Tim Weed's Blog

It was a delight and an honor to be on the radio talking to Morning Edition reporter Carrie Healy about THE GATEPOST. The interview, which aired on public radio stations throughout Vermont and western Massachusetts, touched on the inspirations for the novel, why I chose to set it mostly in Vermont, legacy as a literary theme, and why the hallucinatory settings of the book, though frightening at times, were enjoyable places for this writer to inhabit. If you didn’t get a chance to listen to the four minute interview, here’s the permalink.

For several years now I’ve been making book lists for Book DNA, the upstart Goodreads competitor previously known as Shepherd. It’s an appealing, well-organized site designed to help you find new reads that share “Book DNA” with books you’ve already enjoyed. In that spirit, here’s my new list. Click on the image below to see my choices for five of the best (or at very good!) recent speculative novels.

For several years now I’ve been making book lists for Book DNA, the upstart Goodreads competitor previously known as Shepherd. It’s an appealing, well-organized site designed to help you find new reads that share “Book DNA” with books you’ve already enjoyed. In that spirit, here’s my new list. Click on the image below to see my choices for five very good recent speculative novels!

This video interview is unique in that it’s just me on video responding to written questions. But the questions were good, and the format allowed me to go more in-depth than usual on topics like my creative inspirations and writing process. Watch the full episode here. My thanks to Sean Murphy of 1455 for the opportunity.

Also very much enjoyed this exclusive interview with Paul Semel, in part because it gave me an excuse to think about influences, and to imagine the casting for the limited TV series of THE GATEPOST! Now all I need is a producer . . .

Below are some of the highlights; click on the thumbnails to read them, or you can read the full interview here. My thanks to Paul Semel for the fun questions!

This one comes as a very pleasant surprise. OverDrive, the leading digital reading platform for libraries and schools (my agent calls it “one of the hidden behemoths of publishing”), has featured THE GATEPOST on their Libby Life blog, in a post titled “What is Speculative Fiction? Here’s what it means (and what to read first).”

The Libby app allows users to borrow e-books, audiobooks, and magazines for free using a valid library card. Because it offers many of the same audiobooks found on commercial platforms like Audible, it has become a favored, budget-friendly alternative for avid readers. It is a highly popular digital portal, serving more than 22,000 public libraries and thousands of educational and corporate institutions worldwide.

And they love THE GATEPOST!

This one comes as a very pleasant surprise. OverDrive, the leading digital reading platform for libraries and schools (my agent calls it “one of the hidden behemoths of publishing”), has featured THE GATEPOST on their Libby Life blog, in a post titled “What is Speculative Fiction? Here’s what it means (and what to read first).”

The Libby app allows users to borrow e-books, audiobooks, and magazines for free using a valid library card. Because it offers many of the same audiobooks found on commercial platforms like Audible, it has become a favored, budget-friendly alternative for avid readers. It is a highly popular digital portal, serving more than 22,000 public libraries and thousands of educational and corporate institutions worldwide.

And they love THE GATEPOST!

Thrilled to report that Alex Good of the Toronto Star has reviewed The Gatepost! It’s part of a monthly round-up, and is syndicated to appear in a bunch of other regional Canadian newspapers as well. Given the origins of the novel, which I’ve talked about here and here, for example, this is by far my favorite line:

“The doors of perception are opened wide in Tim Weed’s latest.” —Toronto Star

You can read the whole review here.

Something special about waking up to a well-written front-page feature in a writer’s hometown newspaper!

“A Gatepost to new & ancient worlds: Tim Weed’s new novel is worth the trip” is a feature & interview with Vermont News & Media’s Bill LeConey that appeared in The Brattleboro Reformer, The Bennington Banner, and Manchester Journal.

Much gratitude to Bill or the great coverage and a very fun conversation. Read the complete article here.

I love talking about books, literature, and related topics, so I’m very grateful to these generous radio show/podcast hosts for bringing me on to talk about them in the context of my new novel, The Gatepost. Each of these shows was converted to the podcast format after airing, which means that you can listen to the recordings at any time by clicking on the links or images below!

Writer’s Voice with Francesca Rheannon, a multi-syndicated public radio show that airs on public radio stations around the country. Francesca is a brilliant interviewer and I found our conversation particularly fascinating because it took us to some unexpected and personally revealing places.

We talked about The Gatepost, new mythology, the challenges and prospects for shifting the current paradigm about humanity’s relationship to the rest of nature, the history and uses of psychedelic or entheogenic drugs, archaeology, quantum theory, Mesoamerican stelae & glyphs, the role of modern storytelling, grief, consciousness, and much more.

The Inner Game with Gwen Garcelon on KDNK radio. This delightful conversation covered topics of spirituality and nature including awe, rhe miracle of life on this planet, humanity’s need to reclaim a spiritual relationship with the natural world, and one particular scarlet tanager.

I was particularly honored by Gwen’s takeaways about the book, including this one:

“The Gatepost is a really moving novel about human development and love and what may be possible in other realms of consciousness.” — Gwen Garcelon

Write on Four Corners with DelSheree Spinner on KSJE radio. In this fascinatingly in-depth conversation that may be of particular interest to writers we talked about The Gatepost and how it straddles several genres, grief, the power of fiction to help us figure out our own lives, and how fictional protagonists allow us to use our compassion to explore the experience of being human.

We also talked about why novels are an antidote to loneliness, the work of bringing literature to the new generation, character relatability, the power of place and how good descriptive writing is a mechanism for fictional transportation, hallucinogens, geological time, the Eleusinian mysteries, and more!

Order THE GATEPOST at your FAVORITE INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE or:

ORDER A SIGNED COPY from New Hampshire’s The Toadstool Bookshop. Just use this link to complete your preorder; the signature will be added before shipping or pickup.

Such a fun conversation recently with Mikaela Lefrak, the host of Vermont Edition, up at Vermont Public’s headquarters in Colchester! We talked about my novel THE GATEPOST, its Vermont setting, the origin of its characters, psilocybin, dreams and hallucinations in fiction, and much more. My gratitude to Mikaela and the show’s producer, Jon Ehrens, for their hospitality and professionalism. You can listen to the whole twenty minute interview here.