Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 135

Cherry Flowers and Bedroom Songs

While I was drifting off to sleep last night, a short story idea seized my mind and refused to shut up until I scribbled down enough about it to ensure I didn't lose it during the journey to sleep and back to waking.

I got out of bed, made some barely-legible notes, and fell asleep rather quickly. About an hour or so later, the cats decided that it was time to play, which involves running around the house and across my bed at a speed and noise level that just shouldn't be possible for two animals whose combined weight is less than twenty pounds.

The first time the cats woke me up, I grabbed a drink of water and drifted back to a sort of twilight sleep, where the amorphous blobs of story ideas began to sharpen into ill-defined shapes. I got out of bed and made more notes.

This process repeated itself a number of times overnight, so though my body spent eight hours mostly in bed, my brain didn't get much, if any, rest.

Anne woke me up at 10. "You're going to sleep the whole day away," she said.

"Mrrzzbffgggmmmblllzzz," I said. But, having grown accustomed to dragging myself out of bed when I wanted to stay safely and comfortably wrapped in the covers, I did the same. This time, though, I walked into the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee instead of stumbling into my office to scribble down notes.

That was about two hours ago, and while my brain is beginning to shake off some of the cobwebs, I still feel a little numb and stingy.

"Don't you hate it when you do something really funny and nobody notices?" Anne said to me about fifteen minutes ago.

"Um, yes?" I said.

She stood in the doorway of my office, rocking back and forth on her feet. "Yeah, it's like it's just killing you that you did something very funny but nobody notices."

"...what did you do?" I said.

"I kind of want you to just find it on your own," she said.

"That's probably not going to happen. I'm only forty percent here right now."

She looked pointedly at the wall above my desk.

"Even if it's, like, staring you right in the face?"

"Yeah, even if it's --" I followed her gaze and saw...

Click More, because the reveal is worth it.

"That's hilarious," I said.

"Why aren't you laughing?"

"I'm too tired to laugh. Inside, though, I'm rolling on the floor. That's very clever."

"And don't worry, I made sure the adhesive was almost all gone, so it wouldn't damage your Velvet Wesley Crusher."

"I appreciate that."

She leaned over and reached toward the moustache.

"Wait," I said. I picked up my phone and activated its camera. "The Internet needs to know about this."

HUNTER is here.

Hunter is a short Sci-Fi story set in a dark and desperate world. It is just about 2500 words, which is about the length of a story you'd read in a magazine. I'm not really sure what the appropriate cost is, so I'm experimenting with the Pay What You Want model that seems to be working really well for a lot of artists I respect and admire.

If I sold Hunter to a magazine, I'd probably get around $125 or so (assuming I could get the SFWA professional rate of five cents a word. I figure that at least 125 people will want to read this, so if all of them donated a dollar, I'd feel really good about this, and I'd be able to do it again in the future. If you're interested (and I hope you are) you can download Hunter and pay what you want (even the low low price of NOTHING AT ALL) at Wil Wheaton Books dot Com.

A couple of FAQs:

Is this about the amazing 80s cop drama HUNTER starring Fred Dryer?

No, it's an original work of fiction set in a world I made up. 

Where could I find out more about HUNTER and Fred Dryer?

Oh, I bet Wikipedia will help you with the show and its star.

Don't you mean "it's"?

No, I don't. This rhyme from Strongbad has served me well: "If you want to be possessive, it's just I-T-S ... if you want to use an apostrophe, it's I-T-APOSTROPHE-S!"

Can I use something other than PayPal to give you filthy money?

Not at the moment, no.

But PayPal is evil!

I know. Luckily, you can stick it to me and PayPal at the same time, if you want. Yay!

What about Google Checkout?

I'm working on it. Well slap my fanny, I figured out how to use it. Yes, you can use Google Checkout. The only thing is, I couldn't find an option that lets you set your price, so I set it at $2.00, which seems to be the average people are choosing to pay.

Can I download the artwork and use it for the cover?

Yes! I tried to embed the neat image Will Hindmarch designed into the files, but apparently I haven't unlocked that skill yet.

Are you going to expand this story?

Maybe. I know a lot about the world and other stuff that would be spoilery, because I've thought about it a lot, but I don't know if I'm ready to expand this particular story much more. I think I'll be revisiting [spoiler] at some point, though, because it's very intriguing to me.

So I've decided to pay for this. What do you suggest?

A billon dollars seems about right to me, but most people are choosing between 1 and 5 bucks.

Can I print out the PDF?

Yes.

I bought the [mobi | pdf | epub] but now I want [some other format] do I have to pay you again?

Of course not, but thank you for asking. You're a good guy or girl.

Can I give my copy to a friend?

Yes, but I'd prefer you link them to the Hunter page at Wil Wheaton Books dot Com where they can download their own copy. I hope that this will introduce new readers to my work, and if they're at my virtual bookshelf, maybe they'll check out my other work.

Are you doing an audio version?

I don't know. Maybe in the future.

Isn't Wall of Voodoo an amazing band?

Hell yes! I've been listening to The Index Masters pretty much non-stop for three days.

Will you put this in the Amazon or iBooks store?

Probably not. I'd like to keep it DRM-free and pay-what-you-want.

Okay, that just about covers it. If you like this, please tell your friends.

HUNTER is coming...

Check it out:

A little excerpt from Hunter can be found in this post. Or you can keep reading here:

Pyke chased the girl down a street still wet with the afternoon's rainfall. A thin sliver of moon was glowing behind the thinning clouds, but it wasn't bright enough to pierce the darkness between thefew street lamps that still worked. The girl was fast. He had to stay close, or she'd escape. 

Pyke had let the girl put about 500 feet between them when she ranthrough a bright pool of light and was swallowed by darkness. When she didn't reappear, Pyke knew he had her, for there was only one place she could have gone. He followed her through a once-ornate gateway into the old city, where the colony had been founded a century before.

Her footfalls echoed off rows of empty windows down narrow streets that seemed to turn back on themselves, an ancient trick intended to confuse invaders. When the Gan arrived, they solved this puzzle by simply bombarding most of the buildings and walls from low orbit until there weren't many places left to hide. Hunters like Pyke—a second-generation Goa colonist who'd grown up in the old city—knew every twist, every turn, every blind alley and every hidden basement.

It wasn't the first time Pyke had pushed a rebel into the avenues. In the six months he'd been working for the Gan, he'd let dozens of terrified patriots think they were making their escape into the old city's maze-like streets, only to trap them in one of its countless dead ends, where he'd have a little fun before turning them over to his masters.

He heard a splash just down the block, followed by a yelp. She must have fallen in a puddle, Pyke thought. Shallow craters were everywhere in these streets; filled with water, they made quite effective traps. Pyke slowed to a jog and grinned. It was only a matter of time now.

Hunter will be released a little later today, and I'm starting to feel some apprehension breaking through the excitement. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how I would do this, from putting epub and mobi and pdf files at Lulu and smashwords for 99 cents, to putting it here for free.

Because I've never done anything like this before, I ultimately decided to do the pay what you want model. I hope it works, because I'd like to use it in the future for short fiction projects, until I have enough short works of fiction to make a collection that's worthy of the printed page.

10 seconds of geek

Here's a stupid cell phone video I made with Chris right before we did the @nerdist podcast at Smodcastle last night.

Chris and I have known each other for 20 years, and we were roommates when we were in our early 20s. I'm happy to say that we haven't really changed all that much since then, as this video demonstrates.

The podcast was incredibly fun to record, and will be released on Monday.

in which Highlights for Children is discussed at great length

Last night, on the way home from dinner, I asked Anne, "Do you remember Highlights for Children?"

"Of course I do," she said, "I remember how I hated going to the doctor when I was a kid, until I started reading Highlights in the waiting room."

"Turn right at this intersection," I said, "and Trader Joe's will be on the left in a block. She turned right, and I realized that Trader Joe's was actually to the left. "Oh, my bad. It's actually back there."

As we drove under the freeway to a place where we could make a U turn, I said, "Did anyone ever read Highlights in someplace that wasn't the doctor's or dentist's office?"

"The library at my school had a subscription, so we'd read it there," she said. 

We got to the next intersection, which featured a nice big NO U TURNS sign.

"Well, this quick stop at Trader Joe's is turning into quite an adventure," I said as we waited at the red light.

We were quiet for a second, and I said, "I bet seeing Highlights in someone's house would have been like seeing your teacher at the grocery store, you know? Like it was something familiar, but totally out of context so you wouldn't know what to do."

The light turned green and we made a left onto a dark, industrial street.

"You know what I always hated about Highlights?" Anne said, "some idiot kid had always circled the hidden pictures."

"Seriously!" I said, "fuck that kid, man. That kid's a dick."

"And what kind of parent gives their kid a pen to draw all over a magazine that's obviously intended for more than one kid to read?"

"Asshole parents," I said, "it's called Highlights for Children, you jerk, not Highlights for your Children."

"Because doctor's offices don't exactly have pens just lying around," she said. She pulled into a driveway about halfway down the street and turned around. 

"Yeah, some mom had to go into her purse, dig around the used Kleenex and that giant checkbook/wallet thing moms carry, and find the pen." We turned back toward Trader Joe's. I raised my hands over my head as we went through the freeway underpass. "Wheee!" I put my hands back in my lap. "I mean, that's a lot of time for her to think, 'Hey, maybe I shouldn't be giving little Johnny Snotface this pen to ruin the magazine for all the other children.'"

We turned into the tiny Trader Joe's parking lot and parked the car. As we got out and walked in, I said, "Highlights should have done a Goofus and Gallant about that, man."

"You've spent a lot of time thinking about this," Anne said.

"It's what I do," I said. I pulled a cart out of the stall and pushed it into the store. It had a wobbly wheel and pulled to the right.

I silently cursed the shopping cart gods, and caught up to Anne in the produce section.

Flash Fiction: Perchance To Dream

    The best part of my day? That's easy: those few blissful seconds right after I wake up, when I just feel my head against the pillow and the warmth of the blanket, before it all comes crashing back down on me and I remember where I am. That's when the worst part of the day begins.

    There are guys in here who talk about their dreams. Not like what they want to do with their lives or what they'd do with a million dollars; I mean their actual dreams, where they can fly and talk to animals and shit, but I never remember mine. I haven't remembered a dream for … well, long enough that I can't remember what the last one was, and I have a pretty good memory. Like, when I was a kid, there were these smokestacks that I could see from the motorway when we were getting close to home. They were tall, with four rings of red lights around them every five meters or so. The top ring of lights blinked slowly, and on nights when the weather was bad, I could still see the red glow reflecting off the clouds, even if I couldn't make out the smokestacks in the dark. I would tell my mum, "I can see the smokestacks, mummy!" And she would reply, "That means we're almost home, darling."

    On cloudy nights, I lie back on my bed, look out through the bars, and imagine that I can see a soft red glow slowly blinking against the orange reflection of the lights, telling me that I'm almost home.

I  recently  drove up a freeway that I used to take all the time when I was a kid, but haven't taken for at least a decade. On my drive, I saw these smokestacks that I remembered seeing when I was a little boy. Like the protagonist of this little tale, I liked seeing them, because I knew that meant I was almost home. 

That memory stayed with me, and refused to release me until I did something with it. This afternoon, this little story sprung into my head pretty much as you see it here; I just did my best to write it down before it got away from me.

back in flesh

I cleared two pretty big deadlines yesterday, both for RPG-related projects.

One of them I don't think I can talk about, but involved a fair amount of writing. It was one of the most enjoyable creative experiences of my life, and it excited and inspired me to pick one of the ideas in my notebook and transform it from notes into an actual story; it turns out this making-things-up-and-writing-them-down thing is a whole lot of fun. I'm not sure when this particular thing will be released, but you can be sure that I'll blagh and blagh and blagh about it when it is.

The other I can speak more freely about. My friend Will Hindmarch (who does all design and layout work for my books) asked me a few months ago if I would record some audio for a Trail of Cthulhu campaign he created with Jeff Tidball called Eternal Lies. I thought it was such a nifty idea to include an original score - I love the soundtracks that Flying Frog includes with their games - I jumped at the opportunity to provide some dialog to go with it. The way we did it was pretty cool, and appealed to the technology geek in me as much as the RPG geek: Will sent me the script, and I recorded a few rough passes in Garageband which I put into a shared Dropbox folder for him to listen to. He was able to give me nearly-instant feedback until we were on the same page, at which time I switched to uncompressed audio and Serious Business.

Some of the things I read for the game were quotes from Lovecraft. During one take I realized that, whenever I read a particular type of quote, I hear it in Fawkes' voice. Thanks for that, Felicia. (By the way, Felicia is working on a Secret Project™ that I'm lucky enough to know about ... holy frakking shit balls on fire, you guys. When you know what it is, your mind will be blown right out of your skull so hard it will bounce off the wall and land on the ground next to your socks, which were also knocked right off your feet and through your shoes.)

The last few months were insanely busy, and I just didn't have much time or energy to do anything extra beyond a few Very Important Tasks. Now that I'm getting caught up on my deadlines, and I have more Me Time, I've been able to read more books, play more video games, and feed my inner geek, who it turns out was beginning to starve.

Since playing Cal & D, though, I have really felt the Gaming Monkey's claws digging into my neck, and working on these two RPG projects has made me realize just how much I've missed gaming. I really hate it that I can't go to PAX East this year; I didn't know how much I really wanted needed to go until I accepted that I couldn't.

I'm going to try to make it to OrcCon with some friends next weekend, because I'm starting to get the gaming shakes, man, and I've just got to get straight, you know? You know what I mean, Bubbles? Come on, man, just let me roll 3d6 and add my combat bonus ... just once, man. I'm going crazy over here!

a few programming and personal appearance notes

If everything goes according to plan, I should release Hunter later today. It's 2500 words, about the length of what you'd read in a magazine, I think, and I'm pricing it at 99 cents, for people who want to buy it. I'll eventually put it here or wil wheaton books for free, for those of you who are horrified at the idea of dropping a dollar on something that short. I am equally excited and terrified about doing this, which seems about right.

A couple of upcoming appearance notes that may be of interest to some of you: 

March 4 and 5, I'm going to be in Seattle for the Emerald City Comic Con. I love this show, and it's great to be back again. The show is three days, but I have a family commitment on Sunday, so I'm going to be there Friday and Saturday.

For the first time in almost fifteen years, I'm going to Europe for a convention. For the first time ever, I'm attending FedCon in Germany from 28 April to 1 May.

I'm super bummed that I can't make it to PAX East this year, but I plan to attend Prime this summer.

There is a very good chance that I'll be at a show in the near future that I've never been to before, in part of the country that keeps asking me to come visit. My agent is working out the details, so hopefully I can be less cryptic about it before the end of this week.

I've been talking with Paul and Storm about doing a w00tstock-ish program where I tell stories and they play music to go with the stories. Think of it as my part of w00tstock, except it's for an entire show. We're working on brand new material, because we all love The Trade and Rocky Horror, but pretty much everyone's seen that, so it's time for something new.

Speaking of w00tstock, we're looking into another show at Comic-Con, because last year's show kicked so much ass. #freemolly!

I can't talk about Eureka ... except maybe I just did.

That's all. I have actual deadlines for actual projects that I actually need to get finished today, so this goof off blogging ends... NOW.

The Day After and Other Stories goes digital

tl;dr: The Day After And Other Stories is once again available for download. It's $4.99 at Lulu. Yay!

In December of last year, I released a very short collection of very short stories for a very short time - just ten days, actually - as an experiment in releasing short fiction. It sold fairly well, wildly exceeding my expectations. I got very good feedback from readers, but I'd committed to pulling it off the shelf in its print version at the end of ten days, so that's what I did. I'd always planned to keep the eBook version on sale, but I got busy after I pulled the print version offline, and didn't get around to republishing just the e-version until today.

So, for those of you who want to read a very short collection of very short stories for a very small price ($4.99! Cheap!), now you can.

If you're wondering what this is all about, here's what I wrote back in December:

Last year, I collected a few short stories I'd written and sold them as a chapbook at PAX. It was a scary thing for me to do, because while I feel confident as a narrative non-fiction writer, I am paralyzed with terror whenever I think about releasing something I invented out of nothing more than an idea to the public, and before I actually release it, I hear Carrie's mother screaming at me, "THEY'RE ALL GOING TO LAUGH AT YOU!"

A couple of things have happened recently, though, that gave me the courage to actually release this short collection of short stories to anyone who wants to buy it. First, Project Do Something Creative Every Day is making me feel less and less afraid of sucking. Like I said recently, the goal isn't to be perfect; the goal is to be creative. I don't think The Day After and Other Stories is perfect, but it is creative, and the few people I have shown it to told me they liked it.

Second, over 400 people expressed an interest in buying an autographed copy of The Happiest Days of Our Lives over the last couple of days. That really blew me away, and made me think, "Well, maybe there aren't as many people out there waiting for an excuse to laugh at you as you think. Also? It's adorable that you think you're that important to anyone, jackass."  

I've had these files ready to put on LuLu for over a year, and it wasn't until this morning that I screwed up the courage to actually do it. I'm sticking to my original plan, which is to sell the paperback for a limited time (10 days) and then just offer the PDF version. I'm not quite sure why I wanted to do it that way, but it's nontraditional, and a little weird, so there you go.

Here's the introduction:

Every year, before the summer convention season gets underway, I pull a few excerpts from whatever I plan to release in the fall, take them to my local print shop, and make a deliberately lo-fi, limited edition chapbook to take with me on the obligatory summer convention circuit.

I've done previews of Dancing Barefoot, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Memories of the Future, and in 2008, I pulled together a sampler that eventually became Sunken Treasure.

While Memories of the Future is 2009's "big" fall release, it didn't make sense to me to release a Memories- based chapbook this summer, because one already exists.

It looked like there wasn't going to be a 2009 entry in the traditional Wil Wheaton Zine-like Chapbook Extravaganza, until I realized that I have several pieces of unpublished fiction sitting in my office, just waiting to be published.

"Hey," I said to myself, "people keep asking me to write and release fiction, and I've been waiting until I have an actual novel to give them. But these things totally don't suck, and I bet readers would enjoy them."

"That is an excellent idea, me," I said. "And have I mentioned how smart and pretty you are?"

"Oh, stop it. You're embarrassing me," I said.

Together, myself and I collected some of my (mostly unpublished) fiction and put it into this chapbook, for safe keeping.

Even though this is limited to just 200 copies, it represents a significant step for me in my life as a writer, because it's the first time I've collected and published stories that I made up. (You know, like a writer does.) I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for your support!

The more astute among you may have noticed that this says it's limited to 200 copies; that's because this was originally offered as a limited chapbook at PAX, and we're using the same files. Think of it as a delightful legacy issue, or something like that, if you must. I don't know how many of these books I'll actually sell, but I doubt the number will be exactly 200. When the paperback goes to the Land of Wind And Ghosts, though, I suppose I can check to see how many were sold, and you can use your very own Red Pen of Doom to put the actual number into your copy. Hey! Look! It's interactive!

I hope I can get this available in .mobi and .epub sooner than later, but I don't have conversion software at the moment (Clibre and Sigil barf on the .pdf, so I have to start over with a .rtf file when I have the free time).

Also, because it's a FAQ: If you want to print it out and make your own book from it for your personal, non-commercial use, you have my permission to do that.

"Storage of corpses is important."

Warren wrote about having to kill a story:

The lesson is simply this: you just have to recognise that, no matter how much weight you put behind it and how much you tart it up,sometimes a story just doesn't bloody work, and you have to take it behind the stables and shoot it through the head. No writer is perfect.  We all have dead bodies to our names.

Knowing that someone I respect and admire as much as Warren has had to abandon something that just wasn't working makes me feel less terrible when it happens to me.

I was especially happy when he said,

The corpse gets thrown in the Loose Ideas folder, where one day it will doubtless be cannibalised for its more interesting/less ripoffy parts and interpolated into something new and better.  Storage of corpses is important.  As in life, you never know when bits of them will come in handy.

...because I do precisely that, all the time. Sometimes I have a fully-formed story in my head, and I just write it before it gets away from me. Other times, I have an interesting character I want to explore, or a story about some thing that I want to tell, but once I get down to the path and look up, I realize I've lost myself in the woods, it's getting dark, and I'd better go home before the wolves come out. When that happens, though, I always save whatever I've written to that point; just because it didn't work in this story doesn't mean that it won't work in another one that I don't even know exists, yet. It's reassuring to know that writers I look up to do it, too.