Archive for Andy Gavin

Introducing Ramen Roll

Oct06

Culver City, CA – October 6, 2016 – Adam Fleischman, Andy Gavin, and Kiyoshiro Yamamoto announced plans to establish Ramen Roll, a new Japanese fine-casual concept in Culver City. Opening by year’s end, Ramen Roll heralds a new wave in accessible Japanese dining: Patrons choose from fixed menu sets that include hand rolls, next-level ramen, and Japanese bowls that showcase Chef Yama’s punched-up, modern Japanese style. An expertly tailored list of beer, wine, and sake crafted by beverage masters Gavin and Fleischman will complement.

“Japanese cuisine has been relatively untapped in the fine-casual space,” said Adam Fleischman, co-owner. “Ramen Roll combines bold yet elegant Japanese flavors with an energetic atmosphere designed by Studio UNLTD (Bestia, Otium) and decorated with stylish murals by surrealist L.A. street artist John Park.”

“Great customer service is about getting what you want, when you want it,” said Andy Gavin. “An innovative mix of sushi bar, ramen bar, and table spaces patrolled by iPad wielding staff will ensure ultra-fresh food in ultra-short time.”

The menu for Ramen Roll is the work of Master Chef Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, best known for his ultra-exclusive modern kaiseki restaurant, Yamakase, which garners customer and critical praise alike. “Yama has long been one of my favorite Los Angeles chefs, and I am thrilled to finally be working with him,” said Fleischman.

Ramen Roll will open by the end of the year at 9900 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA, 90232. To learn more about Ramen Roll visit www.ramenroll.com or follow @RamenRollEats on Twitter or facebook.com/RamenRollEats or instagram.com/ramenrolleats.

About Adam Fleischman

Adam Fleischman is a self-taught food innovator and entrepreneur. He is widely regarded as an influential tastemaker and culinary personality (including appearances on Iron Chef). In 2009, he founded Umami Burger (and soon afterward, the Umami Restaurant Group), and co-founded 800 Degrees Pizza, both multi-unit innovative concepts. Recently, he has been putting his tastemaker abilities to use as co-founder and managing director of AdVantage Restaurant Partners, creating and sourcing the next wave of culinary brands. Fleischman was featured on Fast Company’s list of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” and National Restaurant News’ “Power List: The 50 most powerful people in foodservice.”

About Andy Gavin

Andy Gavin is an unstoppable entrepreneur who studied for his Ph.D. at M.I.T. and founded video game developer Naughty Dog, Inc. at the age of fifteen, serving as co-president for two decades. There he created, produced, and directed over a dozen video games, including the award winning and best-selling Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter franchises, selling over 40 million units worldwide. He founded several other tech companies, wrote and published two novels, and blogs obsessively, mostly about his great passion for food and wine. Andy is also a trained sommelier, sleeps very little, reads novels and histories, and eats up a storm the world over.

About Chef Kiyoshiro Yamamoto

A native of Tokyo, Chef Kiyoshiro Yamamoto has been slicing up the Los Angeles sushi scene for years. After training at Yuu and Mitsuki, he spent long stints at Taiko El Segundo and the Hump. At this glamourous airport location Yama’s delectable omakase preparations laid the groundwork for his unique style of traditional Japanese dishes slashed with contemporary verve. In 2011, Yama debuted his ultra-exclusive modern kaiseki restaurant, Yamakase, which garners customer and critical praise alike. The incomparable 20+ course omakase-only experience earned the #2 spot on Eater’s “Hottest Sushi Restaurants in America” list and the coveted #1 place on Tabelog’s “11 Best Sushi Restaurants in America!” His dishes combine superbly sourced ingredients, impeccable knife-work, and the subtle elegance of Japan’s Zen influenced cuisine — punctured with western influences and striking but harmonious flavors.

Press Coverage:

On Eater where they neglect to bold my name.

LA Times says (briefly)…

The Culver City Patch.

By: agavin
Comments (14)

Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Adam Fleischman, Andy Gavin, Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, ramen, Ramen Roll

Untimed Free!

Aug25

The Kindle E-Book versions of Untimed will be FREE Monday, August 25 and Tuesday the 26th! Take the plunge, hey, it won’t cost you a cent.

Free on Amazon!

Tweet, share, like, follow, blog and grab a copy of my book. The trailer can be found here.

About Untimed

Charlie’s the kind of boy that no one notices. Hell, his own mother can’t remember his name. So when a mysterious clockwork man tries to kill him in modern day Philadelphia, and they tumble through a hole into 1725 London, Charlie realizes even the laws of time don’t take him seriously. Still, this isn’t all bad. Who needs school when you can learn about history first hand, like from Ben Franklin himself. And there’s this girl… Yvaine… another time traveler. All good. Except for the rules: boys only travel into the past and girls only into the future. And the baggage: Yvaine’s got a baby boy and more than her share of ex-boyfriends. Still, even if they screw up history — like accidentally let the founding father be killed — they can just time travel and fix it, right? But the future they return to is nothing like Charlie remembers. To set things right, he and his scrappy new girlfriend will have to race across the centuries, battling murderous machines from the future, jealous lovers, reluctant parents, and time itself.

“A masterful storyteller, Gavin builds a solid plot with believable characters.” — Kirkus

“Adventure, chemistry… and roller coaster plot are sure to appeal.” — Publishers Weekly

“Like science class in Las Vegas!” — FantasyLiterature.com

Buy Sample Characters Reviews Reviewer Info

By: agavin
Comments (2)

Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Amazon, Andy Gavin, Kindle, sale, Untimed

Untimed, Unheard no More

Jun25

Seventeen months in the making, the Untimed audiobook is finally ready!

The complete unabridged book is available on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes for MP3 download to your phone or ipod. It’s narrated by producer Steven Barnett.

A bit about the production

I started way back in January 2013, and like most Independent authors considering an audiobook edition, decided to use Amazon’s ACX service. This is a marketplace for connecting authors with voice and production talent as well as an automated mechanism for delivering the finished books to the big online markets (Audible, Amazon, and iTunes). This makes it easy to post descriptions of what your looking for and a section of the book to read. I listed both The Darkening Dream and Untimed. Lo and behold, over the next couple of weeks a pile of auditions started to come in.

Untimed is a tricky novel from a recording standpoint. Like all my books it features a lot of accents. The two most important characters are Charlie, a modern 15 year-old boy from Philadelphia, and Yvaine a 16 year-old girl from 16-18th century Scotland. It’s also a first person narrative, so it needed to be read in Charlie’s voice. Therefore, I wanted to cast a man who sounded fifteen, but also could pull off a passable falsetto. Steven Barnett’s audition was the one that fit the bill. He sounded young, and he proved great with accents.

Steven Barnett in the studio

It important to prepare detailed notes on all your characters. Untimed doesn’t have the biggest cast, but the characters are from all over the world (and time!) with varied accents and histories. Given my lean prose style and my use of whitespace to delineate dialog instead of extensive tagging (see below), the voices needed to be distinct enough for the listener to distinguish who is talking. After Steven studied my character sheets and we discussed them on the phone, we created a number of voice tests for the major parts. I listened and then gave feedback. This is a broad pattern that continues through the process. Prep -> Record -> Listen -> Feedback -> Repeat.

As I’ve experimented in many mediums: video games, novels, screenplays, and now audiobooks, it’s worth noting some of the differences. The physical placement on the page (as dictated by white space) is useful in novels. I separate dialog spoken by different people on different lines, and I make sure to place tags (he said, she said) and beats (small action queues like “Yvaine shifted in place” or “Donnie smirked” in the same paragraph as the speaker’s dialog. In an audiobook, you can’t hear the white space, but differences in voicing can make up for who is speaking. Still, you lose this spatial grouping. The tags also stand out more when spoken, as the eye tends to ignore them.

Another thing I hadn’t thought about is how long it actually takes to listen repeatedly to an entire novel. Untimed is over ten hours and every few weeks I’d get an hour or two of recordings, need to listen — usually twice (paying attention!) — and write up notes. And my side of the work was a lot easier than Steven’s. I can only imagine how long it took to record multiple takes, audition them, edit, then proof.

A final thing I decided to do was to add sound effects (sfx) to Untimed for the time travel aspects. I wanted the mysterious Tick-Tocks to have a creepy otherworld quality, so I thought to underscore them with an antique ticking noise. They never talk, but they do CHIME. In the books, I just write it like that, but having Steven read out the word “chime” sounded lame, so I replaced it with the sound of a deep resonant clock tower. Likewise, to help sell the mechanics of the time holes and the frequent (and complex) travel, I engineered unique sounds. This harkened back to my days as “assistant” sound engineer on Crash Bandicoot (I process and installed all the sounds that the real engineer, Mike Gollom, made for me). I found a source of royalty free sfx and combined and pitch shifted various ones until I got what I wanted. For example, the Tock ticking is a layered sample combining 4-5 different clocks and watches to reach suitable complexity.

Then, as the months rolled by, chapter by chapter, the book came together brilliantly. I’ve listened to it 2-3 times — although not all together at once. I’m curious at the psychological effect, but after reading various drafts countless times and a couple listens, I’ll leave that to you guys!

Listen to a free sample if you like:

Or buy the Audiobook at:

Amazon, Audible, or iTunes

Buy Sample Characters Reviews Reviewer Info

By: agavin
Comments (2)

Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Amazon.com, Andy Gavin, Audible, audiobook, iTunes, Philadelphia, Scotland, Steven Barnett, Untimed

Pixelvolt Interview

Sep25

Periodically I was asked by Pixelvolt to answer a few interview questions.

Check them out here for the latest in Indie Game News!

I’m also posting the interview here for posterity:

Pixelvolt: Many enjoyed the Crash Bandicoot trilogy more than Super Mario 64 or DK64. How do you think the Crash Bandicoot franchise did against Nintendo’s heavy hitter platformers?

Andy: Crash Bandicoot was in development during the same period as Mario 64. We started in 1994 and first saw our rival at E3 in May of 1996, only 3 months before we shipped. Basically that meant that Mario had no influence on us (although it was to later inform Jak & Daxter). Doing platforming in 3D was hard, and both games took different approaches. Our aim was to try and bring the Donkey Kong Country style gameplay into 3D as faithfully as possible. Mario went for more open puzzle solving and exploration (Miyamoto called it a garden or sandbox). I personally like ours better because it’s more straightforward to play with less thinking involved (more twitching). I don’t like my platform games to involve too much thinking – I do plenty of that at work.

Pixelvolt: Were there any N64, GCN, or Xbox games that you enjoyed playing?

Andy: My favorite N64 games were Goldeneye, Zelda, and Banjo-Kazooie.

Pixelvolt: Do you have a personal favorite out of the Crash Bandicoot games?

Andy: Crash 2. It’s better technically than Crash 1, has a bigger more flexible move set, and the play is very balanced. It’s hard but not brutal. Crash 3 is great too, but I think it relies a little too much on gimmick levels (jet skiing, flying, etc).

Pixelvolt: Naughty Dog has always been great at pushing the limits of hardware. Can you give us some details from the development of the Crash series and the Jak series and just how far things were pushed – and how they were pushed?

Andy: Crash 1 was all about forging into the unknown. Everything was new. The gameplay was totally new. We had no model for how to do it in 3D, and it took 6 months of unplayable test levels before we developed some that were actually fun. On the technical side, the sheer volume of data was overwhelming for the computers of the time (1994-6). We had to do all the tool processing on big Silicon Graphics workstations. I actually had 8 gigs of memory in my desktop machine by fall 1996! Imagine that, the memory alone cost $75,000! With Jak, the seamless loading was hard. We had been heading in this direction with Crash, which featured a very sophisticated streaming system and extremely short load times (3-4 seconds!), but with Jak & Daxter, we had this early mandate to eliminate loading entirely. It was hard but very cool in a subtle way. Very few games do it even now.

Pixelvolt: Was it hard to leave Crash Bandicoot behind, and do you think there is a chance that Naughty Dog will save Crash from his most recent outings and produce another game?

Andy: Naughty Dog doesn’t own all the rights to Crash; Activision owns most of them, so it’s difficult for that to happen just from a legal perspective. Still, a fan can always hope.

Pixelvolt: What were some of the immediate allowances that were enjoyed most when switching from Crash to Jak?

Andy: No one would ever call the PS2 an “easy” machine to program for, but there were certain niceties compared to the PS1. Z buffering was a big one. On the PS1, you had to sort all your polygons and make sure they didn’t overlap. The PS1 really freaked out when polygons stretched off (or into the screen). Another more amorphous advantage was the huge step up in raw processing power, which made it possible to stop worrying about individual lines of logic (as much).

Pixelvolt: How did it feel among your video game peers when CTR: Crash Team Racing was being developed? With Mario Kart 64 having thought up the kart racer genre, was it awkward? Many gamers enjoyed CTR much more than MK64; how did this reaction make everyone feel after it was released?

Andy: Obviously, CTR owes a big debt to Mario Kart, even if the graphics are better looking and more detailed – but I also think – and this is one of the game’s big triumphs, that the handling and gameplay we achieved was really first rate. The combination of steering, power sliding, powerups, and the like was really very, very fun (not that Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing weren’t too).

Pixelvolt: What do you and ND think of the current state of Crash Bandicoot. Since Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, almost all the fans agree that the quality has skydived; what do you and the original development team think of the situation?

Andy: I try not to look at anything Crash related after Crash Bash. It’s all kind of sad because even the basic art design isn’t “correct” with the standards of the Crash character.

Pixelvolt: Did you learn anything from video game development that is assisting with your writing at all?

Andy: As a serial creator (having made over a dozen major video games), it was interesting how similar the process was to any other complex creative project. Video games and novel writing are both very iterative and detail oriented. They use a lot of the same mental muscles.

Pixelvolt: What do you plan on doing next? Do you plan to do anything in addition to writing?

Andy: I just finished up adapting Untimed (my time travel novel) as a screenplay. And I’ve got three different new novels in the works. The one I’m working on at the moment is background notes for an epic fantasy series. I’m trying to create an entire extremely detailed world so that’s a lot of fun.

Pixelvolt: Do you ever think you’d consider returning to game development?

Andy: I might someday. I have a cool dungeon crawler idea I’ve wanted to do for years. But right now, I still get to build worlds, characters, and general IP. I can do it faster and without as much stress. I miss the sheer exposure the games got as the whole business is on a much bigger scale than publishing. I’m immensely proud of all my games, but I also think Untimed is as good a novel as my favorite, Crash 2 is a game. Hint, hint. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. Buy, read.

Pixelvolt: What were your thoughts on Jason Rubin and THQ? I know a lot of ND/THQ fans thought he did a great job, despite everything working out the way that it did.

Andy: Jason had a real uphill battle there and very little time to fight it. He’s one of the most talented people I know, so I have to imagine that he did as good a job as humanly possible.

Pixelvolt: Tell us about your books. You’ve been a huge reader for quite some time. When did you decide you were going to leave the gaming industry and pursue writing full time?

Andy: I’m a lifelong creator and explorer of worlds. As far back as first grade, I remember spending most of the school day in one day dream or another. I had a huge notebook stuffed with drawings, story bits, and concepts for an elaborate Sci-Fi/Fantasy world I cobbled together from bits of Star Wars, Narnia, and Battlestar Galactica. By fourth or fifth grade, not only was I losing myself in every fantasy or Sci-Fi novel I could, but I was building Dungeons & Dragons castles and caverns on paper. Then from 1980 on the computer. Over the following decades, I wrote dozens of stories and created and published over a dozen video games all set in alternative universes. And as an avid reader (over 10,000 novels and who knows how many non-fiction volumes), it was no surprise that I eventually decided to write some books of my own.

Pixelvolt: Would you ever consider having any movies or games made based off your books? If so, would you oversee any of the development?

Andy: Uh, big yes. As I mentioned, I just finished adapting Untimed into a screenplay. That was a lot of fun and took far longer than I thought, including at least six major drafts. Untimed is a focused story of about the right scope for the big screen, and it’s fairly short (75,000 words), but I still had to cut at least a quarter out of the novel and learn to adapt the story telling to the new strictly audio-visual medium. Now I just need to figure out how to sell it and get it produced. Haha. Film, unlike novels, is a very collaborative medium.

Pixelvolt: What are you currently playing?

Andy: I’m still playing a bit of WoW. I have on and off since launch and used to be a serious raider in the Vanilla, BC, and Lich King eras. I played The Last of Us when it came out from start to finish and that was hands down the best story-based game I’ve ever played. Really, really emotional and intense. My two games of the moment are really different: the new Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion with my five year-old (I loved the Genesis original) and Bioshock Infinite. That’s an awesome game too. The control and character isn’t quite as good as TLOU, but it’s really engaging, and I’m totally drawn in by the 1912 alternate America and its in-depth and surprisingly accurate depiction. Speaking of 1912, my first novel, The Darkening Dream, is a fantasy set in 1913, so if any of you are curious, think Bioshock Infinite, minus the floating city and plus a 900-year-old vampire, crazy Egyptian gods, and some nasty succubus on preacher action.

This interview was originally posted here.

For more game articles, click here.

If you liked this post, follow me at:

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By: agavin
Comments (22)

Posted in: Games

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Crash Bandicoot, Jak, Jak & Daxter, Jason Rubin, Mario, Mario Kart, Naughty Dog, Pixelvolt, Silicon Graphics

Untimed on the Cheap

Sep02

The E-Book versions of Untimed will be only $0.99 cents from Monday, September 2 through Friday the 13th! Take the plunge, it’s certainly a great deal.

Buy it on Amazon!

Tweet, share, like, follow, blog and grab a copy of my book. The trailer can be found here.

About Untimed

Charlie’s the kind of boy that no one notices. Hell, his own mother can’t remember his name. So when a mysterious clockwork man tries to kill him in modern day Philadelphia, and they tumble through a hole into 1725 London, Charlie realizes even the laws of time don’t take him seriously. Still, this isn’t all bad. Who needs school when you can learn about history first hand, like from Ben Franklin himself. And there’s this girl… Yvaine… another time traveler. All good. Except for the rules: boys only travel into the past and girls only into the future. And the baggage: Yvaine’s got a baby boy and more than her share of ex-boyfriends. Still, even if they screw up history — like accidentally let the founding father be killed — they can just time travel and fix it, right? But the future they return to is nothing like Charlie remembers. To set things right, he and his scrappy new girlfriend will have to race across the centuries, battling murderous machines from the future, jealous lovers, reluctant parents, and time itself.

“A masterful storyteller, Gavin builds a solid plot with believable characters.” — Kirkus

“Adventure, chemistry… and roller coaster plot are sure to appeal.” — Publishers Weekly

“Like science class in Las Vegas!” — FantasyLiterature.com

Buy Sample Characters Reviews Reviewer Info

By: agavin
Comments (0)

Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, E-book, sale, Time travel, Untimed

Summer Night’s Dream Sale

Jun03

The e-book versions of The Darkening Dream will be on sale for only 99 cents this week until Friday June 7th! Take the plunge, it’s certainly a great deal.

Buy it on Amazon!

Tweet, share, like, follow, blog and grab a copy of my book.

Also, on the publishing front, The Audiobook versions for both my novels are in production and am finished with the fourth draft of the Untimed screenplay!

About The Darkening Dream

As the Nineteenth Century gives way to the Twentieth, modern science and steel girders leave little room for the supernatural. But in dark corners the old forces still gather. God, demon, and sorcerer alike plot to regain what was theirs in Andy Gavin’s chilling debut, The Darkening Dream.

1913, Salem, Massachusetts – Sarah Engelmann’s life is full of friends, books, and avoiding the pressure to choose a husband, until an ominous vision and the haunting call of an otherworldly trumpet shake her. When she stumbles across a gruesome corpse, she fears that her vision was more of a premonition. And when she sees the murdered boy moving through the crowd at an amusement park, Sarah is thrust into a dark battle she does not understand.

With the help of Alex, a Greek immigrant who knows a startling amount about the undead, Sarah sets out to uncover the truth. Their quest takes them to Salem’s brutal factory workrooms, on a clandestine maritime mission, and down into their foe’s nightmarish crypt. But they aren’t prepared for the terrifying backlash that brings the fight back to their own homes and families. Can Alex’s elderly, vampire-hunting grandfather and Sarah’s own rabbi father help protect them? And what do Sarah’s darkening visions reveal?

No less than the Archangel Gabriel’s Horn, destined to announce the End of Days, is at stake, and the forces banded to recover it include a 900 year-old vampire, a trio of disgruntled Egyptian gods, and a demon-loving Puritan minister. At the center of this swirling conflict is Sarah, who must fight a millennia-old battle against unspeakable forces, knowing the ultimate prize might be herself.

“Gorgeously creepy, strangely humorous, and sincerely terrifying” — Publishers Weekly

“Wonderfully twisted sense of humor” and

“A vampire novel with actual bite” — Kirkus Reviews

“Steampunk Lovecraftian Horror by way of Joss Whedon”

Buy Sample Characters Reviews Reviewer Info

By: agavin
Comments (0)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, E-book, Kirkus Reviews, Lovecraftian horror, The Darkening Dream

Untimed for Cheap!

Apr16

The E-Book versions of Untimed will be only $0.99 cents from Monday, April 15 until Friday the 19th! Take the plunge, it’s certainly a great deal.

Buy it on Amazon!

Tweet, share, like, follow, blog and grab a copy of my book. The trailer can be found here.

About Untimed

Charlie’s the kind of boy that no one notices. Hell, his own mother can’t remember his name. So when a mysterious clockwork man tries to kill him in modern day Philadelphia, and they tumble through a hole into 1725 London, Charlie realizes even the laws of time don’t take him seriously. Still, this isn’t all bad. Who needs school when you can learn about history first hand, like from Ben Franklin himself. And there’s this girl… Yvaine… another time traveler. All good. Except for the rules: boys only travel into the past and girls only into the future. And the baggage: Yvaine’s got a baby boy and more than her share of ex-boyfriends. Still, even if they screw up history — like accidentally let the founding father be killed — they can just time travel and fix it, right? But the future they return to is nothing like Charlie remembers. To set things right, he and his scrappy new girlfriend will have to race across the centuries, battling murderous machines from the future, jealous lovers, reluctant parents, and time itself.

“A masterful storyteller, Gavin builds a solid plot with believable characters.” — Kirkus

“Adventure, chemistry… and roller coaster plot are sure to appeal.” — Publishers Weekly

“Like science class in Las Vegas!” — FantasyLiterature.com

Buy Sample Characters Reviews Reviewer Info

By: agavin
Comments (5)

Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Book Sale, bookbub, Untimed

Untimed Book Trailer

Mar20

This awesome Trailer for Untimed was made for me by The Other House, a LA based firm specializing in book trailers. They’re one of the few houses with consistently classy output. I went with an animation style because I’m bothered by live action or straight up photography (in a book context). Maybe it’s because I grew up in the 70s and 80s when only cheesy Tie-In novels had photos on the cover, who knows?

In any case, I also had to keep my trailer short (mostly for budget reasons) and so it was also an interesting exercise to squeeze the basic concept into about 15 seconds of storytelling.

Let me know how we did! And make sure to watch it in 720p!

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By: agavin
Comments (25)

Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Book Trailer, Short Narrative, The Other House, Trailer, Untimed

Dream Sale

Mar04

The e-book versions of The Darkening Dream will be on sale for only 99 cents this week until Friday March 8th! Take the plunge, it’s certainly a great deal.

Buy it on Amazon!

Tweet, share, like, follow, blog and grab a copy of my book.

Also, on the publishing front, I have Audiobooks for both my novels in production and am finished with the first draft of the Untimed screenplay! But, being a first draft, it needs plenty of work.

About The Darkening Dream

“Gorgeously creepy, strangely humorous, and sincerely terrifying” — Publishers Weekly

“Wonderfully twisted sense of humor” and

“A vampire novel with actual bite” — Kirkus Reviews

“Steampunk Lovecraftian Horror by way of Joss Whedon”

Buy Sample Characters Reviews Reviewer Info

By: agavin
Comments (0)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Audiobooks, Promotion, sale, Screenplay, The Darkening Dream

Untimed – $1.99 this week!

Jan20

To help kick off the launch, the E-Book versions of Untimed will be only $1.99 cents from Sunday, January 20 until Friday the 25th! Take the plunge, it’s certainly a great deal.

Buy it on Amazon!

Tweet, share, like, follow, blog and grab a copy of my book.

About Untimed

Charlie’s the kind of boy that no one notices. Hell, his own mother can’t remember his name. So when a mysterious clockwork man tries to kill him in modern day Philadelphia, and they tumble through a hole into 1725 London, Charlie realizes even the laws of time don’t take him seriously. Still, this isn’t all bad. Who needs school when you can learn about history first hand, like from Ben Franklin himself. And there’s this girl… Yvaine… another time traveler. All good. Except for the rules: boys only travel into the past and girls only into the future. And the baggage: Yvaine’s got a baby boy and more than her share of ex-boyfriends. Still, even if they screw up history — like accidentally let the founding father be killed — they can just time travel and fix it, right? But the future they return to is nothing like Charlie remembers. To set things right, he and his scrappy new girlfriend will have to race across the centuries, battling murderous machines from the future, jealous lovers, reluctant parents, and time itself.

“A masterful storyteller, Gavin builds a solid plot with believable characters.” — Kirkus

“Like science class in Las Vegas!” — FantasyLiterature.com

Buy Sample Characters Reviews Reviewer Info

By: agavin
Comments (0)

Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, sale, Time travel, Untimed

Unbendable Untimed

Jan18

I debated about publishing a hardcover edition of Untimed, as paper sales on The Darkening Dream leaned heavily to the paperback (presumably for cost reasons). In the end, I just had too, as they look so good.

This time around I did the entire mechanical (the print ready PDF) and layout myself, as I did with the paperback. Good professionals charge around $1000 per mechanical (so usually over $2000 for both paperback and hardcover). If you have a good eye and substantial Photoshop skills, it’s doable by yourself. I did every element on both paperback and hardcover exteriors except for the actual cover illustration (Cliff Nielsen did that, and that is way beyond my artistic abilities).

The hardcover mechanical would have only taken me about four hours, but I ran into a nasty bug with photoshop PDF output that cost me an extra eight. I hate that kind of thing, but it happens.

If you are interested in making a hardcover edition yourself through Lightning Source, you can read about how I did it here.

Here is what the mechanical looks like

In case you’re curious about the book behind the pretty cover:

Untimed: A YA time travel novel by Andy Gavin.

Charlie’s the kind of boy that no one notices. Hell, his own mother can’t remember his name. So when a mysterious clockwork man tries to kill him in modern day Philadelphia, and they tumble through a hole into 1725 London, Charlie realizes even the laws of time don’t take him seriously. Still, this isn’t all bad. Who needs school when you can learn about history first hand, like from Ben Franklin himself. And there’s this girl… Yvaine… another time traveler. All good. Except for the rules: boys only travel into the past and girls only into the future. And the baggage: Yvaine’s got a baby boy and more than her share of ex-boyfriends. Still, even if they screw up history — like accidentally let the founding father be killed — they can just time travel and fix it, right? But the future they return to is nothing like Charlie remembers. To set things right, he and his scrappy new girlfriend will have to race across the centuries, battling murderous machines from the future, jealous lovers, reluctant parents, and time itself.

Find the Hardcover here on Amazon!

(even if it says “out of stock” you can still order it and it’ll ship in a couple of days)

Buy Sample Characters Reviews Reviewer Info

The back cover. It has the usual cloth jacket and flaps inside.

By: agavin
Comments (1)

Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Amazon.com, Andy Gavin, Hardcover, Publishing, Untimed

Whelping Characters

Dec24

My novel Untimed was conceived as a fusion of ideas. Lingering in my mind for over twenty years was a time travel story about people from the future who fell “downtime” to relive exciting moments in history (until things go wrong). I’d worked out a time travel system but had no plot or characters. Separately, in 2010, as a break from editing The Darkening Dream, I experimented with new voice techniques, especially first person present. I also read various “competition.” One of these was The Lightning Thief (the first Percy Jackson novel), which has an amazing series concept (if a slightly limp execution). I love mythology and history, and liked the notion of something with a rich body of material to mine. I wanted an open ended high concept that drew on my strengths, which brought me back to time travel.
Some of the mechanics from my earlier concept merged well with a younger protagonist, voiced in a visceral first person present style. I started thinking about it, and his voice popped into my head. I pounded out a chapter not too dissimilar from the first chapter of the final novel. Then the most awesome villain teleported into the situation. I can’t remember how or why, but it happened quickly and spontaneously. Tick-Tocks were born (or forged).

Rapier: So bad he’s cool

The Tick-Tocks are supposed to be mysterious, and I really wanted to reveal their secrets layer by layer. It was even important that by the end of the book, while you understand a lot more about them, you don’t really know exactly where they come from or what their up to. A great nemesis needs this. Think Darth Vader or Professor Moriarty. Their secrets aren’t all on the table to begin with. Additionally, one of my favorite emotions to play with is “creep.” My first novel, The Darkening Dream, is all about creepiness, and I think it’s much more effective and scary than plain horror. So the Tocks are supposed to be creepy. Not exactly horrific, but just mysterious and creepy. That’s one of the reasons they don’t talk. Creepy.

Charlie: Not even his mother remembers his name

Charlie’s character derived automatically from his voice, which I tried to make authentically 15. And while he’s sweet, and fundamentally optimistic and good natured, realism demanded a bit of an edge. Teen boys think about shit and sex. Sorry, but it’s true. I rub up on issues that make some squirm, even if I deal with the lightly: teen pregnancy, drinking, slavery, etc. But to sweep these under the carpet wouldn’t do justice to the 18th century – or our own.

Yvaine: Comes with serious baggage

As to Yvaine. Well, she’s based in part on the kind of girl I wanted to meet when I was a teenager. This seems odd, considering how messed up she is, but like Charlie, I didn’t have much luck with girls in High School. In the 80s, being a “computer guy” and even worse, into video games, was pretty much the kiss of death (see 16 Candles for reference). Yvaine is smart, capable, and in charge, but she’s also damaged and emotionally needy. I thought the combination worked.

Donnie: If you think the wig is impressive, wait until you see his sword

Lastly, I’ll talk about Donnie. I’ve noticed that the most effective jerks tend to have some real charisma. Because of Yvaine, Charlie never really likes Donnie, but he maybe could have briefly. Donnie holds his little band together throw a mixture of intimidation, generosity, camaraderie and loyalty. He may be mostly out for himself, but he really sees himself as the protector and leader of his gang, and he acts this way to hold up his own self image. Even in the end, his loyalty to Stump is his own undoing, which is kinda sad – but that’s life. Real villains are heroes in their own stories.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Characters, Charlie, Creepy, Lightning Thief, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Sixteen Candles, Time travel, Untimed, Yvaine

Untimed officially for Sale!

Dec20

Both the paperback and Kindle versions are available. If your stocking is stuffed with a brand new Kindle, or you already have one, or you read on the Kindle app anywhere (iPad, Android, etc.)…

Buy it now!

The e-book launches at the low, low price of $5.99, certainly a bargain given that it took me a year to write. Plus the book is lavishly produced with a cover by award winning fantasy artist Cliff Nielsen and there are twenty-one gorgeous interior illustrations by Dave Phillips.

For those of you that aren’t Kindle people, in the next couple of weeks I’ll try to get all the other E-Book variants up (B&N, iTunes, etc.). Also, I’m also working on a stunning hardcover edition — just because I can.

About the book:

Charlie’s the kind of boy that no one notices. Hell, his own mother can’t remember his name. So when a mysterious clockwork man tries to kill him in modern day Philadelphia, and they tumble through a hole into 1725 London, Charlie realizes even the laws of time don’t take him seriously. Still, this isn’t all bad. Who needs school when you can learn about history first hand, like from Ben Franklin himself. And there’s this girl… Yvaine… another time traveler. All good. Except for the rules: boys only travel into the past and girls only into the future. And the baggage: Yvaine’s got a baby boy and more than her share of ex-boyfriends. Still, even if they screw up history — like accidentally let the founding father be killed — they can just time travel and fix it, right? But the future they return to is nothing like Charlie remembers. To set things right, he and his scrappy new girlfriend will have to race across the centuries, battling murderous machines from the future, jealous lovers, reluctant parents, and time itself.

So try it out and see what you think. Afterward, please review the book on Amazon. Reviews matter!

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, Andy Gavin, Cliff Nielsen, E-book, Fantasy art, iTunes, Time travel, Untimed

Untimed nearly here!

Dec10

Prepared yourself to launch yourself back (and forward) into history! My new time travel novel, Untimed, is launching on December 19!

Charlie’s the kind of boy that no one notices. Hell, even his own mother can’t remember his name. And girls? The invisible man gets more dates.

As if that weren’t enough, when a mysterious clockwork man tries to kill him in modern day Philadelphia, and they tumble through a hole into 1725 London, Charlie realizes even the laws of time don’t take him seriously.

Still, this isn’t all bad. In fact, there’s this girl, another time traveler, who not only remembers his name, but might even like him! Unfortunately, Yvaine carries more than her share of baggage: like a baby boy and at least two ex-boyfriends! One’s famous, the other’s murderous, and Charlie doesn’t know who is the bigger problem.

When one kills the other — and the other is nineteen year-old Ben Franklin — things get really crazy. Can their relationship survive? Can the future? Charlie and Yvaine are time travelers, they can fix this — theoretically — but the rules are complicated and the stakes are history as we know it.

And there’s one more wrinkle: he can only travel into the past, and she can only travel into the future!

The paperback and Kindle versions will be available at launch, with hardcover and other ebook adaptions to follow. The cover is by award winning fantasy artist Cliff Nielsen and there are twenty-one gorgeous interior illustrations by Dave Phillips.

Meanwhile, read the first two chapters here, free!

By: agavin
Comments (7)

Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, London, Philadelphia, Time travel, Untimed

Thanksgiving Dream – only $0.99

Nov20

To celebrate Thanksgiving, the Kindle version of The Darkening Dream is on sale for only 99 cents from Wednesday November 20 until Friday the 30th! Take the plunge, it’s certainly a great deal.

Buy it on Amazon!

Tweet, share, like, follow, blog and grab a copy of my book.

About The Darkening Dream

“Gorgeously creepy, strangely humorous, and sincerely terrifying” — Publishers Weekly

“Wonderfully twisted sense of humor” and

“A vampire novel with actual bite” — Kirkus Reviews

“Steampunk Lovecraftian Horror by way of Joss Whedon”

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: 99 cents, Amazon Kindle, Andy Gavin, Darkening Dream, Novel, one dollar, sale, Thanksgiving sale, The Darkening Dream, vampires

Untimed Goodies

Nov12

My latest Advanced Reader Copy of Untimed. NOTE: the white balance leans overly orange in this photo

This was a busy week for Untimed swag. The proof came for the latest ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) and it looks fantastic. Not only the outside, but the interior has a new properly done layout that includes all the illustrations and near print ready formatting.

Swag bookmarks

I also received a run of bookmarks. These look pretty cool but I wish there was an easy way to get proofs before printing a big run. The way they price these things on the online printshops (I used overnightprints.com for these) it only makes sense to order 1000-2000+, but there are no (physical) proofs. The text on the back is a little close to the trim for my taste, even though it was well inside the safety zone. They also have a 2-3mm variance in the cutting, which is typical but annoying. They aren’t all centered perfectly an I’m a perfectionist. Still, they look cool. For those of you curious about the process, below are the print ready versions.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Untimed

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, books, Novel, online printing, Paperback, swag, Time travel, Untimed, Writing

Harvard Divinity

Oct17

As readers of The Darkening Dream are aware, nothing is ever black or white. Certainly this is the case with Pastor John Parris. Is he a villain or victim? Well… villain, but even the most evil come from somewhere. In this short story, which began life as a chapter in an older larger versions of the novel, we explore some important questions about the creepy little man: 1) How did he come to dabble in witchcraft? 2) Who was Grandmother Grace, and what was the manner of her unpleasant death? 3) Is shit really useful for spellcraft? And most importantly, 4) When did Parris meet his succubus lover, Betty?

It turns out, one weekend reveals all four.

I’m publishing this in short story for free as part of this year’s Fiction Frolic.

Read the story here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Arts, Fiction, John Parris, Online Writing, Short Stories, Short story, The Darkening Dream

Untimed Cover Reveal!

Sep05

I just received the final version of the Untimed cover painting by Cliff Nielsen. I’d thought Cliff knocked The Darkening Dream cover out of the park (it’s even won a number of awards) but this one is on fire.

The art above, cool as it is, isn’t intended to be a complete composition. This is a book cover painting, and so there is extra space to work with around the central figure as well as fairly monochromatic areas for the titles and to the left for the back cover (paper edition). I crop different sections out of it as needed for different uses, such as the banner above or the current front cover composition to the left. The logo and text composition aren’t set in stone yet, either, I’m still noodling on them.

You’re probably wondering who the hell the clockwork man is. Meet Rapier. He’s nearly indestructible, dresses in time appropriate blue uniforms, carries a sword, and kills time travelers on sight. History is his playground. He can be anywhere or anywhen. And no one has a clue what he or the other Tick-Tocks want. Which is all a bit of a bummer for our time traveling protagonist, Charlie.

The scene above is inside the church of St. Bartholomew the Great, London, in the year 1725. At the time, a young Ben Franklin worked there (oddly enough, the building was used as a print shop). When Rapier gets in on the action, the paper is literally hot off the presses!

Be sure to leave your thoughts on the new cover in the comments!

Vote on logo options here, check out some interior illustrations, or

BlogTalkRadio Interview

Aug22

Yesterday I did a really fun one hour radio interview on BlogTalkRadio about The Darkening Dream, with tangents into writing, video games, TV, and all that good stuff. You can find the page for it here, or listen directly below (click the play button).

By: agavin
Comments (2)

Posted in: Darkening Dream

Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Arts, Blog Talk Radio, BlogTalkRadio, interview, radio, Talk radio, The Darkening Dream

Untimed Art Finished!

Aug13

All twenty-one interior illustrations for my time travel novel, Untimed, are now finished! These are painted by Dave Phillips, an awesome artist I commissioned earlier this year. I thought I’d use the occasion to show two new images. And because I love process, I’m posting both the rough and final versions. To get a close up look at this, click one of the images and it will bring up a Smugmug lightbox. You can use the arrow keys to flip back and forth between the rough and the final to see the differences.

Above is is “Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd.” Our protagonist Charlie has to go all the way from contemporary Philadelphia to 1725 London to meet a girl, but she has more than her share of baggage!

For those of you who are curious, Donnie, the guy in the middle with the crazy wig, is actually nineteen and dressed as a “Macaroni.” Remember the line from Yankee Doodle Dandy: “He stuck a feather in his hat, and called it macaroni”? In the early 18th century it was in vogue for trendy young men to dress in outlandish colors (Italian Style) and they were called Macaronis. Tim Roth also plays a fantastic and similar dandy in the excellent 1995 film Rob Roy.

Time travel isn’t just about competing for girls, sometimes tiny changes can have big consequences. Well, maybe letting Ben Franklin get killed and leaving the clockwork men to run amuck doesn’t qualify as “tiny.” When Charlie gets back home to modern day Philadelphia (above), things look a bit different then he expects!

Previously released images can be found here and here and stay tuned for more.

Find out more about Untimed here.