Category Archives: Underthing

“…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, cool things, side projects, Stories about stories. | By Pat59 Responses

The Best Laid Plans….

Greetings true believers!

Ech. I remember back in the beforetimes. I remember the long long ago when I refused to resort to gratuitous Exclamation Marks. And yet here we are. I fought the tide and fell before the waves. Now I’m like the rest of the plebeians, promiscuous with my punctuation to the point of profligacy.

As I finally begin to write this blog, it is 2:58 AM on Friday morning. I’d planned on writing about taking my kids to the local pride festival and doing some art design for the Digger Unearthed kickstarter on the livestream this week. But the best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry. And my plans are more prone to that than most. Complicating things were a tornado, two power outages, a medical crisis, a grade-3 internet kerfuffle, and a child with a tragic case of night-yertz.

Everything said, it wasn’t a good week to decide to wean myself off coffee.

The good news is that with 5 days left to go, the kickstarter is trundling along quite nicely. We’ve unlocked a lot of stretch goals, most of which directly relate to improving the books themselves. Better covers, acid-free paper, fancy foil, and silk bookmarks. At the start of all of this, I’ll admit I was kinda hoping we might get as high as $200,00o. But we’ve outstripped that, and are currently standing at $288,017, more than ten times our starting goal.

If you want to dig into more of the particulars of what’s being done to improve the books, you can head over here to see for yourself. There’s a couple updates as well as fancy graphics that show what we’ve unlocked, and what we’ve got on the near horizon.

But the big news for today, is that we’re going to be doing a live discussion and Q&A with Ursula Vernon herself.

Here’s the deets.

 

Ursula is a delight, and I’m excited to get the chance to chat with her. You can show up to enjoy the Q&A live over here, or catch the VOD after we’re done.

Thanks again for all your support, everyone. And I’ll see you on the stream tomorrow.

pat

Also posted in a few words you're probably going to have to look up, Ask the Author | By Pat21 Responses

“Through Dangers Untold and Hardships Unnumbered….”

(This blog got real long and rambly, even for me. The TLDR is here, if you want.)

*     *     *

Okay. For the avoidance of doubt, this isn’t a blog about Labyrinth.

I *could* write a blog about Labyrinth. Hell, I probably *should* write a blog about Labyrinth.

Did I ever tell the story of the time I dressed up as Jareth from Labyrinth?

(You *can* click to embiggen this, but you probably shouldn’t.)

Yes yes. I know. The resemblance to David Bowie is uncanny.

But as I’ve said, this isn’t a blog about Labyrinth. It’s a blog about being nervous and not understanding why.

Which means, I suppose, that this might be a blog about anxiety.

*     *     *

I’ve been meaning to write a blog on mental health for the whole month of May (It’s mental health awareness month.) And there’s a certain grim humor attached to the fact that I haven’t had my shit together enough to actually finish any of the blogs I started *because* of… Mental health stuff. But all roads lead to Amber, I suppose. So here we are, and what I meant to be a blog about the kickstarter I’m launching tomorrow has the most ADHD opening ever, and then segues into me talking about anxiety.

Here’s the thing. I’ve had a vast, pervasive, and widely assorted grab-bag of mood disorder experience over the course of my life. It’s only over the last 10 years or so, since I’ve been doing a lot of therapy, that I’ve put names to things. The most notable of these is probably my relatively recently being diagnosed with  ADHD.

That said, looking back, it’s obvious that some of these things have been with me through the course of my whole life. What I used to think of as my “Hamlet Moods” back in high-school had more than a passing resemblance to depressive episodes. One of my earlier diagnoses was Cyclothymia, which means I go a little higher than most people, then a little lower than most people. So I get a taste of both the manic and the depressive.

But never anxiety. Or at least not until recently. It’s only over the last 5-6 years that I’ve had a taste of Anxiety that. And I have to say, I don’t care for it. Maybe I’m just more familiar with it, but pound-for-pound it’s harder to deal with depressive symptoms.

I once had someone describe Anxiety to me as, “Hearing that tense music that plays in a video game before the big boss fight… but then no boss shows up and you’re all keyed up, thinking, where is it? What do I have to fight?”

I like this description because it makes it clear that the feeling isn’t the problem. The feeling of being a little scared and keyed up and nervous isn’t bad or wrong. It’s the way you *should* feel during a boss fight. But if you feel it so strongly you can’t fight the boss, then it’s a disorder. It’s disruptive. Alternately, what makes it a mood *disorder* is when that feeling happens and there’s no boss to fight. Otherwise it’s just a mood.

So I should make it clear. What I’ve had over the last couple years has been a disorder. Waking up in the middle of the night sweating. Being unable to sleep in the first place. Being scared at nothing. Jumping at small noises. Things like that are disproportionate and disruptive.

What I have tonight is probably just nervousness. Just feelings. I’m nervous about the kickstarter we’re going to launch tomorrow, and I don’t know why, and that’s been making me more nervous. Which sucks.

But I think I’ve finally figured it out.

*     *     *

As I mentioned on the blog months ago….

Huh. I just spent 10 minutes looking through my old blogs for the post I made about Digger. I know I talked about it back during the fundraiser. We made the big announcement then. But I guess that blog is one of the hundreds I’ve half-written then left unfinished. Damn.

For those of you who want the whole story, here’s that video:

For those of you who want the short version: I found out a comic I love had gone out of print, one thing led to another, and now I’m finally doing something I’ve dreamed about for ages. I’m starting my own tiny publishing imprint: Underthing Press.

(I’m really happy with how the logo turned out.)

The first book we’re publishing is Digger. It’s our maiden voyage. Nooo… That sounds wierd. Our first try? Our… dry run?

It’s our first time. And I’m nervous. Really really nervous. Which feels so odd to me, as I’ve done a *ton* of kickstarters before. The first one we did went over really well. The Tak kickstarter blew the doors off and we raised well over $1,000,000 dollars. The card kickstarter went really well too…

So why am I so nervous about this one? I don’t mind being nervous, but I hate not knowing *why* I feel a way. If there’s actually a boss here to fight, I’ll fight it. But if not, then I need to realize I’m maybe having a problem…

I’ve been thinking about it all night, and I think I’ve finally manage to put my finger on what makes this kickstarter different.

First, the other kickstarters were all based in my world, based on my books. My thought was always, “I’ll put this out for people, and if they want it, they can buy it. And if they’re not interested, no hard no foul.”

But this *isn’t* my book. It’s someone else’s book that I’m trying to bring back into the world. If I do a bad job, I’m letting down someone else…

Another issue is that we were actually going to launch this kickstarter waaaaay back in August of 2021. But various things kept spiking our wheel. Covid problems. Paper shortages. Printers going out of business. Quotes changing. Shipping being *wildly* disrupted. As a result, what I’d initially thought of as being an easy first project for Underthing has take a lot more time and energy than I’d anticipated, as we’ve had to solve some problems multiple times….

I’m worried because we can’t fill this kickstarter with stretch goals the way I like to because we want these books to be beautiful right from the beginning.

I’m worried because we’re doing this one as a 21 day kickstarter, instead of my typical 31 that I’ve always done before….

And of course, I’m not looking forward to the people who are going to come after me for doing *anything* other than working on Book Three. That’s a persistent dread. Every time I tweet, whenever I leave my house for a walk, I know there’s probably a 50/50 chance of someone coming up to me and asking me about it. Sometimes it’s just casual, sometimes it’s aggressive, but it’s always a possibility.

But even as I type those up, I realize they’re not my real fear. The other kickstarters were side projects. They would succeed or fail. But Underthing press… It’s something I’ve kinda wanted to do for a decade. A place where I can bring books I love back into print. A way to maybe revive series that have been canceled or abandoned by other publishers.

And, of course, a place where I can publish some of my own odd little projects without having to worry about making the project appealing to a publisher. I want to do my own weird shit in my own weird way. The second book I want do publish with Underthing Press is the graphic novel of The Boy the Loved the Moon that I’ve been working on with Nate Taylor for years now. I had fun working on the Rick and Morty Vs. Dungeons and Dragons comic. But boy I felt my hands were tied in so many ways with that. There was so much I *couldn’t* do….

Yeah. Writing this down, I realize that’s the real thing. This kickstarter isn’t just me trying to bring a book I love back into print. It’s also testing the waters to see if we can make Underthing Press work. It’s seeing if people will show up after all these years of me not being able to finish my book, and trust me to at least give them a book. If this kickstarter flops, it’s not just a single project, it’s maybe the future projects, too…

So… yeah. Yay? I solved my anxiety puzzle. It still doesn’t feel great, but it feels better knowing *why* I feel nervous.

Anyway… This blog was supposed to be a kickstarter announcement, and I’ve kinda done everything but that.

What’s more, it’s no longer the night before the kickstarter, it’s the morning of. We’re going to be launching it inside the hour.

So here it is….

Here’s a link to the kickstarter page, if you’re interested. If you get there before it launches, you can click the button to be notified as soon as things go live…

If any of you have any questions about the kickstarter or Underthing Press, feel free to drop them in the comments below, we’ll try to answer them. But please be patient. As soon as the kickstarter launches, we’re going to have a busy couple days, as the first 36 hours or so of a kickstarter can determine how the whole thing turns out…

Later space cowboys,

pat

  • [Edit: 2:18 PM] Kickstarter launched at 1:30, and funded in less than 5 minutes. Kinda stunned, honestly. We’re at over $50,000.

I did a livestream for the launch. Nothing fancy, mostly just me fretting and being surprised. Here’s the archived video on twitch, if you’re interested.

  • [Edit: 4:02 PM] Whelp. Just got back from picking the boys up from school and saw this.

Almost at 100,000 and we’re not even three hours in. I’m honestly, legitimately surprised. Maybe I shouldn’t be, after all these years. But I still am.

Today’s a good day.

 

 

Also posted in emo bullshit, Nathan Taylor Art | By Pat56 Responses
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