J.A. Pitts

Last night was great, tonight will be mighty.

The SFWA event in Portland last night was stunning.  I’m still processing how great it went.

I showed up around 4pm to the Kennedy School McMenamins to find a bunch of folks already there writing.  I sat with them and cranked out a thousand words on the new novel and enjoyed the company.  Then we grabbed dinner.

At 7pm, we went over into the Gymnasium room which was set up for 80 people, theater style with a book seller in one corner and a bar in the back.  There were also 3-4 round tables back by the bar.

Mary Robinette Kowal opened the event with some SFWA related information than introduced me as the evening’s host.  I read from Forged in Fire which comes out in June.  That went really well.  I hadn’t realized just how emotionally powerful that opening chapter was until I read it in front of that crowd.

Then I introduced Ken Scholes who read two short pieces.  Ken was brilliant as always.  His stuff is visceral.  I highly recommend you look up his Psalms of Isaac series, or check out his stuff on tor.com

We then took a break so folks could refresh their “frothy adult beverages” as Mary said.  Then David Levine came on to read.

I’ve never heard David read before and let me tell you; the man has hidden talents.  His dialect work was excellent — really enhanced the story experience.  He’s a damn fine story teller.

We mingled a bit afterwards, but the place cleared out fairly quickly, being a work night and all.

Then I drove home, got in after midnight.  Was a long day.  Slept in a bit, and heading to day jobbe soon.

And tonight, we do it all over again.  Only this time in Kirkland with Me, David D. Levine and Nancy Kress.  It’s a powerful line-up.  You should come.

There will be great food and great stories.  Here’s the details below.  Hope to see some of you there.

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From Brenda Cooper – Reading coordinator…

I’m very pleased to be part of the team helping to put these literary events on.  The very first Seattle-area event will be Feb 1st, 2012.

The greater Pacific Northwest is home to a host of fabulous genre writers.  Last year, we heard from Ursula K. Le Guin, Kay Kenyon, …Jay Lake, Nancy Kress, Brent Weeks, Ted Chiang, Cherie Priest, Mark Henry, and Kat Richardson.  These free quarterly events provide the Northwest Science Fiction and Fantasy community a chance to gather, network and enjoy readings from local authors.

The 2012 series kicks off with John Pitts, author of Black Blade Blues, reading from his critically acclaimed series.  He’ll be joined by not one, but two Hugo-winning authors:  David Levine and Nancy Kress.

Register at the SFWA site for future mailings.  This is a quarterly event with new authors each time.

February 1st, 7pm.

Venue is the Wilde Rover pub in Kirkland

I use the word “Outline” very loosely

The outline for the fourth book in the Sarah Beauhall series is done.  My high school English teachers would not be amused by my use of that word.  <queue Princess Bride>

Be that as it may:  the outline stands at 205 pages and just over 36K words.

Yes, this is 1/3 of the novel. Some scenes will only need a light touch. Many scenes are high level ideas in need of real dialogue, description, setting, etc.

This is my fourth time through the outline in total.

• Draft one was a skeleton with missing pieces and little meat.

• Draft two filled in the missing pieces and started adding details where I thought they were too important to lose during drafting.

• Draft three added in some sub-plots and bits of foreshadowing, motivation and emotion

• Draft four was a continuity pass. Did things flow organically from one scene to the next?  Does the plot hang together?

I know how I write, I’m confident in my style. This book will come in between 100 and 110k words.

Crazy, huh?

Now it will sit for a couple weeks while I tackle the page proofs for book 3 (Forged in Fire) in preparation of its July 2012 publication.  Proofs are due back to New York by January 17th.  Once that’s wrapped, I’ll be drafting Hearth & Home with earnest.

Last minute gifts

Hey, it’s almost Christmas, and Hanukkah is is well underway.  I was out and about today, picking up a few last minute gifts (and laundry detergent) when I got to thinking.  In this hurly-burly world of e-things and internet shopping, shipping fees and delivery dates there is one item that stands out as a great last minute gift.  Of course, I’m talking about books.

And the great thing about books is while you can order them online for delivery sometime in the new year, or download them on your personal reading device, there is one great way to insure you get them in time to give to your loved ones.  We still have these amazing establishments called book stores.  You can go into on in your area and speak with wonderful people who know a lot about what’s popular, and what’s good.  They know all the best books, from funny to poignant, action adventure to biographies.  They even have cook books, coloring books, picture books and every genre you can dream of.

Head to a bookstore today or tomorrow and reacquaint yourself with a truly magical place.  If you happen to see Black Blade Blues or Honeyed words, I’m sure your loved ones would be thrilled to explore the world of Blacksmith Sarah Beauhall and her adventures with Norse gods, dragons, trolls and magic of all sorts.

Or, you know — what ever book strikes your fancy.  You can’t go wrong with a good book.

Holidays, new books, laptops and other frivolity

As happens every year, we get to the middle of December and I have no idea where the year has gone. It’s crazy. My day job continues to be excellent, but brain-eating most days.

I’ve still got shopping to do for the big gift giving event later this month, and I’m struggling to find the actual band-width to perform such actions. I really only have a few items left to buy.

My laptop recently decided to stop providing video support. It works fine when you first boot the machine, or if I put it in stand by mode and bring it back up. Each time for twenty seconds or so, then it flickers a bit, and fades, almost as if I had turned the brightness down to almost black. If I look at the screen at an angle I can see icons and such, but only as very vague outlines. Luckily, my laptop is connected to my home network, so I’ve been able to rescue all my writing and music so far. Some things I don’t have access to, as I’ve not shared those folders. The next step will be to hook up an external monitor and see if that works. If so, I’ll have an easy enough time recovering my other files. Or, I’ll have to stage things in 20 second intervals when I can see the screen between stand-by events. Awkward, but doable.

Really proves two things. One, 4+ years is a long time on a laptop, not just technology wise. Two, my back up to the thumb-drive thing just isn’t adequate enough. With that in mind, I purchased a 2TB external hard drive that is wireless. I can now use it from any of the machines in the house and backup on a regular basis with little or not hassle. In a few months I’ll purchase a second one, so I can swap them out. I’ll send one off-site with friends, and keep one here. Swap them out every 3-6 months should be adequate for the amount of things I do.

My writing I will do differently. I’ll keep that backed up on a second local machine, and perhaps somewhere else as well. The published stuff is recoverable in hard copies, etc. but I like being able to go back to those final drafts and search for terms, people, places… Despite my best intentions and efforts, I cannot remember every detail of all the novels when I’m writing the next one.

I’ve customized a new laptop and have it sitting in my shopping cart on the Dell website. I’m quite fond of Dell machines. I’ve used them on my day job for years. I’m writing this on the first desktop I’ve purchased over-the-counter. All the others I’ve built myself. Laptops are a different ballgame, though. The machine that just decided it had done enough, was the third laptop I’ve owned since 1993. Like cars, I tend to use them until they are no longer viable as tools.

Laptops are for marketing, social media, email, music and writing in my world. No games, nothing that cannot be directly tied to my writing. It’s where I work. My desktop, on the other hand is for everything. It’s where I go to wind-down, clear the brain, play a game for a bit, that type of thing. It’s where my daughter does her homework, where we research recipes or movies. I am on my fifth desktop since 1983 as well. There was a period of time where I had no computer in the house. Hard to believe, as much as I’m on one today. But there were some lean times between the Commodore 64 days, and my first desktop after I got married.

So, today I made the last payment on this machine (12 months same as cash) and I’ll push “buy” on that laptop. They said it would ship Monday or Tuesday, which is very cool.

Meanwhile I am writing on the desktop. The outline for Hearth and Home is nearing completion. I have two areas to smooth over and then I need to go back and add in the next layer of story. I’m so close to finishing this thing that I keep thinking it will be today, or you know, any day now. Then I discover the next twist in my brain, the next magical tie-back to a prior scene that makes things that much clearer and then I’m back to shuffling things again.

All in all, it’s a great thing. I’m really hoping this fourth in the Sarah Beauhall series takes the story to the next level.

That’s the scoop on my life currently. What’s up in yours? How are you faring as the winter solstice draws near?

Sweet introduction

I had a reading a while back (August) at the Third Place Bookstore, a very hip and cool locally owned independent bookseller. I really like this book store for lots of reasons. First and foremost is how well everyone of the employees I’ve encountered is super friendly and knows their stuff. From one end of the book store to the other, they are experts in their field. Another reason is that they love authors. I’ve read there twice now, and had a great experience each time.

Here’s the introduction Steve Winter gave me the last time I was in for a reading. I think Steve totally rocks.

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J A PITTS (08.10.11)

Good evening everyone and welcome to Third Place Books for this exciting and special event tonight where we are very pleased to welcome back to The Den, J A Pitts. My name is Steve and on behalf of the bookstore and staff, I want to personally thank you all for your support of Third Place Books. As an independent, locally owned bricks and mortar bookstore it is your steadfast patronage and purchases that allow us to continue hosting such great events like tonight’s book reading with Seattle author John Pitts and his latest novel featuring blacksmith bad-ass, Sarah Beauhall–HONEYED WORDS. Yow! (admire cover art)

In the literary landscape of urban fantasy, paranormal romance, and zombie everything, there is a dense population of seemingly every occupation under the sun and every creepy crawly creature of the night. Bounty hunters, witches, and detective mages square off against the dark forces of vampires, werewolves and ghosts in a never-ending battle of good versus evil. John’s first novel, BLACK BLADE BLUES, introduced us to Sarah Beauhall, a singular heroine who may have one or two things in common with the other characters of urban fantasy, but she is definitely cut from different cloth… or should I say, forged from sterner mettle. To borrow and paraphrase from John’s online biography, Sarah is an ordinary woman doing extraordinary things.
In HONEYED WORDS, Sarah has found herself in the middle of a strange new world pulled straight out of the Viking sagas and into the 21st century: dragons and dwarves, fairies and giants with our heroine thrust into the role of reluctant savior in the face of impending Ragnarok. The beat of the hammer, the blistering heat of the forge, the screaming song of the sword… John’s unique creation of Sarah Beauhall and her Black Blade Blues are truly the heavy metal of urban fantasy. In one word: awesome

Please join me in welcoming… John Pitts.

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Talk about making me feel like a superstar. Thanks Steve. I told you I’d blog this so I would never forget it.

Major update to web site: interviews, reviews, award nominations, etc.

Wow, that was a long time in coming. I just spent the evening updating my web site. I added all the interviews, reviews, podcasts, videos and guest blog posts that I could remember or find.

Check ‘em out.

If I missed something, don’t hesitate to let me know in comments. I’ll make corrections.

I find it interesting just how many reviews Black Blade Blues has acquired in year and half since its launch. Not as many reviews of Honeyed Words so far. Good Reads and other fine sites have Honeyed Words as a better book than BBB, though. Glad to see that my writing skills are continuing to improve, and that the story still holds people’s attention.

And, my most excellent agent just sent me a couple stacks of ARCs she’s acquired. Funny how the world of electronic copies is impacting the need for hard copy ARCs for reviews and foreign agent types.

I’m wondering if I should do some give-aways?

What do ya’ll think?

New Genreality guest post up.

Some of you know @KenScholes and his wonderful wife @JenScholes. They’ve recently gone through a spate of tragedy. Three weeks ago, Jen’s Grandmother died. It was not surprising, she was battling illness for a while. When she finally went, it was still heartbreaking. They had the funeral and were just picking up the pieces of their lives once again, when early this week tragedy struck a second time. Jen’s father died suddenly in his sleep.

Two weeks apart, mother and son both died. This has been a second and totally unreasonable blow to their families.

We drove down to Portland Thursday evening late for the funeral on Friday.

As a help to Ken, I agreed to guest blog for him this week and next on Genreality. Here’s the current guest post.

Deciding to fish or cut bait. Jonesing for MMORPGs.

I haven’t played Everquest in over six years.  I’m not sure why I’m jonesing for it so hard tonight.  I logged onto my old Sony Station account and was able to pull up all my old characters.  It’s crazy — looking through them — being flooded with memories of the days, weeks and months I was immersed into that game.

I’m an old pen and paper gamer from way back — before Dungeons and Dragons had any hard bound books — back around 1978 for those of you keeping score at home.  That’s when I tell into gaming with a  passion.

I read source books with a fervor.  No matter the game.  Gamma World, Boot Hill, Traveller, Top Secret.  Most of them I never played.  I just loved to see how the adventures were put together.  How the authors built the world, constructed the reality on those thin pages.  I dreamed of growing up and writing for TSR one day.

When Everquest went live, it was like being in seventh grade all over again, me and the guys, Ed, Ted, Jeff and Tony huddled in one of our bedrooms rolling dice, trying desperately to kill that final kobold so we could get our treasure and upgrade to a better set of gear.  It was heaven.  It was the essence of writing.

Everquest upped the ante.  I was back into that golly-gee world of roleplaying only way beyond our wildest dreams.  I could see my character running around on my computer.  I could talk to other people, people from all over the world, and I could have adventures.  For a few years I sank into that world with a vengeance.

Now, I didn’t neglect my family, lose my job, or anything like that.  But when I had free time, I sacrificed it to Everquest.

I finally gave it up in 2005.  I toyed with Star Wars online, which frankly sucked, then switched to Everquest 2 for a while, but none of them had the magic of the original Everquest.   Not even Everquest.  They’d changed the game so much, it had lost the magic for me.  It was a place for raiders and hard-core gamers.  The content shifted, the stories began to fail me.  I lost the illusion.

See, the games are about story for me.  About peeling back the layers and getting to the heart of the tale.  I love seeing my characters evolve, getting better, more skilled.  I like the excitement of going to a new zone and seeing something I’d never seen before, learning my way around the obvious dangers, and finding the not-so-obvious.  It was thrilling.

I gave it up in the end because I wanted to write my own stories even more.  I cut a deal with myself that if I put the twenty hours or so a week I was gaming into my fiction, that one day I’d sell enough books to quit my day job.

Then, I could do both — game and write.  It would be the best of both worlds.  So I gave up the online games.  I abandoned that world that had begun to lose its luster and dove into my own career as a story teller.

And within a year I’d started selling short stories.  One here and there, nothing to quit my day job over.  Enough to get a taste for success.

Then in December 2008  I sold Black Blade Blues.  I was on the path.  I still missed my friends and the adventure of online gaming.  I missed the various characters and personalities I created for that world.

That was when I cut my real teeth on creating characters.  I practiced the distinctive voices between each, came up with detailed backgrounds, storylines.  Even names.  Bravado Desperado the wood-elf bard, Bone Daddy, the gnome necromancer, Seditious Intent, the human thief.  Virul Infection the dark elf shadow knight, Gnostic Boombostic the gnome wizard and Medico Bandaidico the dwarf cleric.

I reveled in creating the perfect name for each of them, one that would signal to the other gamers just who this individual was.

And now I’ve delivered the third novel in my Sarah Beauhall series.  I’ve taken the real world, mashed it around with Norse mythology and all my love and experience from gaming to create a series that is getting some interesting attention in the world.

As we speak, on another open window on this computer, is the in-work outline for the fourth Sarah book.  I’ve abandoned it for the moment so I could put these words down.  Purge the memories and the what-ifs for a bit longer.

Because, I haven’t left that world, not really.  Building a novel career is like leveling characters.  You don’t move up fast. It’s the slow and steady grinding that wins the game.  Show up, put down the words, get them in front of readers and let the magic happen.  If you put more time in, you produce more words.  The more words you produce, the better they are.  The more skill you gather, the more adept you are at your chosen character class — author.

I’m not quitting my day job any time soon, so the online gaming is still on hold.  But I’m creating story, trying to bottle the magic I felt the first time I logged into the amazing pixilated world of Everquest.

And maybe, if you read one of my stories, you’ll feel some of that magic.  I certainly hope so.

OMG New Cover Art

Okay, This got tweeted yesterday, and showed up around Facebook, but I had to get this on my blog.

Dan Dos Santos is a rocking artist. Dude just continues to get better and better. This is the best cover yet for Sarah. Makes me want to write more books for the express purpose of seeing what Dan can do with the cover.

Hmmmm… gives me an idea. Maybe I should write some short stories as well. They could need art.

Stephen Tobolowsky rocks my world.

There’s this guy. I think you probably know him. Tall, thin, pretty funny, you know the type. He’s one of those rare individuals with the ability to see around corners. That’s his super power. He can see things, make connections, fill-in-the-blanks in a way that makes you shake your head and wonder why you’d never seen the world that way.

And this guy, I’ve never met him, not really. I’ve spent hours and hours of my life in his presence, but just not in person. He’s an actor and a story teller, one of the best I’ve had the pleasure to experience.

Stephen Tobolowsky is a character actor. That means he’s got talent and can do damn near anything. Only, you know, he’s not the leading man. Hollywood can be pretty shallow that way. The first time I recall meeting Mr. Tobolowsky was when I saw Groundhog Day. He plays Ned Ryerson, a guy who went to high school with Bill Murray’s character. He’s funny — steals every scene he’s in.

Earlier this year, my wife said she’d come across this amazing guy on our local NPR station, KUOW. He was doing these hour long stories about life, love and the entertainment industry. I was hooked.

This man is a natural story teller. If you are not familiar with him, start with the movie Stephen Tobolowsky’s Birthday Party.

This week he had another in the series of stories that just blow my socks off. This one was about “Yeah, but…” It’s pretty damn amazing. You can find him at his website, /Film and on I-Tunes.

I encourage you to go check this guy out.

If you are writer, you need to hear the episode from today. I think it’s 51 as it is brand new and the web site only goes to 50. It may take a day or two to go live. But, believe me, it’s well worth your time. One hour to hear an insight into the mind of an extraordinary human being. Stephen doesn’t just tell stories about acting, he tells stories about life. This one particularly has a weighty message to any creative types out there. Hell, I think it applies to all of us. His insight into our ability to self-sabotage caught me off-guard and he reeled me in to the end of his hour with wit and grace.

I don’t do this often. I don’t want to waste your time. This guy, he’s the real deal. Give him an hour of your time. See if he doesn’t make it totally worth your while.