Top 10 Fiction Books

1. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
2. The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter
3. Swimming by Nicola Keegan
4. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
5. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
6. Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
7. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
8. Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell
9. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
10. The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell

Those stories you hear? The ones about things that only come out at night? Things that feed on blood, feed on us? Got news for you: they’re true. Only it’s not like the movies or old man Stoker’s storybook. It’s worse. Especially if you happen to be one of them. Just ask Joe Pitt.

There’s a shambler on the loose. Some fool who got himself infected with a flesh-eating bacteria is lurching around, trying to munch on folks’ brains. Joe hates shamblers, but he’s still the one who has to deal with them. That’s just the kind of life he has. Except afterlife might be better word.

From the Battery to the Bronx, and from river to river, Manhattan is crawling with Vampyres. Joe is one of them, and he’s not happy about it. Yeah, he gets to be stronger and faster than you, and he’s tough as nails and hard to kill. But spending his nights trying to score a pint of blood to feed the Vyrus that’s eating at him isn’t his idea of a good time. And Joe doesn’t make it any easier on himself. Going his own way, refusing to ally with the Clans that run the undead underside of Manhattan—it ain’t easy. It’s worse once he gets mixed up with the Coalition—the city’s most powerful Clan—and finds himself searching for a poor little rich girl who’s gone missing in Alphabet City.

Now the Coalition and the girl’s high-society parents are breathing down his neck, anarchist Vampyres are pushing him around, and a crazy Vampyre cult is stalking him. No time to complain, though. Got to find that girl and kill that shambler before the whip comes down…and before the sun comes up.

Ah! The Dagger and the Coin. That’s an interesting project.

When I started writing the Long Price Quartet, my personal mandate apart from the exact plots and characters and all was to figure out how to write a novel. I’d written a bunch of short stories, and i felt like I had a handle on that length. Novels, though? Before A Shadow in Summer, I’d written three trunk novels. Each one was better than the one before, but I didn’t have it down yet. So four books later — or five, if you count Hunter’s Run, or seven if you add in the Black Sun’s Daughter books to date — I understand book-length fiction a better. I’m comfortable. I win, right?

When it came time to build the new project, one of the things that was clear to me is that if you know where you’re going from the first word, you win. I have this whole rant comparing X Files to Babylon 5 that makes the point. Anyway, I started this by something I called the Symposium. I got a bunch of really great minds together for a Sunday, and we talked about what epic fantasy *is*. What’s the relationship of the genre to landscape? How is it about nostalgia for a mythical past and how is it more than that? What are the expectations, and how can you fulfill them without painting by numbers? It was a *long* talk.

Then with that as a focus, I went through all the things I think are the most interesting things that I could fit into an overtly epic fantasy universe. I love the Medici bank, and especially Tim Park’s book-length essay on it, Medici Money. I love The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis. I love Whedon’s Firefly (not so much Serenity, but that’s another rant). I love The Diary of a Man in Despair by Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen. I love Dumas and Dickens. I love Dorothy Dunnett’s House of Niccolo books. I think Walter Jon Williams’ Dread Empire’s Fall series is critically under-appreciated. And on and on.

And so I stole everything I liked the best, and now I’m making gumbo.

The books — I’m under contract for three, but I’m thinking that the first full arc will take about five — follow five main characters. It’s a little weird, since instead of having a farm boy chosen by prophecy, I’ve got an orphan girl who was raised by my version of the Medici bank, but hey. The point was never to paint by numbers, right?

The first book covers the introductions and setup with a bunch of swashbuckling and dark magic and intrigue and sentiment. The second book is the start of the Great War. The third will take us up to the critical moment, and then change the game again.

They’re longer books than the Long Price — about 160,000 words at the minimum where the Long Price was more in the 120-140 range — but so far, it reads like a short story. With as much as there is to cover, things move fast. And it’s a different tone. The glib way I’ve been describing it is that I wrote my tragedy first, now I’m writing my adventure, and if someday I’m good enough, I might try my comedy. But not yet.

What’s that you say? You’d like to make the world a better place while simultaneously winning fabulous prizes?

Well today is your lucky day.

Heifer International is my favorite charity. It helps people raise themselves up out of poverty and starvation. All over the world Heifer promotes education, sustainable agriculture, and local industry.

They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so families can take care of themselves. They give goats, sheep, and chickens to families so their children have milk to drink, warm clothes to wear, and eggs to eat.

This year we’ve got a couple different options for donating.

This is the option most people will want. It’s simple. You hop directly over to the page I’ve set up at Team Heifer, and donate.

When you donate using my page at team Heifer, two things happen.

1. Worldbuilders will match 50% of your donation. That means your ten-dollar donation becomes fifteen dollars. If you donate two goats, it becomes three goats. And so on.

2. You’ll be entered in the lottery.

After the fundraiser is over on January 15th, we’ll have random drawing for all the swag that’s been donated by authors and publishers over the last couple months. More than a thousand books, DVD’s and CD’s.

For every 10 bucks you donate, your name will get entered into the drawing once. If you donate thirty bucks, your name goes in three times. Think of it as buying tickets, if you like.

We’ve had *way* too many books donated for me to post them all up at once. It’s a prize-rich environment, with over a thousand books.

So I’ll be putting up a new blog full of donated books pretty much every day or so, just to keep people from being overwhelmed with all the awesome. Make sure to check back often.

Pat’s books, and the Golden Ticket

300 Books from Subterranean Press

A Plenitude of Signed Books [Coming Soon.]

A Plethora of Signed Books [Coming Soon.]

Cool Music [Coming Soon.]

A veritable Cornucopia of Signed books [Coming Soon.]

The Glory that is Joss Whedon [Coming Soon.]

Books from Gollancz [Coming Soon.]

Books from DAW [Coming Soon.]

Books from Bad Moon Press [Coming Soon.]

Books from Peter S. Beagle [Coming Soon.]

Last year, people donated over 53,000 dollars on the Team Heifer page, and I’m hoping this year we can do even better.

But let’s start off by trying to hit 10,000 dollars. That seems like a good place to begin, as our lovely sponsor has agreed to match 50% of the first $10,000 donated. Let’s all take advantage of their generosity, shall we?

Click Here to Donate

Or, as I like to think of it, the Christmas Present option.

For those of you who aren’t interested in the lottery, I have some stuff you can just buy. All the proceeds will go directly to Heifer International.

Personalized books from Patrick Rothfuss.

Name of the Wind posters. [Coming Soon.]

Worldbuilders T-shirts. [Coming Soon.]

This year we’ve decided to auction off some of the rarer items and specialized services people have donated.

We’ve got industry professionals willing to read your fledgling manuscript and give you feedback. We’ve got a limited edition Stardust ARC signed by Neil Gaiman and a copy of The Gathering Storm signed by Brandon Sanderson and the production team at Tor. We’ve got original manuscripts, software, and a rockstar’s guitar. Stay tuned for details.

Rare Books and Manuscripts. [Coming Dec 6th.]

Professional Editorial Advice and Critiques. [Coming Dec 13th.]

Miscellaneous cool. [Coming Soon.]

Lastly, I’d like to ask everyone to please read the instructions/directions carefully before they donate.

I know you’re excited. I’m excited too. We’re going to raise some money, make the world a better place, and end up with big warm fuzzy feelings.

But here’s the problem. If you’re *too* excited, you’ll end up clicking buttons all higgledy-piggledy, forgetting vital steps and leaving things out. (Especially when buying things with Paypal) Then you’ll send me an e-mail that says something like: “I’m sorry, but I forgot to include my shipping address/t-shirt size/signing instructions. Could you please fix it for me?”

I know I’m bound to get one or two e-mails like this. No biggie. But each one is like a cold drop of water eroding my warm fuzzy feeling. If I get, say, a hundred, I’ll have no warm fuzzy left at all. I’ll be left with nothing but a cold prickly feeling.

You don’t want to give me a cold prickly, do you?

I’m sure you don’t. And I’m sure that you’ll read the instructions carefully.

Have questions about the fundraiser? Most of them are probably answered over in the FAQ. Even if your question isn’t answered, I talk about Batman a bit, so it won’t be a complete waste of your time.

And, just in case you missed it, here’s the link to the Team Heifer donation page.

Rock on,

pat

Special thanks to our sponsor: Subterranean Press.