Yearly Archives: 2013

Published: November 27, 2013

Worldbuilders is just around the corner….

If you liked this: worldbuilders logo - jpgYou’re going to love this:

Worldbuilders-Logo_Web--less-space

This year’s fundraiser is going to be *very* cool, folks. It’s starting on December 2nd.

But before that, two things:

1. Donations and offers of help.

Are you an author, and artist, a or just a collector of geek paraphernalia? If you have something you’d like to send Worldbuilders, odds are, we can make use of it.

Are you a publisher? A game designer? A vast monolithic corporation looking to ingratiate yourself into the geek community in exchange for sacks of greasy cash? Worldbuilders is now accepting some forms of corporate sponsorship.

Are you a blogger, a podcaster, or a good old-fashioned journalist who would like to help us spread the word? Worldbuilders would love to give you an interview.

Pretty much anyone who would like to help can drop us a line at: donations [atsign] worldbuilders.com.

2. Black Friday Specials in the Tinker’s Packs.

If you’re like me, you plan on staying at home on Black Friday, probably hiding in some manner of protective cushion fort.

For my like-minded brethren and sistren, we’re launching a bunch of new items in The Tinker’s Packs on Friday. That way you can get some of your holiday shopping done without having to worry about getting crushed to death in some Walmart parking lot.

And, as always, all the proceeds from our store go to charity. So you get a free warm fuzzy out of the deal.

That’s all for now, but stay tuned, folks. We’ve got some lovely stuff to show you, and we’re going to do our best to change the world.

pat

Posted in Uncategorized | By Pat23 Responses
Published: November 25, 2013

A Strange Encounter With Social Media….

Tonight I was planning on writing a blog about my recent trip to England and Spain. But something odd has happened and disrupted my plans.

You see, earlier today, I ran into an interesting article, which I posted up on facebook, because I like sharing stories about people being awesome.

The article is worth a read, but I’ll summarize: There was a guy who ran a website for  something called “Revenge Porn.” (Which I’d happily never heard of before this.) Apparently he posted naked pictures of women online and encouraged his followers to harass them, call their employers, and generally make their lives hell. Most of the pictures he used were stolen, faked, or handed over by disgruntled ex-boyfriends.

The article explains how a woman found her daughter’s picture on his website, and after finding out what an asshole he was, engineered his downfall in a serious old testament way. It was some lovely not-one-stone-left-upon-another shit.

Anyway, I posted up the link and wandered away. Not thinking much else about it.

An hour or so later I came back and took at peek at the post. I don’t read my facebook comment threads, but I do occasionally look in on them to make sure nothing is on fire.

And, as chance would have it, things *were* slightly on fire. It wasn’t to the point where people were talking about Hitler yet, but a few folks had made comments along the lines of, “She took nude pictures of herself, but didn’t want anyone to see them? I don’t buy it….”

Then some people were kinda pissed about those comments, and made comments to that effect.

Then other people got defensive, and posted some comments to that effect.

We all know where this ends. It’s a spiral into madness. The dirigible ends up in flames, everyone’s dead, and I’ve lost my hat.

Since any plan where I lose my hat is a bad plan, I sighed and sat down to write a quick post asking people to play nice and behave themselves.

Except… well… my quick post ended up being about 750 words long. Surprising nobody but me.

Once I’d finished writing it I just sat there, disgusted with myself. I knew better than to waste my time with this. Trying to have a productive discussion about a complex social issue on facebook is like trying to build a bridge by throwing rocks into a well.

What’s more, this shit is *dangerous.* People get pissed off when you talk about sexism. And not just the people that think you’re wrong, either. Sometimes the people that agree with 95% of what you say are the ones that go positively incarnadine with rage.

Simply said, writing a post on sexism was not on my agenda for the day. And I knew that in terms of bad ideas, posting it on Facebook ranked somewhere between putting my hand in a fire, and willfully slamming my own dick in a car door.

But I’d already written it. And I hate throwing away something I’ve already written. And it was something that really should be said….

So I posted it. Then I shut down my computer and left for dinner.

Hours later I came home and reluctantly looked online. No one was howling for my blood. I peeked on facebook and saw that in the last 5 hours more people had liked and shared that post than anything else I’d ever written.

And the comments were… well… they were delightful. I read about 150 of them and was not once enraged or disappointed in humanity. The posts were kind and honest and funny and endlessly grateful. People shared their own stories. People were occasionally politely disagreeing.

I stopped reading after 150 comments. I didn’t want to spoil it. It was like a beautiful dream.

Thanks for that, everybody.

If you’d like to read the facebook post, here’s a link.

pat

Posted in holding forth, How to be a Worthwhile Human Being, musings | By Pat30 Responses
Published: November 15, 2013

The New News….

Guess who’s having a baby?

Little Bun

Posted in Sarah | By Pat142 Responses
Published: November 6, 2013

GOG – Using Games to Make the World a Better Place

As y’all know, Worldbuilders is steadily growing into something much bigger than I ever dreamed.

Last year, for example, we had to design inventory software for all the books we were giving away as prizes. We’ve brought in competent, organized staff to replace my incompetent, disorganized self, and we started seeking out corporate sponsorships.

This year, companies have started to seek *us* out, looking to have superhero team-ups up for fundraising purposes. Big companies like GOG.com.

GOG is really cool. They sell games that you can download off the internet.

Boy, that doesn’t do the job of explaining how cool they are at *all.*

I think of GOG as the place that saves cool old games from the abyss. Looking through their stock, I see pretty much every game that I *loved* to play back in the day. Games I remember 10, even 20 years after I played them.

Games like the original Fallouts (Fallout 1 and 2, not Tactics.) The original Deus Ex. Arcanum. Anachronox. System Shock Two. King’s Quest. Planescape….

Looking through GOG’s inventory, you’ll see a huge piece of my childhood. You’ll see a lot of the games that made me *love* games. You’ll see games that helped make me the person I am today.

I’m guessing a lot of you with a history of gaming will feel the same way.

Oh, look at that. They have the Zork games too.

The original trilogy and a few of the follow-ups. Raw text badassery. Zork III was the first game that I ever played on my very first computer. It took me, quite literally, YEARS to solve. There was no internet back then, you figured shit out or you choked on your own frustration….

Zork_III_box_art

Oh god. It’s been thirty years since I played it.

But that’s exactly what I’m talking about. GOG has saved this beautiful old game from the dustbin of history. They even make sure it’s compatible with current operating systems. Want to play Zork III on Windows 8? Go right ahead. That’s what GOG does, and that’s why I love them.

Well, that’s *one* of the reasons I love them.

The other reason is that they’ve decided to include Worldbuilders in a fundraiser they’re running this week: from November 5th to November 12th.

There are two ways you can help bring in money to Worldbuilders.

1.  One is to simply sign up for an account on GOG.com.  When you sign up for a GOG account through our affiliate link (that was it), they will donate 10% of everything you purchase for the rest of the year to Worldbuilders.

You need some reccomendations? Just scroll up a bit, and you’ll see the begining of my list….

You owe it to yourself to try Zork if nothing else.  Seeing it there makes my fingers itch. I’m not even kiddling, half of my current problem-solving skills came from playing those early Infocom games. I learned to type so I could play that game….

2. The second way is to buy some games off of the Worldbuilders Fundraising Page on GOG’s website.

For the next week, you can pick three games from a selected list of GOG’s titles and it will only cost you five bucks.

You have to agree that’s a good deal. And even better, 100% of the money collected will come to Worldbuilders.  ALL of it. GOG will even pay for the transaction fees themselves, using their own money.

That means if you buy a $5 game, Worldbuilders will get $5.  Period.

The games that were chosen for Worldbuilders in particular are Driftmoon, The Whispered World, and Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee.  That said, on our page, your purchase comes to us on *all* of the games listed, so you could also get Walking Mars, Botanicula, Incredipede, Faster Than Light, Darwinia, and Pid.

Did I mention that Amanda loves Faster Than Light? She does. She told me to tell you that…

Be warned: this second option only lasts for a week.

So. There you go.

I really can’t stress enough how big an opportunity this is for Worldbuilders, folks. We stand a chance to raise some serious money on this one….

But only if we can get the word out. Would you mind helping me with that?

Thanks again, everyone. I’ll see some of you tonight in Barcelona.

 

Posted in Worldbuilders | By Pat49 Responses
Published: November 4, 2013

Twitter Contest – The Reveal

Well folks, the votes are in on the twitter conetest.

And the Winner is… Pat Rothfuss.

Or rather, the winner is @Pat_Rothfuss

Which is to say that the winner was *not* Pat Rothfuss.

By which I mean that the winner was not me. And it wasn’t even a close thing.

With a crushing 42% of the electorate, the winner is.

MaryRobinetteKowal

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of Shades of Milk and Honey, Glamour in Glass, and Without a Summer. In 2008 she received the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and in 2011, her short story “For Want of a Nail” won the Hugo Award for Short Story. Her work has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and several Year’s Best anthologies. She is also a cast member of the Hugo-award winning podcast Writing Excuses. Mary, a professional puppeteer, performs as a voice actor, recording fiction for authors such as Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi. She lives in Chicago with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters.

Everyone played a good game, but simply said, Mary crushed this contest. Not only did she get nearly three times the votes anyone else did, but she managed to convince twitter itself that she was me.

It was a little disheartening, in all honesty.

Who were the rest of the players?

AmberBenson

Amber Benson is a writer, director, actor, and maker of things.  She wrote the five-book CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES urban fantasy series and the middle grade book, AMONG THE GHOSTS. She co-directed the Slamdance feature, DRONES and (co-wrote) and directed the BBC animated series, THE GHOSTS OF ALBION.  She also spent three years as Tara Maclay on the television series BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. She doesn’t own a television.

KialaKazebee

Kiala Kazebee is a writer on the internet and co-host of Felicia Day’s web show/book club “Vaginal Fantasy” on Geek and Sundry. She apologizes in advance for making you google that.

You can find her on Twitter. Forever.

VeronicaBelmont

In the world of SFF, Veronica is the co-host of the science fiction and fantasy book club, podcast and video show The Sword and Laser. She is also a member of the monthly Google Hangout show, Vaginal Fantasy, where she drinks too much and waxes intellectual on paranormal romance and erotic scifi and fantasy.

Otherwise, you can find her weekly on the tech-help and how-to show Tekzilla, or as the technology contributor to PopSugar Girls’ Guide show, The Sync Up.
  • @PatRothfuss was my assistant, Amanda, with 14.05% of the vote

AmandaHoerter

Amanda and I have known each other for years now, and she’s been reading the blog for even longer. Not only is she my personal assistant (aka Pat-herder) but she’s also developed a creepy knack for impersonating my phraseology. She’s good enough at mimicing me that shes’ managed to fool Sarah once or twice, so it’s not really surprising that she also tricked 14 percent of you….

She tells me she’s considering getting her own Twitter account now, though she worries she’ll feel significantly less cool than while she was pretending to be me.

PatrickRothfuss

I am the actual bonafide Pat Rothfuss. Or at least I thought I was until I lost my own fucking contest.

*     *     *

First and foremost, big kudos to Mary Robinette Kowal, who was above-and-beyond cunning and devious. Her charity, Con Or Bust, will receive $1,000 from DAW Books, and bragging rights for all of eternity.

She already did a bit of strutting, walking around parts of World Fantasy con looking like this:

MRK as Patrick Rothfuss
I expect I will never live this down…

Secondly, I’d like to thank all of you for a lovely game. Even with a few hiccups, I’m very pleased. Once again, you’ve proven that my readers are some of the brightest, wittiest, snarkiest folks a writer could hope to have.

And thank you to Mary, Amber, Kiala, Veronica and Amanda for spending a couple weeks being me.  I can’t stress enough how much I appreciate y’all taking time to goof about with me. You should really check out their work if you haven’t already. Because while they’re quite good at being me, they’re much better at being themselves.

In the next couple weeks, I’m hoping we might be able to schedule a Google hangout together and talk about the contest. But that will probably have to wait until I’m back in the US….

Tonight, (Monday night) I’m going to be doing my reading and signing in Oxford. I hope to see some of you there….

Fondly,

pat

p.s. I wrote  goodly portion of this blog using stolen wifi on a moving train. If you ignore my minor typos up here, I’ll ignore yours in the comments below. Sound fair?

Posted in Achievement Unlocked!, Beautiful Games | By Pat81 Responses
Published: October 30, 2013

Twitter Contest – The Voting

Okay folks, we’ve been running our game on twitter for almost two weeks.

It’s been fun, but now we’re just a day away from Halloween. That means it’s time to start voting on who you think the real Rothfuss is.

But first, some things to consider:

1. Voting starts now, but the contest isn’t over until Midnight on Oct 31st. (And just to be clear, we mean midnight in  American Samoa (UMT-12.) We picked that time zone so *everyone* gets all of Halloween to vote.)

But the contest will continue right up until midnight. Our players will continue to campaign for your trust and affection right up until the end.

2. You can vote even if you’re not on Twitter. I’m REALLY not trying to get people to sign up on there.  That’s why I set up the site where you can follow all the accounts even if you don’t follow twitter and don’t know much about it.

I’m serious about this. The only point of this contest was to have some fun and catch the attention of my readers who were already on Twitter. Every time I hear someone say they joined twitter just to participate, I die a little inside.

I am Jack's mute horror

3. You can vote here:

[polldaddy poll=”7507110″]

4. I’m well aware that there are ways to circumvent this sort of online poll. There ware ways you can vote multiple times and stuff the ballot box.

I’m sure that my readers are above that sort of small-minded douchery.

5. If you *are* on twitter, and you’d like to declare your allegiance to your Rothfuss, this is the best way to do it.

“I think that @PatTwitterHandle is #TheRealRothfuss.”

We’ll pick some random winners from the people that have backed the right horse in the contest.

6. I also welcome your rampant speculation as to who the other five fakers are. That’s been one of my favorite parts of the game so far….

Might I recommend something along the lines of:

“I think @PatTwitterHandle is actually @Davidbowie. #RothFaux”

7. For folks that want a chance to win cool stuff, but who don’t want to gaze into the twitter abyss, there’s a contest going on right now on right now over at The Tinker’s Packs.

All the details are over here.

There. That’s seven things. I’ll leave it at that. Seven’s a good number.

pat

Posted in Beautiful Games | By Pat54 Responses
Published: October 29, 2013

Delicious Geekery – October 2013

Back in August, we tried something a little new for Worldbuilders. Kevin Hearne and several of his anthology-mates sent us some signed copies of their carnival-steampunk collection, aptly named Carniepunk.

The books were signed by multiple authors, and rather than save them for our end-of-the-year Worldbuilders extraviganza, we decided to throw them up in our online store. We doubled the cover price because they were signed by some cool authors and because all the money goes to charity…

… and despite that, the books sold out in just a couple of hours.

Since people were obviously excited about the idea, we’ve decided to make a monthly habit of bringing you some new signed books in The Tinker’s Packs:

Since this is our first month, I tapped a few of my author friends. And, because they’re all awesome people, they jumped right in.

The first to agree was Brandon Sanderson.  His book Steelheart came out a few weeks ago. It’s the first in a new series…

1-Sanderson

Look at it, looming over you like it can write faster than you or something…

Sanderson Signature

Not to mention the fact that his signature is beautiful and flowing and doesn’t at all look like a 4 year old stole a pen from you…

I got a chance to read an ARC of this and loved it even before it went through final edits. My blurb on the back says, “Unfortunately for my ego, Steelheart is another win for Sanderson, proving that he’s not a brilliant writer of epic fantasy, he’s simply a brilliant writer. Period.”

If you want to know more about what I thought, you can check out my goodreads review here.

Or you could just jump right over to the Tinker’s packs and buy it.

These are signed first printings, and we’ve only got ten of them. So, fair warning, they’re bound to go quickly.

And remember, all the money we make in the Tinker’s Packs goes to Worldbuilders, helping Heifer International do awesome things all over the world.

Sustainable Community Development Project for Chitwan, Nawalparasi and Palpa (22-0531-23)

Our second set of books comes from my long-time friend Nnedi Okorafor. She and I go way back to the Writers of the Future Volume 18 in 2002, where we were both bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, newbie writers.

Me-and-Nnedi-730772

Awww… look at me, all young and thin and tiny-bearded.

Both Nnedi and I have both come a long way since then. Her book Zahrah the Windseeker won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. And in 2011 Who Fears Death won the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

Her newest book Kabu Kabu just hit the shelves, and she’s been nice enough to send us some copies hot off the press.

Nnedi Signature

In addition to signing, she’s gone the extra mile and decorated them too….

1-photo

As you can see, each of these is signed, dated, and has it’s own individual doodle along the top and bottom of the book. She sent along 10 of these, and we’re putting them up in the store for you.

Fair warning: There’s only nine left because I just bought one. I haven’t read this one yet.

Last we have a lovely donation from Scott Lynch (who I’m doing an event with soon in Lond0n).

It’s the third book in the Gentleman Bastard series: The Republic of Thieves…

Lynch Cover

I’m a huge fan of the first two books in the series, and recently wrote a review of The Lies of Locke Lamora on Goodreads that was so gushy with love that his publisher contacted me to ask if they could use it as promo copy.

Scott went all out on copies he sent us, as you can see if you embiggen the below pictures.

1-Republic

Yeah, he’s a great guy. Because of that, I’ll try not to resent the fact that his handwriting looks like a stylish font.

By strange coincidence, I just started reading my copy tonight over dinner. And honestly, I wish I were still reading it instead of writing a blog post. It’s one of *those* books.

They’re available for sale over here.

*     *     *

We’ve also got one cool non-book thing we’re adding to the store. Something we’ve been saving for pre-christmass.

We’ve got the complete The Legend of Neil DVD series:

Legend of Neil DVDs

If you haven’t heard of Legend of Neil, well… not only do you lose some geek points, but you’re missing out on some of the best geek humor out there.

I’m not just a fan of the show, I bought the t-shirt. (Several copies of the t-shirt, actually.)

patrick rothfuss- Murder shirt

(Note: This is not the best shirt to go through airport security in.)

The series was written and directed by the inestimable Sandeep Parikh who agreed to let us sell the DVD to help raise money for Worldbuilders.

We’ve got some regular DVD’s and some signed by Sandeep, writer/actor Tony Janning, and geek glitterati princess Felicia Day.

We’ve got the DVDs and the posters available for sale individually, or you can buy them together at a discounted price.

We’ve only got a limited number of these, especially the signed ones. Fair warning.

*     *     *

And finally, a piece of news:

The Lauren Zurchin Fantasy Calendar just came back from the printers. That means as of today, we’re no longer doing pre-orders. If you buy one, we’ll be shipping it out to you straightaway.

oliver-updated

The same is true if you’re buying a couple calendars in a combo packs to get a discount. We’re shipping those out immediately too.

So… yeah. There you go folks. Plenty of geek swag you can add to your vasty horde or use to get a jump on your  holiday shopping.

Have fun,

pat

Posted in a billion links, recommendations, The Tinker's Packs, Things I Like, Worldbuilders | By Pat19 Responses

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