Category Archives: cool things

“…an odd, maundering aggregation of anecdotes and elegy.”

So there’s one day left on the kickstarter, and among the many stretch goals we’ve unlocked while bringing Digger back into print, was one where I said folks would get a sneak peek of the foreword.

So I’m going to throw that up here today.

But first, I want to show you the graphic that I made with Julia on the livestream a couple days ago, that shows nice mockups of the books and gives details about them, including all the upgrades we’ve been able to include.

And you know what? I’m going to do you one better than that.

Right now the kickstarter is at $339,827. But I’m going to show you the graphic we have ready for when we hit $350K because that’s kinda the final big goal for us.

Because at $350,000 every Softcover and Hardcover book people get through the kickstarter will include a special bookplate with new, original art by Ursula Vernon.

Here it is.

(Woo!)

Here’s the thing: I know everyone jumping into the kickstarter would like a signed book. But there’s just no way we can do that. The books are *way* too big, and shipping them to Ursula would take a truck, then a crew of people to unload, unbox, present, re-box, and re-load. Pallets of books. Shipping cost both ways. Plus the books get damaged boxing and unboxing. Plus the time. And hassle. And extra money.

Even a bookplate is tricky. It ads more art design. We still have to do a proofing process, pay to get things printed and shipped to Ursula, then shipped back. And god help us if we lose a box…

But the kickstarter has done well enough that we can manage it. And Ursula has been gracious enough to agree to sign *all* of them.

So that means everyone can get their book signed, after a fashion.

But anyway. Here’s the promo graphic I was talking about…

(Click to Embiggen)

That was a ton of fun to make with Julia and the folks on the stream. I’m trying to do my best on this project, because I love Ursula’s book. But I do my best work when I don’t take things *too* seriously.

And now, without further ado, here’s my rambling mess of a foreword. (Forgive the occasional error, this is the raw text, not the nicely trimmed and copy-edited version that exists in the book itself.)

*     *     *

Hello there. My name is Patrick Rothfuss. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

That’s the gist of it right there. You have permission to skip this whole foreword and get straight to the good stuff. I don’t know what you might be expecting from a forward, but odds are you won’t find it here. This is, at best, going to be an odd, maundering aggregation of anecdotes and elegy.

So go on. Get in there. Read it.

*     *     * 

Okay. I warned you.

Once, years and miles away, I stumbled onto a comic called Digger.

I was on a book tour, which meant I needed something to read in airports and hotel rooms. I found this comic in the store after I was done with my signing. I looked it over. Good blurbs. Playful tone. Hold on, Phil Foglio wrote the foreword? I’ve loved his work for ages, especially Girl Genius.

But luggage space was limited, and this book was beefy. Thick as a cinderblock. I wasn’t sure I had space for it…

I flipped a couple pages to look at the art and suddenly there was a full splash page showing Ganesha.

That was enough for me. I rolled the dice, bought it, and ended up having to throw away two t-shirts so I could fit it in my bag.

Every once in a while, apparently, I make a good decision.

*     *     * 

Whenever I write a foreword or introduction, I feel the need to explain that I don’t like introductions. That I don’t read introductions. I find the entire concept baffling at best. More often I think of them as belonging in the same circle of hell as spoilers, paid endorsements, and people who talk in the theatre.

Simply said, I don’t want to tell you about this book. I believe a story should stand on its own, and that the first time you experience it is precious. Sacrosanct.

If my job here is to introduce you to the book… shouldn’t I do it in the same way I introduce people? “Hello there, Reader. I hear you like Books.” I turn to face Digger with an expansive gesture. “What a fortunate happenstance, my good friend Book! I suspect the two of you will form a delightful acquaintance.”

And then I should leave. I shouldn’t stand around, hands in my pockets, eyeballing you intently while rocking back onto my heels, like I’m expecting the two of you to immediately kiss.

So. Reader, meet Book. Book, Reader.

*     *     * 

Giving people books is my love language. And these days, my older son bears the brunt of the impulse. The only thing that keeps me from burying him in books is the fact that I only want to bring him truly good things to read.

Also? He’s 12, and I’ve tried to keep the worst of the world from poisoning him. As a result, he’s crushingly literate with a tender heart and has a real distaste for what he refers to as “Dead Dog Books.” Which is to say, books where there’s needless tragedy, cruelty, violence, etc.

This was more than two years ago, so he was only 10, and even though I loved Digger, I didn’t know if I should share it. Violence, but it’s not gratuitous. Big feelings, but nothing overwhelming. Complex story and relationships, Non-western philosophy but presented with care and clarity…

I rolled the dice again and gave him the book.

He read the whole thing. Then he read it again. On his third time through, he read big chunks of it to his younger brother.

When I asked him what he thought of it, he lit up and said, “It’s almost as good as Bone!”

Trust me, this is stunning praise. I gave him my Omnibus edition of Bone back when he was 7. He’s read it dozens of times. The thing is in absolute tatters. This isn’t him giving Digger second place, he’s saying he loves it infinity –1.

Here’s the hard truth: I’m biased toward digger. You can’t trust me to be impartial about Digger. Hell, I’m publishing it. It’s kinda my job to say nice things.

But my kid? He’s better than me. You can trust him.

*     *     * 

Fast forward. I’m still brimful of New Relationship Energy toward Digger. So I take it on a trip and give it to a friend who lives a thousand miles away.

Again, giving books is one of my purest joys. I get to share something I love with someone I love. And when I replace it, buying a new copy supports the author, publisher, and bookstore.

But it turns out my local bookstore can’t order it. Neither can Room of One’s Own in Madison. Neither can Barnes and Noble…

It isn’t anywhere. Eventually I find a copy for $600 on a rare book site, but that’s it. How could this be out of print? It’s an amazing story. It won a Hugo….

So, using all my vast publishing-world clout, I ping Ursula Vernon on Twitter to ask her what was up. She directed me to Sofa Wolf Press and I learn the harsh truth: The omnibus is, as I mentioned, a *really* big book. They simply couldn’t afford to bring it back with the cost of paper being what it is these days.

I asked if I could help. I have a little experience bringing books back. When my weird picture book went out of print, we brought it back and sold it through the Worldbuilders store, making a *lot* of money for charity while accidentally scarring an entire generation of geek children.

Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that bringing Digger back was going to be harder. For one, Digger was a thousand pages long. For another, Covid was ruining everything. There were paper shortages, printers I’d worked with in the past had gone out of business…

So I called Shawn Speakman, cool guy, experienced book-doer, and founder of Grim Oak Press. We talked. Made plans. One thing led to another, and I ended up finally pulling the trigger on a project I’ve daydreamed of for over a decade: Starting my own publishing imprint.

(I’ll never get tired of showing off the logo.)

As I’ve already said, sharing books is one of my favorite things. I do it so much that I buy my favorite books in bulk, so I always have a copy I can hand to someone. Bringing a book back into print is pretty much the same thing, just on a vaster scale.

Thanks for taking a risk on us. This is the first flight of Underthing Press. I hope it goes well. I hope you enjoy the books I want to share.

*     *     * 

When I was 8, while walking through the woods with my father, he asked me to wait a moment, then rolled up his sleeves and casually pushed over a huge, fully-grown tree.

Later in life, I realized the tree had been long dead. Nevertheless, the effect was that young Pat thought of his father as the strongest man in the world, immeasurably cool.

Earlier today, I told my boys I’d be working on this foreword for the same reason my father pushed over that tree: a desperate desire to look cool in front of my kids. It worked pretty well, because, as I’ve said, my kids love Digger.

On a whim, I asked what they would say if someone asked them for a promotional blurb. (They know what this is because daddy’s an author.)

My 8-year old immediately stomped out with: “It’s wonderfully story-rich!”

My 12 year old said he wanted to think about it a bit, then a couple hours later he came back and said: “Digger is a beautiful story that rambles, but in a good way.”

So there you go. If anyone knows rambling stories, it’s my kids.

And I’m guessing if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this foreword, you might be one of the folks who enjoy that sort of thing as well….

*     *     *

So… yeah.

If that seems like something you might be interested in, you’ve got about 24 hours left to jump in and back it over here.

Later space cowboys,

pat

[Edit: 2:33 PM – We’ve hit $350K, so it’s official. Everyone gets one of the cool new signed bookplates. We also added another 50 Limited editions, as they sold out again.

Also, Shawnposted an update announcing an add-on that folks requested in one of our early brainstorm session, and we’ve been working on for a couple of weeks. Specifically, it’s a way for those of you who love books (and libraries) to add a discounted copy of digger to your order and then we at Underthing Press will donate those books to underserved libraries around the country where they can get the love and attention they deserve.)

Also posted in book covers, cool news, side projects, Stories about stories., Underthing | By Pat59 Responses

Playing Fiasco With Polygon

In an attempt to work through my vasty backlog of half-finished blogs. I’m going to be posting up a few little short ones here and there.

It’s wild to me when I stop to think that back in the day, I used to post up blogs at the rate of 2-3 a week, whereas now it’s more usual for me to post one every 2-3 months.

Though to be fair, a lot was different back then. It was before I had two kids, back before I was trying to run a charity (as opposed to sometimes just running a fundraiser, which is a big difference.) Back in the beforetimes of covid…

Anyway, one of the things I regret leaving by the wayside is posting up blogs of stuff I’d done that you could access online. That way even folks who didn’t go to a convention could watch the panels I was on. Or even people who don’t subscribe to it, could hear me guest star onto a podcast, or catch me do a writing Q&A or play D&D or some other sort of game.

I feel like over the last 4-5 years, I haven’t shared more than 10% of the stuff here that’s available online.

Like, (Pat said, doing an expert segue) the time I played Fiasco with the folks over at Polygon.

(I’d be angry about this screencap if I hadn’t made it. As it is, I’m just angry about my face.)

If you’ve never heard of Fiasco before…. boy. I don’t know if this is a good introduction to the game or not. It’s a delightful collaborative storytelling environment to be sure, and I *love* me some worldbuilding as you know. But… it kinda went off the rails.

In a good way, I feel. And it was certainly a ton of fun. And it certainly shows how flexible the game is in terms of what you can play. But, as is often the case when I play a game, I kinda push at things to see what I can get away with narratively and creatively. It’s not that I want to break anything, I just get kind of excited full of ideas, and when you get to play with a group of folks as delightful as this….

Let’s just say it was a wild ride…

Also, I would like to go on the record as saying that I didn’t go into this game with *anything* planned. It all happened organically. My hand to glob.

Polygon posted up an article about the game, titled “Fiasco proves how fun it is to role-play without a DM.

They even generously subtitled the article, “Patrick Rothfuss joins us for some collaborative storytelling” instead of something more realistic like, “Rothfuss weirds up our game and then drives us off a narrative cliff.”

But yeah. It was a ton of fun.

Extra points anyone who can guess in the comments below as to where I stole the inspiration for the voice and demeanor of my character….

Later space cowboys,

pat

P.S. We’re slightly more than one week into the Kickstarter, and we’re currently at $247,283. (SO close to cracking a quarter million.) We’ve unlocked a lot of stretch goals, most of which center around making the books cooler and better when we go to press, and the team is actively investigating what else we might be able to add if things keep going this strong.

But yeah. It’s been a delightful launch of the first book from Underthing Press. Thanks so much to all of you who have helped by jumping in and spreading the word.

 

Also posted in appearances, Beautiful Games, gaming, geeking out, meeting famous people, Stories about stories., videos | By Pat30 Responses

Total Party Kiss and Architect Update.

Heya everybody,

Quick post today, as I only have two hours before I’m going to be playing some D&D over on my twitch stream at 2:00 CST today with these fabulous people….

Aaand apparently I can’t upload the title card. Great. Great great. Ugh. It seems like every time I try to post up a blog, even a quick one. It involves 30-40 minutes of me writing things, and two hours of me trying to sort out technical problems and getting formatting to not be shit.

*sigh* Fine. I’ll just use that title card for twitter. Instead I’ll just say that it’s the follow up to this game that we did back in December. Those of you who watched it might remember it as the session where someone (it might even have been me) coined the term, Total Party Kiss.

 

So… yeah. Feel free to show up and watch us D&D it live later today if you like.

In other news, we’re finishing up the behind-the-scenes work for the Worldbuilders Architects program. (If you don’t know what that is, you can look over here.) We want it to be something special, and so we’ve been looking into what we can do to make it a good experience AND also have it run as smoothly as possible.

Right now one of the main things we’ve discovered is that I can never. EVER spell the word “Archetects” right on the first try. And, in fact, I can misspell it up to 5 different ways in a single newsletter.

But yeah. Despite these hurdles, we’re putting the final touches on our initial e-mail, that lets you know what’s up, and includes a poll so we can gather your thoughts about what you’d really like out of Archetects in the coming year so we can focus our energies there. So if you’re signed up, keep an eye out for that in the next day or two.

Thirdly and lastly, if you’re into newsletters, or just want news and don’t mind it coming in a letter-y format, you can sign up for a couple over here.

That’s all for now, Gotta go dig up my character sheets and dust off those dice.

pat

Also posted in cool news | By Pat28 Responses

Losing Wagers, Doubling Donations, and Playing a Beautiful Game…

So for today’s blog to make sense, you might want to go back and read the one I wrote a couple days ago.

It’s was my favorite blog I’ve written in a while, with some quite nice faerie-tale flavor in parts. So even if you don’t care much about the charity stuff I’m doing, there’s something for you to enjoy there.

For those of you who can’t be bothered, here’s the gist: A couple days ago, I wagered the community that they couldn’t raise $333,333 on my team page before I beat the Ender Dragon in Minecraft.

And… well… y’all did it. Handily.

More than that, once I posted the blog and shared it, y’all stormed so hard I didn’t even have time to hit send on a tweet I’d typed up using this graphic:

The Details of The Wager

(Made by the fabulous E’lir Lisa.)

Truth is, this is exactly what I was hoping for. That people would hear the news, get excited, then come in and make it a race. Then we’d play together, have some fun, raise scads of money to feed hungry kids, and make the world a better place.

But… it kinda worked *better* than we’d anticipated. Y’all came in and just trampled things to the extent that we burned through *all* our stretch goals within hours, leaving us without more cool stuff we could immediately offer. Let alone graphics to show them off.

Pat's Streaming Schedule for 12/14

(Graphics like this.)

And so while it was cool, it was also a bit of a shame. We were left with nothing else to offer up despite the fact that the fundraiser is still going on and all donations are still being matched.

First off, let’s be clear. Y’all won the wager. So:

  1. I’ll be reading the prologue of Doors of Stone and doing a Q&A on my Twitch Channel.
  2. I’ll be showing off some of the finished pages of the The Boy That Loved The Moon.
  3. I’ll be releasing a chapter of Doors of Stone into the wild. (When? I’ talk about that below.)

But it seems a shame to stop there. For one thing, I still haven’t beaten the Ender Dragon.

And also, we still needed more stretch goal prizes for the team page.

And also also, I really liked those graphics that E’lir Lisa came up with, and we barely got to use them…

So here’s what we’re doing:

(Warning, this graphic on the blog won’t be updated as frequently as over on Twitch Team Page.)

You see the stretch goals on the left? Those are going into the prize draw as soon as folks hit the donation amount.

That said, if y’all manage to hit those goals *before* I beat the Ender Dragon, I’ll donate TWO of each prize.

“But wait!” I hear you cry. “What’s that thing way down at the bottom there?

Here’s the thing, I’ve met a lot of cool folks over the years. Voice actors, comedians, musicians, audio narrators, performers, actors, puppeteers….

I think that sounds like a fun way of releasing the early peek of the book. I’m hoping some of my friends will like the idea too.

So I’m going to cast my net among my friends and see who might like to come help me read the chapter of Doors of Stone for y’all. Then, if we hit $666,666, I’ll  assemble the Geek Glitterati equivalent of the Avengers and we’ll record it for you. It might take a bit to assemble, as cool people tend to be busy, and there’s no way I’m going to ask them to do it during the fundraiser. But I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to get it done early next year. February at the latest.

Okay. We ready? Here we go.

My team page is already over $420,000.

All donations are currently being matched.

The Fundraiser runs until midnight on the 14th.

Race you to the end…

pat

Edit: 1:31 pm – In the last 12 hours, through the dark hours of night when I was mostly asleep, the team page has raised another $60,000 unlocking double sets HeroQuest and the cool, Wooden-box version of Risk from Avalon Hill. AS WELL AS two copies of the limited edition cover of of Vault of Magic from Kobold Press that I wrote a part of, personalized by me, with some of the rare D&D cards.

Y’all are amazing…

Also posted in Achievement Unlocked!, Acts of Whimsy, Beautiful Games, Book Three, calling on the legions, contests, Worldbuilders 2021 | By Pat50 Responses

The Literary Tarot: Being Foolish Together

So here’s the thing, I got a little rambly while writing this post. Even for me.

The crux of the issue, is that I was invited to help design a tarot card for the Literary Tarot project that’s running right now.

Not only that, but I got to do the Fool, which is a particularly meaningful card to me. Even better, I got to pair the fool with Don Quixote, a *character* that is very close to my heart.

(Click to Embiggen.)

Did I mention that the kickstarter is raising money for a charity? Which is absolutely my jam. Except when it’s a charity that’s focused on improving global literacy, which is *double* my jam.

And if that weren’t enough, the person who is running the charity (and the kickstarter) has agreed to add a tier so that people can back at that level and support both Brink (their charity) and Worldbuilders (my charity).

Here’s the catch: as I type this, there’s only about 36 hours left in the kickstarter.

That’s why the new tier is named “Foolish Together” because doing something like this at the last minute at the end of a successful kickstarter is pure madness. (Right now they’ve got almost 10,000 backers, and are poised to tear past 700,000 dollars.)

That’s why I’m doing this little summary here, so if you’re interested, you can just hop over there go over there and take a quick look. Even if you’re not interested in backing it, you should really go look at the art and the different authors invovled. It’s really cool.

But if you want the whole story, maunder and all, here it is….

*     *     *

For years now, a big part of my job is saying no to cool new projects.

And believe it or not, I’ve gotten pretty good at it. It might not seem like it to the casual observer, or to any observer at all, really. The problem with non-action, of course, is that it is non-visible. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to write a blog or tweet,  “I said no to being in a writer’s room!” Or “I passed on the opportunity to be a keynote speaker today!”

But the truth is, I nope out of the vast majority of things I’m invited to do. Maybe, like… 97% of them.

Sometimes it’s easy. But some of the missed opportunities I still think about years later. I’ve passed up several chances to do narrative design for video games. And twice I’ve said no actually holding the reins and helping assemble and lead teams for parts of video game design: once for Worldbuilding, once for narrative. Those really stung to walk away from.

I’ve given a regretful no to writing an opinion piece for the New York Times, to being involved in writer’s rooms for *very* cool properties, and writing stories comic book characters that I’ve loved since I was a kid…

And those are just the ones that spring to mind. Not to mention the hundreds of conventions, dozens of licensing deals, and many anthology invitations I’ve politely declined.

Almost all of these things I would have loved to do to some degree, but I know I need to focus more. Working on too many projects at once is foolish…

But several weeks ago, some friends introduced me to Dani Hedlund, who was putting together a Literary Tarot Deck for a charity fundraiser. Authors were pairing up cards with literary characters. A bunch of authors. Cool authors.

These are just the ones that were announced TODAY. Seriously.

And yes, that’s Steven Fry.

Anyway, I got the invite. It sounded fun and easy, and I like charity, and I’ve been dabbling with Tarot for about 30 years now. Plus, just picking a card and pairing it with a literary figure should probably take what? Ten minutes? Fifteen?

Fast forward two weeks to where I’m on a call with the CEO of the other charity doing art direction, talking about Sancho Panza, and excitedly bubbling over about the fact that what’s on his head is not, in fact, a helmet. It’s a shaving basin.

Also, there might have been singing.

Then this:

Fast forward another two weeks, where I’m talking with Dani again, asking if there’s anything I or Worldbuilders can do to help.

She mentions what I already know, that the biggest challenge is always getting the word out.

I tell her what *she* already knows, that my charity is currently doing its own fundraiser right now. Worse yet, both our fundraisers end almost exactly at the same time. We both know it would be deeply foolish for me to change directions and to promote hers at the same time.

I mention that if Brink and Worldbuilders could somehow work together in some way, we could hit it from that angle. Use the Worldbuilders mailing list. Do a livestream. Pitch it as a superhero team-up. But we both know that it would be deeply foolish for her to make a sudden addition or change to what is already a *super* successful project right at the end.

Fast forward to this:

Yup. She added an entire new tier to her kickstarter out of the goodness of her heart. Just so our charities could work together. It’s got a special postcard based off the card that we designed together that’s full of delightful little flourishes like this:

And I took a chunck of time on Sunday and we had an *amazingly* fun talk about Tarot cards, books we love, the madness of running a charity. I explain why I picked Don Quixote, and we talk about the art direction we did. It’s honestly one of my favorite streams I’ve done in ages.

Also, I was in fine form. I’m not saying I was so witty at one point that I made Dani snort. But I’m not *not* saying that either.

You should check out the video just for the joy of getting to meet Dani, honestly. She’s charming AF. Straight-up one of the most delightful people I’ve ever met. (And I’m saying this as a person who once hugged Felicia Day and Neil Gaiman on the same day.)

So… yeah. You’ve got about 36 hours to jump on that kickstarter if you’re interested.

Here’s the link.

You know what to do.

pat

Also posted in Arts and Crafts, calling on the legions, cool news, geeking out, hubris, Me Interviewing Other Folks, meeting famous people, My Iconoclastic Tendencies | By Pat19 Responses

Love, Money, and Milk: Geeks Doing Good

Hey there space cowboys. I’ve got some exciting stuff to talk about today…

Those of you who have been following the blog for a while, probably know about the work I do with a charity called Worldbuilders.

(It delights me when people don’t know I actually started Worldbuilders on this blog, by accident, back in the day. But that, as they say, is another story.)

Worldbuilders does a lot of things. But most notably we raise money for Heifer International during our big End-Of-Year fundraiser. Over the years, we’ve raised more than $11,000,000 for Heifer, helping parents feed their children, helping little girls go to school, helping communities drink clean water, helping people have the training, tools, and education that they need to take control of their lives.

It’s a big teach-a-person-to-fish thing. Except with goats and chickens and cows and bees and trees. No. Not fishing for goats. And no, you don’t fish *with* a goat. You milk them. The goats, not the fish…

Okay. Let me start again.

It’s like this: If you give a hungry family a goat (and the tools and training to care for it) they’ll milk that goat. Then every day this happens.

(I’m writing this on father’s day. And this picture makes me weepy.)

That. That right there. That’s what Worldbuilders does. We help. We want to make the world a better place.

We’ve raised money for charities other than Heifer too: we’ve helped with Puerto Rico’s hurricane relief, with Syrian refugees, with children’s literacy, and medical supplies to marginalized communities during the pandemic…

(We kinda do a lot, actually. Kinda too much to list here. But if you like, you can go look at the map of our projects over here.)

What not as *many* folks know is that Worldbuilders also runs an online store full of delightful geek treasures: Signed books, comics, cool games, original art prints, T-shirts, Jewelry, and other assorted bits of lovely geekery. We make and sell those things to help creatives make money while giving their communities a chance to show their support (and do the geek equivalent of showing their gang colors.)

(Throws underthing gang sign.)

[Side Note: I support creators making money off their art and merch, as artists need to eat. That said, a lot of the folks who partner with Worldbuilders let them keep the royalties they would otherwise earn, myself included.]

The items we sell in the store help generate money for Worldbuilders, too. This is kind of a big deal, as Worldbuilders needs to do things like pay its electricity bill and buy paperclips and stuff. We also like to pay our employees so they can do things like buy food and clothes so they can… y’know… keep being alive.

This is one of the big reasons Worldbuilders is different from a lot of other charities. When we run a fundraiser, say, to support Mercy Corps, we pass along 100% of what we raise to that organization. Most other pass-through charities keep a small percentage of what they raise, then use that money to keep themselves running, which is important because if the business side of things fails, then no charity happens. (Of course, as you know, some charities pass along almost none of what they raise. But Worldbuilders doesn’t work with folks like that. And ultimately, that’s a story for a different day.)

Here’s the thing though. I love that Worldbuilders gets to pass along 100% of what it raises. But it *does* make things kinda tricky on the business side. It means we can raise two million dollars to feed hungry kids… and then have trouble paying our water bill or fixing a computer when it breaks.

That’s why several years ago, we started running the Geeks Doing Good fundraiser.

The purpose of GDG is manifold:

  1. We need to make that munny, yo. We gotta keep the lights on.
  2. We experiment with new products and creative partnerships.
  3. We make weird, fun stuff we might not normally have in our store.
  4. We offer limited-time deals to reward the folks on our mailing list.
  5. We raise awareness of the fact that Worldbuilders makes and sells cool stuff.

So. Here we are. Now you know why we’re doing this.

(You can just click and go over there right now, if you want.)

It’s a big week-long fundraiser where we try to raise awareness of the fact that *yes* we’re a charity, but we also run an online store full of cool stuff that you simply can’t find anywhere else.

What kind of stuff, you might ask?

How about cool Kingkiller art prints from Marc Simonetti?

Or for you Dresden Files fans out there:

A bargain on the only comic I’d ever compare to Calvin and Hobbes?

We also have some rarer stuff, too.

We’re also bundling things together to save you money, and bringing out things that haven’t been for sale in ages…

 

 

(So. Much. Stuff.)

Many of the Kingkiller-specific items have a “7” in the price, so they’re easier for y’all to spot.

Anyway. There’s SO much stuff over there. Way too much to mention here. You should go look yourself.

Fair Warning: many items are limited quantities, so they might sell out. But the good news is: new stuff is getting added every day. So there are always more reasons to stop back in and take a look around.

Also, and I can’t stress this enough, remember that unlike Kickstarter, you can buy more than one item. 

So you can go hog wild in there.

So go…

pat

P.S. Oh. Also, I’m doing a 12 hour promotional stream today on Twitch, so if you want to see me play games, answer questions, and explain some of these items in more detail, you can tune in there. (I’m streaming all this week, and we’ll be updating this graphic with new items as they’re added.)

I’m super excited about this one in particular….

Okay. Thanks much for caring. Help us spread the word!

Also posted in College Survival Guide, cool news, Geeks Doing Good, hodgelany, Worldbuilders | By Pat6 Responses

One Good Thing #4: Henry

Allow me to introduce you to the newest member of our household.

His name is Henry.

(Say hello, Henry!)

The boys and I have become very fond of him over the last couple weeks, to the extent where I think it’s fair to say that he’s a member of the family….

We recently celebrated a family holiday, and after eating cake and watching shows and cuddling, I asked the boys what they would like more of in their lives. Because if I knew that, we could work together on getting it.

It was late when I asked, the boys were already in bed and falling asleep with the unstoppable surety of someone falling off a cliff. (I remember falling asleep like that, and I hope to again someday, but I worry it might be the purview of the young.)

But I’m a night-owl, and I need less sleep than they do. So I have an irritating habit of asking them questions just as I’ve tucked them in all snug and warm…

It was only then, standing over them in the dim light from the hallway, that I remembered that I wanted to ask them. (You have to leave the hall light on. Of course you do. I remember what it’s like to be a child.) And even though they were fading fast, I asked them: What would you like more of in your life?

Cutie’s eyes were closed, but without hesitation, yawningly, he said he wanted secret tunnels, showing he is the true child of my heart.

Oot was quiet for a bit, and I thought he’d passed out. When he finally spoke, his voice was blurry. As if he was only dimly able to focus on what I’d said from where he was at bottom of a deep well of sleep.  “Beautiful rich colours,” he said, soft and slow like he was speaking under hypnosis. Then added: “Cosy Flowers,” showing that he too, is the child of my heart.

Since then, we’ve been working on cosy, beautiful, richly coloured flowers. It’s with muted confusion that I realize how oddly domestic I have become. I feel like this should fill me with a yawning terror, like I’m forgetting my true self. The self I’ve been forever. The me who never bothered putting up so much as a poster in so many of the places I lived, let alone go through all the work of planting flowers….

Instead, I find these things to be an untrammeled delight. (Well… *slightly* trammeled. Sometimes. Depending on how careful the boys are about when they place their feet.)

And it’s how Henry has come into our lives…

(Click to Embiggen)

(Also note Oot’s side hussle: promoting True Dungeon like a champ.)

Speaking of which, if you’re interested in seeing more True Dungeon stuff, as well as dozens of other cool geeky products (including some stuff from me) Worldbuilders is having its Geeks-Doing-Good fundraiser next week. (Here’s a link you can use to follow the Indigogo. If you plug in your e-mail there, you can get a notification when everything goes live on the 21st.)

I’ll be doing a bunch of streaming to celebrate and promote it the fundraiser. Games and Q&A and discussions with special guests.

Though *that* reminds me. I don’t think I mentioned it on the blog yet, but if you didn’t already know, I’ve been streaming regularly over on twitch for the last several months. Every Friday from 1:00 – 3:00 CST, as well as other random times.

I’ll be posting the streaming schedule for the charity up here on the blog in the next couple days. As well as descriptions of of some of the kingkiller related prizes. But if you’re prefer to get live updates you can just follow my twitch channel and make sure your notifications to ON. That way, you get a heads-up about *all* the streams I do, even if they’re scheduled last minute, completely spontaneous.

That’s all for now. I’ll see y’all more here in the blog over the next couple weeks.

Until then, I hope your lives are full of rich, warm, beautiful colours.

Later space cowboys,

pat

Also posted in Arts and Crafts, Because I Love, Cutie Snoo, day in the life, One Good Thing, Oot, The Terror of Domesticity | By Pat39 Responses
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