Category Archives: my rockstar life

Published: January 22, 2009

Just to let you know….

Hello everyone,

This is just a quick note to let you know that I’m back from my trip to California and that the quiet here on my blog doesn’t stem from the fans out there killing me and selling my furry pelt on e-bay.

It was a great time. A lovely break from my current lonely snowbound writing existence. I played board games, hung out with rocket scientists, and got to have a Jamba Juice with Felicia Day.

Yes. That’s right. A Jamba Juice. I was pretty excited, let me tell you.

But before you go wishing you were me, be aware that I paid dearly for my decadent weekend. I was trapped in Minneapolis all Sunday due to Northwest Airline’s asshattery. Monday, hours after returning home, I was brought low by a terrible plague. Don’t ask for details, but know that I have only today recovered enough to crawl to my computer, check e-mail, and bask in the healing glow of Facebook.

More soon,

pat

Also posted in Achievement Unlocked!, Felicia Day | By Pat35 Responses
Published: December 30, 2008

Home for the Holidays

While I live in the cozy little town of Stevens Point, I grew up near Madison. That’s where my family is. It’s home, in the biggest sense of the word. That’s where I go when the family-type holidays roll around, and that’s where I went this Christmas.

A couple months ago, I went down to Madison to attend Wiscon. It’s nice to go to a convention that doesn’t involve spending all day on a plane, and this one is practically in my backyard.

While I was there, I ended up hooking up with Tobias Buckell and David Anthony Durham. And by “hooking up” I mean that we were going to hang out at the coffee shop and chat. Not that they aren’t attractive men and all… But… well. Yeah.

Anyway, before I go into the coffee shop, I hit the Jamba Juice next door. Because I love Jamba Juice. Specifically, I love the Orange Dream Machine smoothie. If there was a Jamba Juice here in Stevens Point, that is all I would eat. Ever.

So I get a smoothie and head across the street to the coffee shop. There, I order a mocha and politely ask if it’s okay for me to bring in my smoothie. The hipster behind the counter is cool about it, and I tip him generously.

So Toby, David, and I are waiting for our drinks when a policeman shows up. Not mall security. This is a real cop, blue suit, badge, gun and everything.

This makes me edgy. Back in high-school my friends and I used to be hooligans. Our main hobby was toilet-papering houses. In a small town like Deforest (which is where I went to school) that means that you have to get pretty good at dodging the cops, because most of their job was keeping us from doing stuff like that. It was like an elaborate game of tag.

My friends and I were pretty good at it, and we were never caught. We developed highly sensitive cop radar that let us know when to run or hide.

The unfortunate result is that these days, whenever I see a cop, I feel like I’ve done something wrong. This isn’t helped by the fact that at any given moment that I might be returning from, going to, carrying around, or at least thinking about something illegal.

So when I see the cop, I immediately feel shifty. I do a mental inventory of my pockets and backpack, wondering what I have on me that might get me in trouble. This is also a holdover from highschool. Back then, innocent things riding around in your car with you can get you in trouble. Things like fireworks, silly string, shaving cream, and, of course, the case of toilet paper in the trunk.

But I don’t have anything on me. Lockpicks might raise an eyebrow, but they’re legal to carry here in Wisconsin. I have a bottle of caffeine in my backpack. And while it looks suspicious, it’s not illegal either. I’m clean.

Still, I can’t help but feel like this cop is giving me the eye. I get my mocha and wander over to the condiment stand to add my requisite four or five sugars. I’m sure of it: he’s looking me over. Is it because I have terrorist beard? That might single me out in line at the airport, but in a coffeeshop in downtown Madison? Not likely. There are hippies here aplenty.

I head over to the table Toby and David have picked out, and he’s still watching me. What is it? Am I wearing my t-shirt that says, “You say tomato, I say fuck you.” No. Is it my black leather trench coat? Am I just radiating latent guilt? What? What?

He comes over to the table where I’ve just taken off my coat. His expression is serious, he’s frowning a little. Then it occurs to me – the Jamba Juice. He knows that I shouldn’t have it here in the coffee shop. Is it illegal to have a carry-in?

He then he says. “Did you write The Name of the Wind?”

And I’m floored. He’s read my book. We chatted for a bit, and I got to look popular in front of my fellow writers.

However, I knew that for what it was, a fluke. There had been a story about me in the paper a couple days before. A “Local Boy Does Good” sort of thing. They used a picture of me, and I have to admit I do have a bit of a distinctive look.

Jump forward to last week. Sarah and I are walking out to my car in the Borders parking lot. Heading toward the bookstore is a stranger, making more than the usual amount of eye-contact. As he had some respectable chin growth, I figured he was just expressing beard solidarity.

But then, as he comes closer he nods and says, “I like your work.”

I say, “You’re kidding me. You know who I am?”

He does, apparently. Still, I can pass this off as a fluke too. It did happen in the parking lot of a bookstore, after all.

But then, two days later, I’m at the post office mailing the check out to Heifer. When I hand the guy the envelope, he looks down at it, then says, “Are you the writer Pat Rothfuss?”

So… yeah. It was weird. Cool, but weird. It’s nice that these last two things happened when Sarah was around, so she thinks I’m cooler than I really am. This is important because she’s much prettier and nicer than me. I need to have something to balance the scales out.

In unrelated news, I’m going to be making an appearance at a bookstore in Pasadena on January 17th. I can’t lay my hands on the details right now, but I’ll post them up as soon as I can find the appropriate piece of paper.

Hope everyone is having a good time,

pat

Also posted in appearances, fan coolness | By Pat43 Responses
Published: October 2, 2008

Concerning Fanmail: Part One

So while I wasn’t paying attention, I apparently received my 1500th piece of fanmail.

Rather, I should probably say I recently received mail from my 1500th fan. There’s been more mail than that, because sometimes I end up e-mailing back and forth with people who drop me a line. Interviews. Witty banter. Coy flirtation. Geek talk. That sort of thing.

But yeah. 1500, people have sent me messages. And that’s just through the contact form on my webpage. That doesn’t count the people who have dropped me a line through Myspace, or Facebook, or sent me a physical letter. I’m guessing that if I counted those, the number would rise up over two thousand.

It’s a little stupefying now that I’m stopping to think of it.

I won’t lie to you, fanmail is great. There have been occasional exceptions to this, like the guy who sent me a message saying that he hoped a dog would bite me on the nuts. But even that made me laugh.

I’ll even go so far as to say that over the last year or so, fanmail has significantly improved the quality of my life. I’ve had some real emotional low points since the book came out. But many’s the time when I’d get a little note from someone and it would salvage what was shaping up to be a real turd of a day.

Like today, for example. Today someone sent me a pair of fucking nunchucks. I’m not even kidding. Look:

Okay. This picture is crap. But the nunchucks are cool. They’re heavy, solid. Not toys at all. And the only thing keeping me from swinging them around as an idiot is the thought of showing up as Guest of Honor at V-Con having broken my own nose.

They were sent to me as the “something cool” part of the package so I’d sign someone’s book. I was understandably delighted.

Then, later, I was out running errands and found out my favorite restaurant had just shut down. This place made sandwiches so good that they were sexual. Not just regular sexual either. These sandwiches were transcendent. They were the sandwich equivalent of a three-way. It was like you, the sandwich, and a sexy god made entirely of bacon got together for a friendly yiff.

Anyway, my point is that my favorite restaurant closed. Depressing. I was ready to be really bummed out. Then I thought to myself, “Someone sent me nunchucks today. I have nunchucks at home right now that I can go and play with.” And my day was saved.

Of course, not all fanmail is physical. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t lovely. Take this excerpt, for example.

I want to thank you so very much. Your book brought me and my girlfriend closer together. Life is tough, my girlfriend and I have a 15 month old son (named after me!) and it seems all we do is work and work and occasionally work some more. Money is always tight and stress is always high, but your book brought a respite from our monotonous routine. J—- loved it (as I hope you guessed already). I had so much fun discussing the book with her I can not even put it to words.

Needless to say, reading something like that is every bit as good as getting nunchucks in the mail. What’s more, that e-mail has the added bonus of having absolutely no chance of breaking my girlfriend’s coffee mug. Which I just did.

In part two of this post, I’ll share more of my favorite fanmail excerpts. Y’all have said some crazy stuff over the last year.

Stay tuned.

pat

Also posted in fan coolness, fanmail | By Pat31 Responses
Published: September 4, 2008

How to be Cool – A Primer.

As I’ve mentioned before, due to angering some fickle deity, I only had one scheduled event at DragonCon: a reading.

When I showed up to the con, the programming staff were nice enough to schedule me a signing too. Then, using my not inconsiderable charm, I sweet-talked my way onto a couple of the writing track panels.

The panels went pretty well. Since they were already on the schedule, they had good audiences. I gave a few good pieces of advice, got a few laughs, and avoided – for the most part – making an ass of myself. If I can do all three of those things, it’s a good panel.

My signing was another matter entirely. Since it wasn’t on the schedule, nobody knew about it. You could hear crickets. Two people showed up, and I was surprised to have that many.

Rest assured that my ego did not suffer any permanent trauma due to low attendance. Why is that? Well… mostly because of the signings I used to do back when my first story appeared in an anthology….

They were brutal. Most signings are when you’re a new writer. Typically you spend two hours sitting at a card table in front of a Waldenbooks at the local mall. Then everyone ignores you. Pointedly ignores you. Ignores you as if they fear making eye contact will give them herpes.

Those early signings, while grueling, did a great job of setting my expectations low. These days, if I have a signing and two or three people talk to me, I consider it a win. Everything beyond that is gravy.

The other reason my ego wasn’t bruised by the low turn-out is that earlier this month at Worldcon, when my signing *was* on the schedule, I got a turnout that surprised so much that I took a picture of the line:

By comparison, my DragonCon signing is pretty relaxing. I talk to the two people who stop by, drink my coffee, and read the program book making plans to stalk Nathan Fillion, Morena Baccarin, and Jewel Staite.

Then I pack up and head over to my reading. My expectations understandably low.

Imagine my surprise when I see that the room is pretty much full. It’s surprising to me that all these people, in the middle of all the glamour and weird of DragonCon, have chosen to show up and listen to me read. What’s more, they all started to applaud when I came in the door.

It was a good feeling. I felt cool. Really cool. I was a hoopy frood. I was about .8 of a Gaiman on the cool-o-meter, which is pretty cool.

I briefly excused myself to use the bathroom – as I said, it was exciting – then did my reading. They laughed at my jokes, asked good questions, and didn’t hassle me too much about book two. In brief, it was a great crowd.

When my hour was up, so many people wanted me to sign that, after a half hour, I needed to move the remainder into the hallway because the next reading was scheduled to begin. Then I signed in the hallway for another half hour.

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Then I realized that my zipper was down. Which means that it had been down since I used the bathroom right before the reading.

Thank you, oh universe, for reminding me of the truth. While I may be all that and a bag of chips, I’m usually all that and a bag of chips who doesn’t know his zipper is open.

I learned my lesson though. Later that night, in order to prevent any further zipper-related embarrassment, I changed into my kilt before I went out to dinner with some of the folks who had participated in the photo contest a couple months back:

And a good time was had by all….

pat

Also posted in conventions, my dumbness, Neil Gaiman | By Pat40 Responses
Published: July 6, 2007

Science.

Experiment # 34:

Question: What happens when you mix a caffeine with vanilla extract and drink it?

Hypothesis: A stimulant may prove helpful in assisting with my novel revisions.

Procedures: In an attempt to gain relatively accurate and repeatable dosage information. 2 grams of caffeine were dissolved into 25 ml volumetric flask. This means that every ml of mixture will contain 80 mg of caffeine. Roughly the equivalent of a strong cup of coffee.

Notable statistics:

ORL-RAT LD50 192 mg kg-1ORL-HMN LDLO 192 mg kg-1

According to this, my minimum lethal dosage of caffeine would be in excess of 17 grams.

Therefore I should be well under tolerance, no matter how much of the mixture I consume. (Unless I bunged up the math.)

Findings:

1. Caffeine seems to be rather insoluble. Heat must be applied to supersaturate the solution.

2. Volumetric flasks get hot when you hold them over the gas burner of your stove.

Observations:

Mixture is a pleasant amber color.

Mixture is intensely bitter, causes burning sensation in mouth and throat.

Stage one: Consume 5 mg of mixture.

Short term effects:

0-30 seconds: Intense urge to gag.

1-3 minutes: Nausea. Extremely unpleasant aftertaste. Some coughing.

4-5 minutes: Coughing fades. Aftertaste remains. Nausea subsides with direct application of skim milk and cinnamon bread sticks.

Mid-term effects.

10 minutes: Desire to watch Invader Zim. (May be coincidental.)

20 minutes: Mild excitability. Belief that I could, perhaps, lift up the front end of a car, if one were available, or if I could be bothered to go outside.

30 minutes: Continued desire for Invader Zim. No appreciable increase in the desire to work on novel.

Stage two: Consume additional 5 mg of mixture.

Short-term effects:

0-30 seconds: Bitter taste. Burning sensation. Intense urge to gag.

1-3 minutes: Nausea. Extremely unpleasant aftertaste. More coughing.

4-5 minutes: Coughing fades. Aftertaste remains. Nausea subsides with direct application of Southwestern Chicken Grinder from Toppers.

Mid-term effects:

10 minutes. Feelings of doubt. Uncertainty. Tendency to question my own sanity. Depression. Further desire for Southwestern Chicken Grinder.

15 minutes: Moderate excitation. Sensation of bloating. (May be unrelated.) Desire to check e-mail.

20 minutes: Moderate desire to write.

30 minutes: Strong desire to write.

Long term effects:

1-5 hours: Productive revisions on book two. Mild Nausea. Mild elation. Urination. Some jittering. Weird pains in large muscle groups, most notably quadriceps and triceps. Tightness in chest. Tunnel of light. Mild dementia and/or conversation with God. Continued desire for Invader Zim. Twinkie.

Conclusions:

While this a marked success over Experiment 15, as it involved no prolonged vomiting, the discomfort-to-revision ratio still seems rather high. Also, the small N prevents determination of statistical significance.

And now, sweet, jittery sleep.

pat

Also posted in hodgelany, Science | By Pat22 Responses
Published: April 2, 2007

My First Signing

I had my first reading and book signing last Tuesday. A cool if slightly surreal experience.

I showed up at the Barnes and Noble in Madison about ten minutes before the signing was supposed to start. There were about a half-dozen of my friends hanging around, and my grampa was sitting in the front row. That was about it. Ten people tops, and that was including me.

Honestly, I was kinda relieved. With less than ten people the potential for looking stupid is greatly reduced. And since everyone was either a friend or a relative, I could trust that they’d already seen me humiliate myself on a far grander scale than anything I was likely to achieve tonight.

But I was pretty disappointed. You want a little fanfair for your maiden voyage, and in terms of the beginning of my writing career, a turnout of less than ten people is not a good omen.

But soon the place started to fill up. We put out more chairs and they filled up too. Eventually we ended up with about two hundred people. A crowd. Perhaps even a throng.

I read some of the book out loud, which was a new experience for me. We also did some Q & A, which I very much enjoyed, as I love talking about writing. I got a few laughs and avoided walking around with my fly undone, so, as a whole, the experience was a positive one.

Then came the signing. I was a little nervous because of certain penmanship and spelling issues I posses. However, the B & N organizer had everyone sign a little post-it and put it on their book, so when they got to the front of the line, I could personalize the books without having to ask the spelling of names.

I made my way through about 40 or 50 people without any trouble. I’m chatting with people, shaking hands, having a good time. I feel just a little bit like a rockstar. And that, of course, is when I let my guard down.

A woman gets to the front of the line and hands me her book. “Could you inscribe this ‘to Helen?’ ” she asks.

“No problem,” I say. I take the post-it off the book and stick it on the table where I can look at it: H-e-l-e-n.

Because I’m feeling pretty good, I try to chat with the woman while I’m signing. As a result, I misspell the name.

I laugh it off and move her book over to the side, replacing it with the book I brought with me to read from. I stop talking and focus my considerable intellect at the task at hand. Using my full concentration, massive brain, and over eleven years of higher education, I’m able to successfully transcribe a five-letter name… the second time around.

So now I’m left with this: a memento of my first signing.

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.
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Yeah. That’s all me. Totally rockstar.

pat

Also posted in my dumbness | By Pat19 Responses
Published: March 26, 2007

My Misspent Youth.

So a couple days ago, I come home, open the door, and find this waiting for me:


My first thought is that I might have blacked out and overdone it on Amazon again. But when I looked closer I realized what was really going on:

My book. My baby.

My next thought was that these might be my author copies. But there was WAY too many for that. Then I remembered that a couple weeks ago, one of the PR people at Penguin told me that a bookstore owner had read the advance copy of the book and really loved it. He wanted to buy a hundred copies for his store, and was wondering if I would sign them for him.

I said, “sure, no problem,” then pretty much forgot about it.

Carrying all the books inside really made me realize that 100 books is, to put it delicately, a whole shitload. And this is just for one store….

So anyway, I pulled out a book and decided to get started. I figured this was going to take me a while, unpacking, signing, then repacking the books to ship back out.

But before I even opened the first book, I was paralyzed with performance anxiety. Seriously. I held the pen and thought, “What if my signature doesn’t look… well… authory enough?”

You know that phase you go through when you’re in middle school, where you practice your signature so you’re ready for when you become a rock star and have to sign autographs all the time? I know most of my peer group went through this somewhere between the ages of 11 and 16. One of my friends actually developed an entire variant style of cursive writing that he’s used ever since. It was, and still is, totally cool looking.

Anyway, I never went through that phase. I wanted to be a rock star. But I suspected I didn’t have the right sort of hair. I also had the penmanship of a demented monkey. Plus, I was lazy and had no musical talent to speak of.

Instead I wasted my time reading books, talking to girls, and doing my physics homework. As I looked down at the hundred books I was supposed to sign, I mourned my misspent youth.

So I sat down and signed my name a couple times. Its one of those things that’s easy if you’re not thinking about it, and hard when you’re concentrating too much. I suddenly became very aware of the fact that the O leading into the T and the H is kinda hard to do quickly. If you rush it, you get tripped up and your H gets tangled up with the F.

That’s right. Laugh it up. It’s a hard name to sign, especially when you’re obsessing, and nervous, and you have, at best, the penmanship of a third grader.

Anyway, I toughed it out and did my best. I still think my signature looks a little goofy, and there are a few of them where the H looks like it’s getting freaky with the F, and the F might not be entirely cool with it. But still, given the fact that I started this whole process with a significant handicap, I think I did pretty well.

I just finished the last one, repacked the boxes, and got them ready to send out.

So before I go to bed, I’d like to give you aspiring writers out there some advice. Learn from my mistakes. Practice your signature now.

pat

Also posted in My checkered past, Things I didn't know about publishing | By Pat23 Responses

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