortgage….

In other news, I did an online conversation with Brandon Sanderson for Amazon about a week ago. It’s a beast, more than 6000 words long. But what else would you expect when you get two authors like us together and ask us to talk about books?

Here’s a link to our conversation.

Lastly, here’s a link to an interview I did with the Portland Mercury.

Unlike most of my interviews, I didn’t type this one up. It’s more of a transcript of a phone conversation I had with with Erik Henriksen. He was a cool guy to talk to and our conversation was far-ranging to say the least.

More later folks. I’ll be seeing some of you in Madison later tonight.

Be good.

pat

Also posted in Fanmail Q + A
|posted by Pat 223 Comments
Published: February 4, 2011

An early review and an interview…

I try not to read a reviews of my books. This is one of the things I’ve learned over the last several years. That ways lies madness.

For the most part, I’m good at not seeking them out. But occasionally my editor or agent brings one to my attention.

This is how I found out that The Wise Man’s Fear got a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly. They’re one of the handful of big-mojo book reviewers out there, and a starred review is a from them is a pretty big deal.

Here’s the last line of the review:

“This breathtakingly epic story is heartrending in its intimacy and masterful in its narrative essence, and will leave fans waiting on tenterhooks for the final installment.”

Now that’s a blurb. Narrative essence. Heartrending. Tenterhooks.

Why can’t I write a blurb like that? I just don’t seem to have it in me….

Anyway, if you want to read the whole review, you can hop over here.

I also did a short interview for Publisher’s Weekly with Paul Goat Allen. I had a good time with that, and he asked some questions nobody’s ever asked me before. Dude is wicked smart.

If you’re interested in that, you can find it over here.

Have a good weekend folks,

pat

Also posted in a few words you're probably going to have to look up, reviews
|posted by Pat 54 Comments
Published: January 28, 2011

Home again, home again, jiggety jig…

I manged to get out of New York just before they got buried in snow. I’m glad for many reasons, but mostly because I really, really missed Oot on my trip. And as cool as it was to see my book in print after all these years, it was much cooler to see my baby after I’d been away from him for a week.

Much to my relief, he still recognized me. We hung out in the airport for a while, catching up on all the news. He poked at my shoes and said, “boots.” Then tugged up my pantleg, found my leg, and told me it was there. I was relieved.

Then we went for a walk. He informed me that the baggage carousel was a “vroom,” and I had to agree.

He also let me know that clocks are still the in thing. That’s reassuring to me, as I was worried the fashion might have changed while I was gone. But no, he continues to point whenever he sees one, announcing to everyone who cares to listen that there is a clock. I agree to this as well, even if that particular clock happens to be, say, a thermometer.

There is an art to conversation, you see, and part of that art is the ability to occasionally let a trifling difference of opinion slide by without making a federal case out of it.

So he says, “Clock,” and I think, Okay. Fair enough. I see your point.

“Clock,” I agree.

At some point Sarah asks me if I’m crying, and I tell her that no, in fact I’m weeping, thank you very much. Because weeping is slightly more dignified, as it’s derived from the Old English wepan shedding of tears, not the the sissy Old French crier which implies a wailing noise.

Oot says, “up,” and I pick him up. Then he pushes my nose and says, “beep.” It’s impossible to explain how cute this is. Then he pushes his own nose, which is exponentially cuter.

After dinner and more hanging out with Sarah and Oot, I slept from 9:00 PM until 4:00 AM. Then, after a little e-mail, I decided that getting a full eight hour’s rest was so much fun that I might as well do it again, so I went to bed and slept from 8:00 AM until 3:00 PM.

In brief, it’s good to be home.

I’m well aware that Wednesday’s picture of The Wise Man’s Fear rather resembled a grainy photo of bigfoot. I wasn’t being coy, it’s just that I was using the camera on my little netbook. Functional, but not elegant by any means….

Here’s what it really looks like.

Strangely enough, the book is just about the same size as The Name of the Wind, but The Wise Man’s Fear has 994 pages, compared to Name’s measly 662. From what I understand, they did this using some manner of tesseract. Or perhaps through the sacrifice of a black she-goat. Or thinner paper. Whatever the source technology, the result is that The Wise Man’s Fear is feels really solid. As if each revision I did somehow increased the gravitational density of the book.

Have I said that it’s pleasing to hold? It is. It very is.

Back in July when I was out at Comic Con, I did an interview with Shawn Speakman. (He’s the lovely gent that’s selling signed versions of The Wise Man’s Fear for those of you that can’t make it to a signing.)

Anyway, Shawn recently posted it up on Suvudu, so I thought I’d share it around for those of you who might be interested….

We chat about a bunch of things, and at the end of the video I answer a bunch of questions that readers sent in.

Honestly? I can’t remember a damn thing I said, as at that point in the convention I was in a fugue state brought about my overexposure to cool people, catgirls, and caffeine.

Share and enjoy….

pat

Also posted in Oot, book two, videos
|posted by Pat 58 Comments
Published: August 23, 2010

Locus Magazine

I’ve been cutting back on conventions this year so I can focus on revisions and my pretty new baby.

I’d even decided to skip Wiscon this year, even though it’s in Madison, which means it’s practically in my backyard.

But then I found out my friend Nnedi was going to be Guest of Honor there this year. (Remember Nnedi? I interviewed her for Worldbuilders last year, and talked about her book a couple months ago.) Anyway, getting asked to be GOH at Wiscon is a pretty big deal, and I don’t see Nnedi nearly as much as I’d like, so I decided to go.

Then the people at Locus dropped me an e-mail, asking if I wanted to do an interview. I said, “Sure.” Because Locus is a pretty big deal in the Sci-Fi Fantasy publishing world. And I like doing interviews, especially when they’re in person. I spend enough time typing.

So I meet up with the lovely folks from Locus. The interview is fun. They ask good questions. We hang out. Then they say, “Do you mind if we take some pictures?”

And I’m like, “Sure, if you’re into that sort of thing.”

Then a couple weeks ago, this shows up in the mail:

My first thought? “If I’d known they were going to put me on the cover, I would have gotten a haircut….”

My second thought was, “I’m on the cover of Locus.”

My third thought was, “Shit. This is kind of a big deal. I hope I don’t sound like an idiot…”

Then I open up the magazine and burst out laughing. Here’s what I see:

Why don’t we zoom in on that a little?

Yeah. There you go. You can click that to embiggen it if you want, but you might want to be careful, lest the intensity of my sheer awesome reduce you to a quivering wreck.

For those of you who are curious. My t-shirt says: “My Marxist feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.” It’s a very specialized sort of joke, and there really isn’t any point in me explaining it if you don’t get it. Suffice to say that Wiscon is a feminist Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention. It’s the only place I can wear the shirt where people think it’s funny.

Anyway, after I had a good laugh at this picture I was much more relaxed. I get very nervous when people take me too seriously.

I read the interview and was very pleased that I didn’t come off sounding like an idiot. It was a lot more wide-ranging than a lot of the interviews I do, and we talked about some stuff I don’t normally talk about.

If you want a taste of it, there’s a few excerpts over on Locus’ website.

Still revising. One week ’til deadline.

pat

Also posted in being awesome, cool things
|posted by Pat 64 Comments
Published: October 23, 2009

Sfsignal – What book Introduced you to Fantasy?

Recently, SFsignal asked a bunch of authors about how they got introduced to fantasy. (Myself included.)

It was interesting to see what the other authors listed. Some mentioned old familiars, and I picked up a few new titles for me increasingly long “To Be read” list.

It’s an interesting collective interview. If you want to check it out, it’s over here.

Edit: A helpful fan found a link to the read-along record I talk about in the interview. It’s over here.

As for the raffle, there’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that things are going really well. We’ve already raised over 6000 dollars. Woo!

The bad news is that paypal doesn’t like me using my account for anything resembling gambling. I’ve sent them an e-mail to hopefully straighten things out, and make it clear that this is really just a charity fundraiser with an incentive that just *looks* like a raffle.

I’m waiting to hear back from them. But the moral of the story is that if you want to donate online with paypal, it might be better to do it sooner, rather than later. I might be forced to take the paypal link down, and if that happens, I’ll have to muddle my way through figuring out google checkout or some shit like that. And if it’s close to November 15th (the end of the name fundraiser) I might not bother.

Or you can take the safe and simple route and just mail your entry in. Easy peasy.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, but you’re interested in maybe getting your name in The Wise Man’s Fear, you can get all the details over here.

More news soon.

pat

Also posted in Fantasy
|posted by Pat 55 Comments

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