And, on top of it all, I’m attending a convention this weekend in Wisconsin Dells.

I wasn’t planning on going to the Dells this weekend, I was going to try and knuckle down and focus on my wordcount. But the local sci-fi convention that’s based here in Stevens Point got hit with a sudden change of venue when the convention center here in Stevens Point unexpected closed a month ago.

But the folks at Daishocon didn’t let that stop them. They called around and found somewhere else they could host the convention: The Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells. Which is kinda cool, because now I can take Sarah and Oot to play in their indoor water park in between my panels.

What’s my point? Mostly :

1. If you’re at loose ends this weekend, and want to come to a gaming/sci-fi/anime convention, you should stop by Daishocon. Not tonly will we I be doing three panels on Saturday, but we’ll be holding an auction for worldbuilders.

Best of all, fellow fantasy writer and Wisconsinite Scott Lynch will be there, too.

2. I’m kinda busy.

So for the blog today, you’re going to get link salad. An interesting miscellany of stuff I’ve been meaning to share for a while now, but for some reason or other, I haven’t gotten around to it.

First and foremost, Goodreads is holding their annual Choice Awards. The Wise Man’s Fear has been nominated for a couple of categories, so you can wander over there if you like.

Or, if you’re not in a voting mood, you can subscribe to my profile over there, so you’ll get a heads-up when I post up a review of a book.

Secondly, here’s a link to a video interview I did with Speculatesf a while back..

Nextly, someone posted a cool flow chart using all the books in NPR’s list of 100 best sci-fi books of all time. It’s a very tongue-in-cheek “how-do-I-find-the-book-that’s-best-for-me?” chart, and you can test your geek street cred by seeing how many of the jokes you understand.

Penultimately, here’s a link to an interview I did with my UK editor when we were both at World Fantasy convention last month.

And lastly, a blog where someone compares different writing styles to different deserts. It struck me as an interesting way to look at the situation, and I will admit that I was a little tickled to be referred to as tiramisu.

Later,

pat

First off, I did a podcast with the folks over at Fictional Frontiers. I dimly remember using the word “buggery” somewhere in this interview, though I may be making that up….

Second off, over on his blog, Jim Hines recently did a parody/tribute to “Baby Got Back” called “Baby Got Books” wherin he states in no uncertain terms that he likes girls with big books. And boys with big books, for that matter. NOTW gets a flattering nod.

The Onion’s AV CLUB did an article called The Pleasures and Perils of Long-Running Fantasy Series that I thought was pretty interesting.

I’ll be doing a signing down near Madison on the 7th, in Waunakee, to be specific. I’m thinking of reading a piece of a novella I’m working on, and since a couple people have e-mailed me, asking if I can bring t-shirts, I might throw a bunch of them into the trunk of my car before I head down there.

The library is asking that you RSVP online if you’re thinking of attending.

And lastly, a piece of cool news. After years and years, I’m finally getting to teach a creative writing class here at UW – Stevens Point.

The guy that usually teaches fiction around here took a semester off, so they gave me a call and asked if I wanted to pinch hit. I jumped on it, as I’ve always wanted to teach creative writing.

Oh sure, I’ve done panels and workshops before. I even taught a Winterim last January. But those are short-term teaching. This is the first time I’ll get to teach fiction for a full semester. I’m excited and more than a little scared.

There are still a few seats open, if anybody’s interested….

Have a good weekend, y’all.

pat

Linky Linky.

Truth is, I have roughly 50 blogs I’d like to finish writing for y’all, not the least of which are the photo contest blogs, blogs telling some of the stories of what happened to me during the tour, and a few posts about upcoming projects that might interest y’all.

But simply said, right now I just don’t have the time and the energy to write those blogs properly, and I’m loathe to half-ass these things.

So instead, you get links to some stuff I’ve kinda been meaning to mention on here for a while. Such as….

… an interview I did for Dragonmount a while back.

… and a funny blog a woman wrote about how I conspired with her child to destroy her house.

Share and enjoy,

pat

The most elaborate of these was a interview I did with Peter Orullian out in Seattle. He had three cameras and everything. Very posh.

The interview was at The Signed Page, and I was about to knuckle down and sign the books that people had ordered. You see those boxes in the background? They’re full of The Wise Man’s Fear. There’s another 40-50 boxes behind the camera too. I signed 1500 books later on that day.

This interview was on February 28th, the day before my book was released, so it was still the day before my tour started. You’d think I’d be a little more bright-eyed and bushy tailed. But the truth is, I was already exhausted. I was in a rush getting ready for my trip, and so I hadn’t slept at all the night before I got on the plane.

So the downside is that I’m not as perky as I might otherwise be.

But the upside is that sleep deprivation probably causes me to rave deliriously on a few topics I’d otherwise stay quiet about.

As always, I’m a wordy bitch. So the interview is broken up into three pieces:

One:

Two:

Three:

I wish I could give you some idea what we talked about, but, as usual, I can’t bring myself to watch videos of myself. So I really have no idea what I said in these interviews.

That said, I do remember we had a good time recording it, and I wouldn’t have talked for 45 minutes if he hadn’t been asking me good questions….

Share and enjoy,

pat

Share and enjoy,

pat

I set this one up just today, and it’s not even a week away. So if you know of anyone here in central wisconsin who might be interested, I’d appreciate it if you spread the news to them.

STEVENS POINT, WI
April 2 at Noon
Signing at Bookfinders
1001 Brilowski Rd
Stevens Point, WI 54482
Phone: 715-341-8300
Facebook Event

I’ll be hanging out at the local bookstore here in Stevens Point for a couple hours this upcoming Saturday, signing books and chatting with anyone who cares to stop by. Bookfinders will have copies of The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle as well as hardcover versions of The Name of the Wind.

Also, because this is close to my house, Oot might be making a guest appearance.

LOS ANGELES, CA
April 8 at 7:30 PM
Skylight Books
1818 N. Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Phone: (323) 660-1175
Facebook Event

This one is going to be fun, as I’m doing a talk and signing with the fabulous Amber Benson.

Amber has graciously forgiven me for making an ass of myself a couple years back. So we’ll be talking about epic vs. urban fantasy, answering questions, and just generally being cool. Or at least Amber will be being cool, and I’ll be faking it to the best of my ability.

AUSTIN, TX
April 15 at 7 PM
Barnes & Noble
10000 Research Blvd #158
Austin, TX 78759
Phone: 512-418-8985

Facebook Event.

When I did my signing at Murder by the Book in Houston, 50 people must have said that they drove down from Austin to attend. So, since I’m going to be in town for a convention, I figured I’d do a signing for folks that couldn’t make the trip.

Earlier this week, I did a call-in show on WPR. If you’re interested, you can listen to the recording of the broadcast here.

If we could avoid the endless screeling noise in the comments along the lines of, “Why don’t you ever come to XXX?” I’d appreciate it.

Cool news on Friday. Stay tuned.

Thanks,

pat

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.

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

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