Tim Pratt

SF and Fantasy Writer

Clarion in San Diego and Clarion West in Seattle are now accepting applications. If you’re serious about this whole writing-science-fiction-short-stories thing, you should consider applying to these programs. (And the instructor line-ups for both workshops this year feature people with some insane literary and commercial chops.)

I would literally not be where I am in my life today without Clarion. I went in the summer of ‘99, when Clarion was in East Lansing MI. I got my brain turned inside out, and my learning process accelerated mightily. I made friends who are still among the most important people in my life. I’m not sure I would have met my wife if I hadn’t gone to Clarion, and I probably wouldn’t have the day job I have today if not for Clarion (both of those are the result of chains of personal connection that I can trace back to the workshop, at least partly).

Now, I don’t promise attending a Clarion will lead you to both a person and a job you love… but it will give you six weeks to think about nothing except getting better at writing science fiction and fantasy, which should be draw enough on its own, I’d think.

On Friday evening, I finished the first draft of a novel. My 20th finished novel since 1997! I’m a little staggered by that. (For one thing, you’d think it would be easier by now.)

Now, that’s not twenty published novels. There are some trunk books in there, and a book that’s still out on submission (I have hopes it’ll see print someday.)

I thought I’d do a little walk down memory lane. This’ll be self-indulgent. Skip if you like.

1. Shannon’s God. I wrote this in the summer of 1997, after my sophomore year of college. It was my first attempt to write a novel since some failures in high school. It’s a contemporary fantasy about a woman in college who begins to see monsters, and meets a man who claims to be God. I finished the thing, miraculously, and there are still elements I like about it, but it’s pretty broken. It should have been a short story. It did feature an assassin named Walker, who was a sort of prototype for my later character Mr. Zealand.
2. Raveling. I wrote this in 1998, and it was insanely ambitious, way beyond my capabilities back then, a multi-viewpoint novel about a dark god returning to the world and the efforts of his half-human daughters to prevent him from destroying reality. Again, it had some good bits, but wow, was it a mess. A total structural disaster.
3. Infants and Tyrants, or, Kootchie-Kootchie-Coup. Written over Christmas break in 1998 — took me only three weeks! It’s a superhero novel, set in the 1950s, in the same universe as my stories “Captain Fantasy and the Secret Masters” and “Dr. Nefarious and the Lazarus Project.” It concerns a child born with superhuman intelligence and telekinesis… but all the absolute self-centeredness of any six-month-old. (Good villain, huh?) It’s mostly about his mom discovering her own powers to alter reality to stop her son from conquering the world. It sucks. I kept it as backstory for the later stories set in that world, though…
4. The Genius of Deceit. Written in September 1999, immediately after Clarion. (My attempt to avoid a post-Clarion writing slump: writing a 96,000 word novel in a single month, destroying any chance for writer’s block to get a grip on me. Well, it worked!) It’s a contemporary fantasy about the tenth incarnation of Vishnu, destined to save the world… but he’s beset by demons who are doing their best to drive him insane before he realizes his own power. The main character was an Indian American woman who may or may not be an avatar of Lakshmi. It has some awesome scenes… and some hideous issues with cultural appropriation I was too dumb to recognize at the time. (Making the incarnation of Vishnu a whiny white kid was maybe a mistake.) It does kind of work as a novel, though it’s not good enough to publish. I tried rewriting it as a YA, but without any success.
5. The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, written mostly in 2000-2001, largely in Cafe Pergolesi around the corner from my house in Santa Cruz. (Before that I tried to write a Marla Mason novel called Ferocious Dreamers, but it went off the rails 60,000 words in. I did pillage bits of it for later books though.) My weird Western novel, and my love song to Santa Cruz, and my debut novel, and the fifth book I ever finished. (I’m a slow learner.)
6. Blood Engines, written in 2003 and 2004, mostly. The first Marla Mason novel, intended to be a standalone, and not the start of a series. I sold it while I was at the Blue Heaven workshop in 2006, along with a then-unwritten sequel.
7. Briarpatch, which back then was called The Light of a Better World, written 2005/6 in Oakland. Took me a while to sell that one — or even to try to sell it, for tedious contractual reasons. But a mere five years after finishing it, it saw print last year. Probably my most ambitious book, and I think one of my more successful. Bridges! Alternate worlds! People who turn into bears! Magical cars!
8. Poison Sleep, written in 2006. The second Marla novel, and the one where I really started thinking of it in terms of an ongoing series.
9. Dead Reign, written in 2007. (Oh, for those bygone days of writing one book a year. And I had no kid! What did I do with all that free time?) Sold as part of another two-book deal to Bantam, which also included…
10. Spell Games, written in 2007/8. Originally had the much better title Grift Sense, but Random House had published another novel with that title some years before, so I couldn’t use it. The fourth Marla novel, and the last one from a major publisher. After that, my career cratered, I got dumped by Random House, etc. And yet, somehow, I kept on working…
11. The Nex, 2008. My first attempt at a book for kids, a gonzo science-fantasy adventure set in the world of my story “Dream Engine.” Nobody wanted to publish it, but I still liked it, so I later self-published it as an e-book and serialized it online. By far my least-read novel, alas.
12. Bone Shop, 2009. Meant to be a novella, this prequel to the Marla Mason series eventually edged well into short-novel territory. This was my first attempt at a reader-funded serialization, and it worked out extremely well, giving me the confidence to write…
13. Broken Mirrors, 2010, the fifth full-length Marla book, resolving the cliffhangers from Spell Games. Also serialized, and self-published as an e-book. Including royalties from e-book sales, audio sales, etc., it’s been as lucrative financially for me as the ones I published with Random House.
14. Pseudonymous novel #1, 2010. A work-for-hire book, based on an idea by the publisher. Appeared later that year. Got better reviews than most of my books under my own name. Sigh.
15. Venom In Her Veins, 2010. Also a work-for-hire book, a roleplaying game tie-in set in the world of Forgotten Realms, but this one’s under my own name, and was vast quantities of fun. It’s about insane subterranean monsters, a trade princess who’s wickedly good with a bow, addictive flowers, and other weird wonders. Coming out in March 2012.
16. The Deep Woods, 2010. My second attempt at a middle-grade novel, this one about creatures from Celtic folklore (mostly), a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, and the power of friendship (which is maybe just slightly weaker than the power of iron-toothed giants). I wrote this one in 18 days, because after two work-for-hire books in a row, I wanted to write something that was utterly and entirely for me… but I didn’t have much time. So, yeah, 2010 was a four-book year, but Deep Woods is only about 45000 words long. It’s still out on submission. Somebody buy it, please?
17. Pseudonymous novel #2, 2011. Work-for-hire again, published in late 2011, also to pretty good reviews, and I love the main character. And the narrator. Who is a different character.
18. City of the Fallen Sky, 2011. Another RPG tie-in, this one set in the world of Pathfinder Tales. It’s about an alchemist/artificer who gets roped into going on a dangerous expedition to the legendary ruined flying city of Kho… all while being pursued by a relentless thug who wants to retrieve the things our hero stole on a previous expedition.  Coming out in May 2012.
19. Grim Tides, 2011. The sixth full-length Marla Mason novel, currently being serialized. This whole alternative-publishing-model thing seems to be working out for me.
20. Pseudonymous novel #3, 2011/12. (This is the one I finished on Friday.) This book actually is an original novel, based on my own idea, and not work-for-hire, but the publisher wanted to put it out under a pseudonym. I can probably claim it as my own a while after it’s published. 2011 wasn’t quite a four-book year, but it was a near thing.

So what’s next? I’ve got another work-for-hire book due this summer, but I can’t announce it yet. (It’ll be under my own name.) I also plan to write a contemporary fantasy novel, Heirs of Grace, for my own amusement. I’ve got a proposal for an epic(ish) fantasy novel called The Emperor of Owls, which I may just write even without selling it, because I’m excited about the characters and the world. And if there’s interest, I could do another Marla Mason novel for next year, assuming my readers want to support me again.

In other words… I expect I’ll keep busy. I’m fortunate this year in that I sold an anthology with my friend Melissa Marr, and that’s bringing in enough money that I don’t have to hustle up quite as much work as usual. That means I can write some spec books that may never sell. I’ve enjoyed all the work-for-hire stuff, actually, and a couple of them are among my very best books, but there’s something to be said for writing books that don’t have any deadlines or expectations attached. Like the old days, before I succeeded (and then failed, and then kept going anyway) as a novelist.

It’s Monday, and that means: a new chapter of Grim Tides! Chapter 3: “A Conversation with Koona.” It’s about Marla and Rondeau visiting an oracle. I love oracles. Go, read, tell your friends if you like it, etc.

One nice thing about doing a serial novel is it encourages me to update here at least weekly.

In other linkages:

I tend to link mostly to book or magazine-related Kickstarter projects, but I do have other passions, like gourmet popsicles: so consider supporting the Little Bee Pops kickstarter. A delicious small business!

My wife Heather Shaw, who used to edit erotica magazine Fishnet, tells me that one of the authors she frequently published there has an erotica e-book collection for sale: Four Fantasies by Matthew Addison. (The cover features, like, stockings and part of a butt, so don’t click if you’re someplace where viewing such things is a problem.) Apparently it’s hardcore and literary with some fantasy elements, so if that’s your boat, go float it.

Writing:

I broke 75K on my current novel-in-progress on Sunday. (I can’t tell you much about the book; it’s pseudonymous, but I may be able to out myself as the author in the future.) Another eight (or maybe ten or twelve) thousand words will finish off the first draft, I think, so it should be a book this week! Of course, it’s an unusually messy book, but I’ll have the rest of the month to clean it up.

Life:

A wonderful weekend! Our friend Anne came over and hung out with us on Saturday, out in the back yard (the weather is essentially summer-like here, it’s bizarre), then stayed for dinner. That was great fun. On Sunday morning, I took the kid out to a playground, where he rode his tricycle in furious Mister Toad style, and we played chase (which is like tag but less, uh, formal?) and played in the sandbox. Afterward we encountered some local kids with a lemonade stand. (Yeah, in January. See above re: summerlike.) The boy was just captivated by the notion of having a lemonade stand, so his mom helped him make lemonade in the afternoon, and we played lemonade stand in the kitchen. (Me: “Can I have some lemonade?” Him: “It costs money.” Me: “Here’s a nickel.” Him: “No. 75 cents.”)

Beautiful weather, good friends, time with my wife and kid, and about 9,000 words of writing. That’s pretty much all I want out of any weekend ever.

The sixth full-length Marla Mason novel, Grim Tides, is being serialized online! The first two chapters are up now.

If you don’t want to wait, you can buy the Kindle version of the whole book now.

Of if you prefer a different flavor of e-book, you can get the epub version at Barnes & Noble.

Enjoy the novel! And thanks to everyone who supported me. I couldn’t have done this without you.

I am a great fan of the symbolic. For whatever reason, the symbolism of New Year’s — an arbitrary moment chosen to begin anew — is profoundly powerful for me. A year is a good unit of time: short enough to be measurable and memorable, but long enough to get a sense of trends and developments. It’s a time to make course-corrections, and to see if my life is where I’d like it to be — and, if not, to figure out what actions are within my power to bring my dream life into line with my real life. (Of course, there’s no fighting the external and the unexpected, and conversely, no use fretting over such things: I do my best these days to worry about things I can, loosely speaking, actually control. Or at least influence.) It’s also a time to celebrate achievements, assuming I had any.

So, as always, a look back at my past year, with a particular emphasis on writing stuff, because that’s where most of my energy goes.

I wrote about 370,000 words of fiction and non-fiction (that doesn’t count blog posts, e-mails, or the thousands of words I write monthly at my day job — just books, stories, articles, reviews, etc.).

Most of those words went toward novels. I completed a pseudonymous work-for-hire novel in the spring; wrote the entirety of my roleplaying game tie-in City of the Fallen Sky over the summer; completed my new Marla Mason novel Grim Tides this fall; and have written about 50,000 words of another pseudonymous book this winter (though this one is original, not a tie-in or work-for-hire). I didn’t quite manage to write four entire novels this year, but it was a near thing. I also did revisions and copyedits and so on for various novels written previously, including Venom In Her Veins and Briarpatch.

I wrote some short stories which I subsequently sold: “The Carved Forest” (forthcoming in an anthology); “We Go Back” (an original commissioned by Escape Pod); “The Secret Beach” (published in Fantasy Magazine); “Ill Met in Ulthar” (forthcoming in an anthology); and “A Fairy Tale of Oakland” (an audio original commissioned by Drabblecast.) With my wife Heather Shaw I co-wrote “The Ghost of Christmas Possible” (audio original commissioned by Podcastle.) I also wrote “The Haunted Mech Suit,” which isn’t sold yet, but is out on submission.

I sold other books, too, most notably an anthology called Rags and Bones, co-edited with the marvelous Melissa Marr, which should be in bookstores in 2013. I also sold audio rights to my self-published novels Broken Mirrors and Bone Shop to Audible, which is awesome — especially since they commissioned original covers by Daniel Dos Santos! Also sold a couple of those work-for-hire books. Maybe my best year ever in terms of books sold. (I tell you, my career has really taken off ever since it crashed and burned after I got dumped by Random House. I’ve been really busy since I became a failure.)

I published a few things this year. The big one was my novel Briarpatch, which has been very well-received critically, to my great pleasure. (The book means a lot to me.) In addition to the stories mentioned above, I also published “A Void Wrapped in a Smile” in Basement Stories; “Antiquities and Tangibles” in Subterranean; “The Alphabet Quartet” (suite of 26 flash stories in collaboration with Jenn Reese, Heather Shaw, and Greg van Eekhout) in Daily Science Fiction, published one per week from January – June 2011; “Hell’s Lottery” in Bull Spec; “Little Better than a Beast” in Those Who Fight Monsters; “Shark’s Teeth” in Daily Science Fiction; and “Our Stars, Our Selves” in Welcome to Bordertown (that was kind of a dream come true, as I loved the Bordertown series as a teen). My poem “Lion Heart” appeared at Apex magazine — the first poem I’ve published in ages.

A bunch of my stories were reprinted (or rather published in audio form) at assorted podcasts — “Terrible Ones,” “On a Blade of Grass,” “Hart and Boot”, “From Around Here”… others I’m forgetting, too, I suspect. Podcasts have become a huge part of my career, and many of them reach audiences larger than those of the major genre magazines. The future is an odd and wonderful place. I sold some print reprints, too, though not as many.

Remarkably, there were even developments at my day job (I’m senior editor at A Certain Magazine). I wrote a few book reviews, after a couple of years of not reading much SF/Fantasy at all. I conducted a couple of interviews for A Certain Magazine, solo, which I’d never done before — I sat down with Nick Mamatas, and with Sarah Pinborough. (You’ll be able to read both interviews next year.)

I ran a Kickstarter campaign to fund my Marla Mason novel Grim Tides, with a goal of raising $6,000. I raised over $11,000. My fans are the greatest people in the world.

I got into self-publishing some more, putting up a bunch of single stories for sale in various e-book formats, mostly. Thanks to Jenn Reese of Tiger Bright Studios for doing a bunch of awesome e-book covers for me. Keep her in mind for your cover designing needs; she rocks. At my agent’s prompting, I looked into the ACX audiobook exchange, where authors can connect with producers and narrators to create audiobooks, and we made a deal with the amazing Mary Robinette Kowal to narrate an audiobook of my debut novel The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl. With luck, it’ll be available next year.

I got to see the first film adaptation of my work, a short film by Israeli director Shir Comay, based on my story “Impossible Dreams” (it’s fantastic). I optioned my short story “Morris and the Machine” to an indie filmmaker. My beloved producer and friend Anne Rodman renewed her option on the Marla Mason series (and those wheels are still turning, though Hollywood is a strange and vast place full of dangers, so I expect nothing).

Okay, okay, non-writing things!

My three-year-old became a four-year-old. Fatherhood continues to be pretty awesome. His glaucoma is under control — and he’s old enough now that he doesn’t have to be anesthetized in order to have his eye pressures checked, which is huge and good. He got stitches for the first time, after getting a cut over his eye. (He’s precocious; I was seven years old before I got stitches.) The kid swam with dolphins! He learned to count to 100! He can spell his name! He is generally fantastic. Such a great kid. One of the best parts of my life.

My wife started working full-time at A Certain Magazine (as a bookkeeper, mostly, though like everyone there, she does various things). Having her at my workplace is awesome, and our financial terror has gone from constant to intermittent (mostly around quarterly tax payment time), which is a nice change.

I did a bit of traveling. I went with my wife and kid to Southern California, as I was invited to be on a panel at the Literary Orange festival at UC Irvine. (The opportunity to take the boy to Disneyland, accompanied by our dear friend Jenn, may also have been a factor in our decision to make the trip.) I went to Worldcon in Reno, and later to the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, both with my wife and kid. I got to meet a few of my editors (James Sutter and Fleetwood Robbins and Brett Savory and Sandra Kasturi) in person, which was great.

I took a week-long family vacation to the Big Island of Hawai’i (though it was partly a research trip for Grim Tides), and it was marvelous, except for my kid’s ear infection and my wife’s strep throat…. Other fun things that involved leaving my house: the Solano Stroll (my kid loves a street fair); the Eat Real Festival (my favorite annual excuse to wander around eating everything that looks yummy); reading at the LitCrawl portion of LitQuake; doing a talk about self-publishing and crowdfunding for a college class; a couple of memorable special occasion dinners with my adorable wife.

I sure like video games. I started the year playing a ton of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and the end of the year playing lots of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. It’s pretty much the perfect series for my tastes as a gamer. Portal 2 was also super fun.

I got seriously into making popsicles over the summer. Both boozy popsicles and non-boozy. My chocolate popsicles are awesome. This is not arrogance; this is merely fact.

I read around 175 books (that’s approximate — I lost my list of books read when my computer hard drive dramatically died. Didn’t have a backup of that file for some reason, so I’m reconstructing from my library account history, etc.) That sounds like a lot, but it includes a ton of comic collections/graphic novels, which I read fast, and more re-reads than usual…. I had some nostalgia for old favorite books this year, and dipped back into some Stephen King and Terry Pratchett favorites.

All in all: a pretty great year. Too much work, and not enough play, but I’ll keep adjusting the ratios.

Lately, my kid has been talking a lot about what he wants to be when he grows up. He’s asked me what I wanted to be when I was a kid, and I told him: a writer. Which is what I am, despite taking a few knocks along the way. I really am living my dream life. Oh, there are bad particulars — I’ve had some unpleasant experiences this year in the publishing business (some at least partly my fault, some the fault of others), and there have been illnesses I could have done without, and certainly a fair share of simply bad days — but the overall arc of my life is moving in a good direction. My usual wish at the beginning of a new year is a line from that old Counting Crows song: “Maybe this year will be better than the last.” But this time, I’d be happy if this year is merely as good as the last.

I have two holiday stories for your holiday listenings! In audio even! The first, “The Ghost of Christmas Possible,” is co-written with my lovely wife Heather Shaw, and is online at PodCastle. This is our “A Christmas Carol”/Ghost-finder mash-up, in which Ebenezer Scrooge seeks the assistance of a young occultist to save him from the Three Spirits.

The second is “A Fairy Tale of Oakland,” written solo, and online now at The Drabblecast. Technically, it is not a Xmas story. It’s actually a Krampusnacht story.

Go, listen, may your hearts be merry and bright!

I turned 35 today, thus falling out of the coveted 18-34 demographic age bracket, which means my opinions are no longer of interest. I expect video games, film, and all other media to begin sliding away from my preferences immediately. Drat.

My wonderful wife took me out to Pizzaiolo, one of my favorite restaurants, on Friday night, and we feasted and made merry. And I drank bourbon. She made me a cherry pie last night, served with great heaping scoops of vanilla bean ice cream. Why pie? Because I looooove cherries, and I don’t really like cake. Carrot cake is okay, but mostly because of the cream cheese frosting. Cake is just… sweet bread. Eh. It’s not offensive or anything, but neither does it delight me. Generally speaking, creamy is my vice, not sweet — fat yay, sugar meh. So, yay for ice cream!

Tonight, my actual birthday, I’ll open some presents and eat a cheeseburger and probably watch a horror movie. I’m a simple man of simple hedonic tastes.

Saturday, while my wife and kid went to a party, I neglected fun in favor of work. I dove back into my half-written novel-in-progress, which stalled utterly while I was on vacation. (It was an intentional stall, but I found it difficult to get back on track.) I had, fortunately, figured out my plot while on vacation, though now I have to do some retrofitting to make that plot actually work out. I got to write an attempted murder scene, at least, so that was fun. And soon I get to write about tentacled river monsters. I’m still a bit panicked about getting it all done by the February 1 deadline, but I think it’ll work. I know where I’m going now, at least.

Sunday was more fun. I took the boy out for about five hours in the morning, just wandering around Berkeley, doing some Christmas shopping, going to the playground, eating cinnamon rolls at the coffee shop, eating ice cream cones in the cold wind, and so on. I love spending time with that little guy. I did some work on the novel, too, figuring out how to hack apart the structure to insert a new section early on. For the rest of the night… I pretty much watched TV and played Skyrim. It was awesome.

I haven’t worked on my novel much this week in terms of adding word count. I made some good progress in November pre-vacation, but the week away gave me some perspective on things that weren’t working. The stuff I love about the book wasn’t taking up enough space in the book, basically, and I was flying pretty blind in terms of plot. (When you don’t actually know the ultimate goal of your principal antagonist? That’s a problem.)

So I’ve spent the week thinking, and jotting notes, and now I know why the antagonist does what he does. And once you understand the motivations of your characters, and the conditions of their situations, the plot pretty much comes automatically. This makes actually writing the book and getting all the weird cool scenes I want vastly easier! I’m going to go through the 40,000 words or so I’ve written and make some changes, add some scenes, shuffle things around, and generally make the beginning fit the ending I have in mind. Then I’ll be able to write the back half. A lot of work ahead of me, though. It’s going to be a busy weekend. Still: it’s a great comfort to know what I’m doing, after a certain amount of terrified flailing.

My wife is taking me out for a birthday dinner at Pizzaiolo today. (I turn 35 on Monday.) One of my favorite restaurants, with one of my favorite people! Life is good.

(Just realized I never posted this. It was written on the Sunday after we got home.)

Really just a half-day. The kid and I went for breakfast — Heather was still so ill she could barely get out of bed. After that, we returned to the room and worked on packing everything up.

I was afraid we wouldn’t have time to get in a last swim before check-out time, but we hurried, and managed to get an hour or so in the pools. River bravely went over to one of the waterfalls, which had terrified him, and found the splashing to be delightful. I got a last tropical drink — lava flow, yum — and we played and had a great time.

We dragged our myriad bags to the lobby, and got the car loaded up, and drove toward the airport. We had some free time before the rental car was due back, so we hit a beachside park. Heather pretty much stayed in the car, still feeling lousy, but River and I roamed around and looked at tidepools and waded in the surf for an hour or so. A nice, peaceful final few moments.

Then began the misery of modern air travel. River gets his own seat on the plane, so he gets his own carry-on and personal item, which makes packing easier — but he’s too little to actually carry his bags, and though Heather did as much as she could, she was sick, so I found myself extremely over-laden. (Plus we have the stroller, and the car seat the kid uses on the plane since he’s only 36 pounds, and etc.) The only way to carry everything is to elaborately arrange things on the stroller in a very specific way, but it all has to be disassembled for the security scan, and then reassembled, which is annoying. And, because it’s Hawai’i, we had to assemble and disassemble again for the agricultural scan, to make sure we weren’t smuggling fruit.

We finally got on the plane. River was good for an hour, cranky for an hour, and slept the last couple of hours. Thank goodness for that last. I listened to podcasts after he went to sleep, and read some of Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork Angel — I really like it. I’ll have to read her Mortal Instruments series.

We landed in Oakland just after 11 p.m. local time. The kid was remarkably cheerful when we woke him up — with all our bags, we couldn’t carry him, so he had to regain consciousness and walk. We took the shuttle to long-term parking, got our car — which seems terribly mundane after having a convertible for a week — and drove home. It was a fair bit after midnight before we were actually in our own house, but the kid went to sleep in his own bed easily, fortunately.

I scarfed some food — it didn’t feel that late, since we’d been on Hawaii time — and did some Tivo gardening until I got sleepy around 2 a.m. Luckily, the boy remained on Hawaii time, and didn’t wake today until around 8 a.m. We hung out and played for a while, and then his aunt came over around 9 to take him away for the morning. I have to write a story today, and Heather needs another day in bed to recover, so she couldn’t do any childcare. Thank heavens for sisters-in-law…

Here we are. Back in real life. The vacation certainly had its share of unpleasant moments, but we had a couple of very good days, and all the days had good parts. I hope that as time goes on I’ll only remember the good things, and the bad bits will fade. I just wish I felt more rested.

Friday, our last full day of vacation, was largely spent driving around the island, and not for particularly fun reasons. I rose with the kid, and we took a morning constitutional once the sun actually came up. We rode the hotel’s trains around, and did some “exploring,” riding random elevators, etc. Then we reconnected with my wife for an exciting morning of doctor visits. We drove an hour to a clinic for her appointment. The kid fell asleep in the car on the way, so I stayed in the parking lot while my wife saw the doctor. The boy woke up soon after she went inside, and so I entertained him by showing him how cars work. He was fascinated, though he did want to know how the musicians fit behind the radio. The car was especially entertaining because it’s a convertible, so he was able to push the button to put the top up and down.

My wife came out in slightly less than an hour, armed with a prescription… that she had to pick up in another clinic across town. Sigh. Another long stretch of driving, then another wait at a doctor’s office. After that… we had to return the snorkel gear (which of course we hardly got to use). River was well and truly annoyed by then, so we grabbed some drive-thru food and hit the nearest beach for a picnic. My wife was fairly wiped out from the long day out, and the beach was too rocky for playing, so we headed back home.

After laying on the bed and moaning for a while — the kid got me up around 5 a.m., and I hate driving at the best of times, let alone on the last day of my vacation, so I was grumpy and exhausted — I forced myself to embrace life and all that. I took the boy and his inflatable dragon float over to the kiddie pool for more playing while my wife napped.

There was a little girl at the pool he’d played with the day before (not the 4-year-old, but a sweet 2.5-year-old), and they remembered each other. So they played together a ton, and I chatted with their parents, who were disappointed that we were leaving so soon, since the kids got together along so well. (We’d kept running into them in various places around the resort all day too.) They told me about a Christmas program in the lobby at 5:30, with a tree lighting, Christmas carols, and Santa, so River became suitably frantically excited about that.

We got him dried off and changed, and Heather decided to venture forth into the world. The little Christmas show was cute. Hawai’ian Xmas carols, little girl hula dancers, a ballerina doing the dance of the sugarplum fairies, and a quite Hawai’ian Santa. Very Mele Kalikimaka. We got pictures (including some of River and his little friend), and had a pretty good time, though it wiped Heather out again.

Dinner was a picnic on the floor of the room, since we had to use up our groceries. Hummus and sandwiches and chips and macaroni salad, oh boy! (My wife, of course, did not eat, really, beyond a few crackers. Vicious strep throat is a great recipe for weight loss.) We put the boy to bed, for his last overnight in Hawai’i. I considered going out for the evening… but I was wiped from such a long day. No final evening at the bar for me. I played a little Skyrim and went to bed.

But, you know, I sort of embraced the suck. The vacation wasn’t going to be perfect, or even necessarily good, but I tried to make the best of it, and enjoy the weather, and the conversation, and my son’s happiness, which is, in fact, pretty extreme — he’s had a fantastic time, and says he never wants to leave Hawai’i. I could learn something from him about finding joy in the moment.