Author Spotlight on Tim Pratt (aka T.A. Pratt)

Many of you were first introduced to Tim Pratt thru his novel Blood Engines, which is currently free in the Kindle Store, written under his pseudonym T.A. Pratt. Finding the rest of the series can be a bit tricky, as Amazon has them listed under Tim Pratt (despite the T.A. Pratt on the covers) and they are not linked in to his Author's Page. Most of his earlier novels, under the Tim Pratt name, are short story collections and he continues to write short stories and has put a large number of them on his website as free reads. He also used to edit a webzine, FlyTrap, and you can order back issues as well as find a few stories by his wife, Heather Shaw.

Now, Tim's wife has lost her job and he is trying to raise money with a serialized novel he is publishing on the web. Bone Shop is a Marla Mason novel, but a prequel to the existing series. There will be a new chapter each Monday and there is a Donate button on the website where you donate as much (or as little) as you wish. The first chapter is already up and you can read it HERE. For more information, you can also check out his blog and check out the Marla Mason website for a free short story, Pale Dog, a map of Felport and bios on all the major players in the series. No doubt, buying his books in the Kindle store will also help (as he is also trying to sell a new novel and more readers always helps), but direct sales/donations are more immediate.

Marla Mason Series
1. Blood Engines (free)
2. Poison Sleep ($5.59)
3. Dead Reign ($5.59)
4. Spell Games ($5.59)

Novels
The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl ($9.60)
Little Gods ($14.95 Paperback)
If There Were Wolves ($10.00 Paperback)
Hart & Boot & Other Stories ($14.95 Paperback)
The Urban Bizarre ($13.50 Paperback)

Here is a quick synopsis of his novels that are available in the Kindle Store (see this blog post for Blood Engines).

Poison Sleep ($5.59)

The bad girl of the magical underworld is back and badder than ever

Someone wants Marla Mason dead. Usually that’s not news. As chief sorcerer of Felport, someone always wants her dead. But this time she’s the target of a renegade assassin who specializes in killing his victims over days, months, or even years. Not to mention a mysterious knife-wielding killer in black who pops up in the most unexpected places. To make matters worse, an inmate has broken out of the Blackwing Institute for criminally insane sorcerers—a troubled psychic who can literally reweave the fabric of reality to match her own traumatic past.

With her wisecracking partner Rondeau reluctantly in tow, Marla teams up with a “love-talker” whose dangerous erotic spells not even she can resist. Together they’re searching the rapidly transforming streets of Felport for a woman who’s become the Typhoid Mary of nightmares, infecting everything—and everyone—she touches with a chaos worse than death itself.

Dead Reign ($5.59)

Death has come calling, and one woman has what he wants most of all...

As chief sorcerer of Felport, Marla Mason thought she’d faced every kind of evil the magical world had to offer. But she’s never faced a killer like this. He’s dark, glib, handsome as the devil—and exactly who he says he is. Death—in the flesh. He’s arrived in Felport with a posse composed of a half-insane necromancer and the reanimated corpse of John Wilkes Booth, and he isn’t leaving until he gets what he came for. Only Marla is crazy enough to tell Death to go back to Hell.

With the Founders’ Ball just around the bend, drawing together the brightest, meanest, and most dangerous of Felport’s magical elite, the last thing Marla needs is all-out war with the King of the Underworld, but that’s exactly what she’s got. As the battle lines are drawn, she can count on her hedonistic, body-hopping partner Rondeau…but how many of her old allies will stand by her side when facing the ultimate adversary? To save her city, Marla will have to find a way to cheat Death…literally.

Spell Games ($5.59)

Brain-eating fungi, wannabe sorcerers, long-lost relations–does even a hard-core witch stand a chance?

Mad sorcerers, psychic vampires, an army of vengeful demons, Marla Mason would rather face them all than a flesh-and-blood ghost from her dysfunctional family past: her con artist brother, Jason. As Felport’s chief sorcerer, Marla would ordinarily consider it her duty to protect her town from such an unscrupulous ne’er-do-well. As his sister, things are a lot…trickier. Now, as Marla attempts to train an apprentice oracle whose magical wires have gotten crossed, Jason is setting up an elaborate sting and drawing her ever-so-corruptible partner Rondeau into the ruse.

Their patsy is a filthy-rich wannabe mage and their bait is something so valuable, so dangerous, so sought after, it probably doesn’t exist. But now word’s gotten out that the Borrichius spores do exist and instead of a sucker Jason and Rondeau have a much bigger–and much deadlier–fish on their line: a reclusive sorcerer whose devotion to the mushroom god and command of vegetal magic could bring a fungal apocalypse to Felport. It’ll be the mother of all bad trips unless Marla can pull off the ultimate magical switcheroo…and somehow live to tell about it.


The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl ($9.60)

As night manager of Santa Cruz’s quirkiest coffeehouse, Marzi McCarty makes a mean espresso, but her first love is making comics. Her claim to fame: The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, a cowpunk neo-western yarn. Striding through an urban frontier peopled by Marzi’s wild imagination, Rangergirl doles out her own brand of justice. But lately Marzi’s imagination seems to be altering her reality. She’s seeing the world through Rangergirl’s eyes–literally--complete with her deadly nemesis, the Outlaw.

It all started when Marzi opened a hidden door in the coffeehouse storage room. There, imprisoned among
the supplies, she saw the face of something unknown…and dangerous. And she unwittingly became its guard. But some primal darkness must’ve escaped, because Marzi hasn’t been the same since. And neither have her customers, who are acting downright apocalyptic.

Now it’s up to Marzi to stop this supervillainous superforce that’s swaggered its way into her world. For Marzi, it’s the
showdown of her life. For Rangergirl, it’s just another day....