Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 137

a nice walk about

It is unseasonably warm here (you're welcome, Southern California; I brought the weather from JoCoCruseCrazy home with me) so project Get Outside And Exercise A Little Bit Every Day has been easier than it was in December.

Yesterday, I took Seamus with me on my walk. The Western sky was beginning to turn red and gold as the sun prepared to char the other side of the world and come back to us as we walked down the driveway and out into the street. 

As we neared the top of our block, a woman I rarely see was working in her front yard, planting something near the curb. She's probably in her 70s, has white hair pulled back into a bun and a heavily-lined face straight out of the Grapes of Wrath.

She dusted the dirt off her hands and stabbed her small shovel into the freshly-turned earth. She looked up at me and smiled. 

"You have a nice walk about," she said.

I smiled back at her. "Thank you! I think I will."

We continued up the street and around the corner, Seamus stopping to smell every tree, bush, and fire hydrant along the way. When we got home, he walked over to his little dog bed and was asleep and snoring before I had put his leash away. I poured myself a glass of water, stood on my porch, and watched the sun set.

Nothing special or unusual happened while we were out. I didn't have any epiphanies or anything while I stood on my porch and watched black silhouettes fly across the gloaming sky. It was just a beautiful half an hour, during which I enjoyed the quiet, simple pleasures of walking my dog and hearing a kind word from a neighbor.

And that, I think, is why it's worth remembering.

 

I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool.

One of my favorite things on JoCoCruiseCrazy was our Informal Moustache Formal, organized by the (now dead to me) Paul F. Not Coming On the Cruise Because I Got a "Job" that "Pays Me" and "Furthers My Career" Tompkins.

During the Informal Formal, Kevin Murphy loaned me this most exquisite fez, which I wore proudly until it was time for the Informal Moustache Formal to come to its inevitable and all-too-soon conclusion.

"Thank you," I would say when a gentleman or lady would compliment me on the aforementioned fez, "it is on loan from the Murphy collection."

(Photo by my friend Atom Moore, who has a brazillion pictures from the cruise up at Flickr.)

I am no longer on a boat...

...but my inner ear is pretty convinced that I am. Goodtimes. Goodtimes.

Until I have enough moments in a row to reflect on and recount the amazing and wonderful time I had on #JoCoCruiseCrazy, I wanted to take a second to share the best part of the entire trip for me:

For seven days and six nautical nights, every single person who met my kids told me how much they liked Ryan and Nolan. Words like "articulate" and "polite" and "hilarious" and "awesome" were used more than once. As a father, this is the best thing I can ever hear, and I'm incredibly proud of my kids for being exactly who they are.

More to come, but probably not for a couple of days.

Happy New Year. I'm on a boat.

I'm going to be on JoCo Cruise Crazy until January 8. I thought it was kind of important to stay connected, keep Twittering and blogging and Internetting while I was on a boat, but after much deliberation, decided that I will not be purchasing Holland America's Yes, We Use The Whole Fist internet package. 

I'm not going to lie to you, Marge: the idea of no internet for a whole week makes me a little twitchy, but it's been a really hectic end of the year, and I think that I'll enjoy myself a heck of a lot more if I stay offline, read books, play games, enjoy the time with my family, and get my geek on at every opportunity.

One final thought before I sign off: I looked at my desk a couple nights ago, and told Anne, "I sat there for months and wrote Dancing Barefoot and Just A Geek. That's where I started my blog, and built my first website." I paused for a moment, because I felt a lump rising in my throat. "Remember how frustrated and scared I was ten years ago? How hard I was struggling?"

"Yeah," she said, quietly.

"I don't want to be all 'hey, look how great I am,' but I'm so grateful that my hard work finally paid off."

She put her arms around my waist and kissed me. "Me too." 

I held her for a second. "It all started right here. Isn't that weird?"

"I don't think it's weird. I think it's kind of awesome."

I kissed her face and she kissed me back.

2010 was easily the best year I've had in a decade, and 2011 is looking like it's going to be pretty amazing, too. So happy new year to you all, and thank you for reading my blog and my books, watching me on TV, interacting with me on Twitter, and just being part of this incredible chapter in my life. 

Happy New Year, everyone! Talk to you in a week.

Let's take a ride out, see what we can find

"If it's true about there being no rest for the wicked, then I must have been very naughty indeed." -Charlie Stross

Yes, I just compared myself to Charlie Stross. It must be the coffee and lack of sleep talking. Go me.

I leave for JoCo Cruise Crazy in just a few days, so I've been too busy preparing to do anything here on the old bloggy-blog-bloggity-blog, but I wanted to take a moment to remind all interested parties that there is just one day left to get a print copy of The Day After And Other Stories. 

I'm thrilled and delighted that The Day After and Other Stories has sold as well as it has, and I'm relieved and excited to hear such good feedback from so many readers. Writing fiction still feels a little strange, and actually publishing it still scares the shit out of me, but having faced it once now and returned relatively unscathed, it probably won't be quite as scary the next time.

though it's been said, many times, many ways ...

Merry Swayze Christmas, Internet.

 

of books and beards

Sales of The Day After and Other Stories have blown my expectations away, and the feedback I've received has been overwhelmingly positive. I'm relieved and happy that so many readers are enjoying it, and if you're one of them, I thought you should know that you've given me +5 to my saves vs. Paralyzing Fear of Writing and Publishing Fiction. I woke up at 4am yesterday and wrote for 10 hours straight, because my brain was all, Dude! You have to finish this thing you started two months ago and abandoned because you were afraid of it!

I finished the draft, and though it still needs a little work, it was tremendously satisfying to stare down my fear and enjoy telling the story. I have something I'm proud of, that I should be able to publish in the very near future.

More on The Day After and Other Stories, previously posted on my blog.

It's raining a lot here. Last night on Twitter, John Scalzi asked me if he could have my beard, should the storm wash me away. I told him that my beard could be used as a flotation device, so ha ha ha. One thing led to another, and John created a full-on Twitter Meme called #LegendsOfWilsBeard. There were thousands of hilarious and clever posts, and new ones are still showing up today.

Related:

 

(Thanks to @Alxhm, who found it at Reddit before I did.)

If you haven't read John's Interview With The Nativity Inn Keeper and Interview With The Christmas Bunny, you probably want to do that right now.

And now that you've read those, you're ready to move on to The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas.

You're welcome.

Announcing The Day After and Other Stories

This is one of the scariest things I've ever done: I'm releasing a short collection of short fiction, called The Day After and Other Stories.

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.

Okay, now here are the details about this:

The Day After and Other Stories is a very short collection of very short stories, available for a very short time.

The paperback is $11, because it's available for a limited time. I realize this is pricey for a 50 page book, so if you don't want to spend that much (and I don't blame you), you can get the PDF version for $5. Yay!

The paperback will only be available until December 30th, so if you wanted to get one, do it before then.

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!

Anyway, now you know, I'm terrified that nobody's going to like it, but the goal isn't to be perfect; the goal is to be creative.

I'm going to keep saying that until I don't feel like I'm going to throw up.

and the autographed book sale winners are ...

I am totally thrilled that 419 of you entered the autographed book lottery, and I'll be honest: it's weird to me to think of choosing "winners" who get to buy something from me, but that's just my damn liberal guilt, I guess. (And, I think I said this before, but in case I didn't: the Bursar at my son's university thanks you for your purchase.)

So here's how I did this: I removed the duplicate comments, divided the remaining comments into 20 groups of 20, then rolled d20 three times. The first time gave me a group, the second time was to choose if I would start counting from the top or bottom (1-10, go top to bottom, 11-20 go bottom to top) and the final roll gave me the number I'd count to.

I could have used a bunch of different dice, but I decided that the d20 was perfect for this method, because it has a 5% chance of rolling any number (unlike a combination of d6 or something, that has a different Gaussian distribution that peaks around 13, muh-hay, guh-hey flaven) and it's also the only gaming die I have that's the size of a billiard ball, which felt appropriately massive for this occasion.

So, without any further ado, here are the nine people who were chosen by my giant d20. If your name is on this list, and you haven't gotten an e-mail from me, you should e-mail me RIGHT AWAY so I can get your book in the mail today:

1. Xuff

2. Dwayne Reinhardt

3. Terry Callan

4. Jeswils

5. Tamelam

6. Isisgate1

7. Jonathan Disher

8. Kwbeck

9. Bsv567

If you weren't chosen, do not despair! The response to this was so overwhelming and awesome, I was inspired to go ahead and release a chapbook of short fiction that I've been afraid to publish for almost a year. It will go up on Lulu a little later today, after I've taken care of signing and shipping these copies of Happiest Days.

a very limited (I mean VERY limited) autographed book lottery

Yesterday, I said:

I found nine hardback copies of The Happiest Days of Our Lives that I must have put there when they first arrived at my house a couple of years ago. They look as perfect as they did the day they were taken out of the box.

So I have this idea to sell them, that goes like this:

I will number these books 1-9, and sign them to whomever the buyer wants, with a dedication of my choosing. I will ship the book USPS Priority mail no later than Monday, which should ensure that it arrives before Christmas, in case that's important to you.

I'll do this for $50 a book, which will include shipping and handling.

I only have 9 of these, but I'm not sure anyone is interested in this, so before I go and set up the ordering and payment information, I need to know if anyone reading this is actually interested.

This would be a first come, first served sort of thing, sold to the first 9 people who leave comments at some time tomorrow (I'll figure that out and update this post later, if it's going to happen). I can ship internationally, but the buyer would have to cover the cost of shipping, because it's damn expensive.

I wasn't sure that anyone would be interested, and I'm delighted to discover that I was wrong about that. Initially, I thought I'd make it first come, first served, but I thought that might be a bummer for anyone who can't be at their computer at, say, noon today or whatever. So I thought that it would be more fair to everyone if it was a lottery.

So here's what I'm going to do: For the next 24 hours (maybe a tiny bit longer, if I sleep late tomorrow), you can leave a comment on this post, if you're interested in buying one of these ultra-limited signed copies of The Happiest Days Of Our Lives. 

Tomorrow, I'll roll dice (you know, like we gaming geeks do) to pick nine people who, uh, get a Golden Ticket, I guess.

I'll contact those people by e-mail, to let them know that they can buy one of these books. When those people respond, I'll get details and give payment instructions.

A couple important notes:

I'm only set up to take payment from PayPal, so if you hate PayPal (and I'm right there with you), don't bother with this.

Please ensure that you have an e-mail address attached to your identity here, so I can find you if you're one of the 9. Do not leave your e-mail address in your comment, because spammerbots will grab it and make your life miserable.

I will ship internationally, but the buyer will be responsible for shipping (express shipping to countries outside of the US can be very expensive, so find out how much that's going to cost ahead of time, so you don't get any unpleasant surprises.)

Please, please, please, don't use multiple accounts to enter this more than once. I can't stop you, but that would be really unfair to other people.

These books will be numbered "2010 Holiday Super Funtimes 1-9".

Yay!