Category Archives: Books

librarians are awesome

I was recently invited to participate in an awesome literacy project, and I wanted to share an excerpt from my contribution:

I want to take a moment and say thank you to librarians, because it was a librarian who made me fall in love with reading. In third or fourth grade, part of our curriculum was a monthly trip to a local library in Tujunga, California. One of the librarians would read us a short story, give a short talk about a literacy-related topic, and then let us pick a book off a table of paperbacks that we could keep. We were also allowed – no, encouraged – to check out up to three books, which we would have a month to read.

I was a nerdy, shy, awkward kid who was scared of everything, and the library intimidated me; I never knew where to start, I was afraid I’d pick a book the the Cool Kids would tease me about reading, and I always felt lost in the stacks. This librarian, though, reached out to me. She asked me what sort of things I liked on TV and in the movies, and recommended a few different books based on my answers, including the first real SciFi book I can recall reading, Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien. I loved it so much, when I went back the next month, she taught me how to use the card catalog to find other books like it, entirely on my own. On that day, the library was transformed from a confusing and intimidating collection of books into a thousand different portals through time and space to fantastic worlds for me to explore.

I don’t remember her name, but I do remember that she was in her fifties, wore epic 1970s polyester pantsuits, huge glasses that hung from a long gold chain around her neck, and had a hairdo that was ten miles high. She was friendly and helpful, and when she reached out to that nerdy little kid, she changed his life. If you’re a librarian today, you probably don’t hear this very often, but thank you. Thank you for making a difference in people’s lives.

Libraries are constantly under attack from people who fear knowledge, politicians who think guns are more important than books, and people who want to ensure that multi-millionaires pocket even more money. As an author, father, and a reader, I beg you: please support your local libraries in any way you can, and if you enjoy reading, take a moment to thank a librarian.

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.

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:

  OMG_BEARD

(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!

Updated: Wow, 419 entries! That's awesome. I'll roll dice and notify the nine by Monday. (It's a very busy weekend here in Wheatonland).

possible (and very limited) autographed book sale

I've been cleaning out my office, organizing comic books and games, and slowly crawling through a decade's accumulation of geek stuff.

It. Has. Been. AWESOME.

Last night, I went into the depths of the hallway closet, and behind a bunch of CDs and DVDs, 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.

So, what do you think? Interested? Let me know, or ask your questions in the comments below.

UPDATED: Okay, it looks like there are at least 9 potential buyers, so here's what I'll do: I'll put up a post later, where you can leave a comment to be entered into a lottery. I'll leave that open for 24 hours, and then roll dice to see who gets them. Maybe I'll roll them live on Ustream, if that's not to totally lame and ridiculous. I think that's fair, and gives everyone an equal chance to get in, even those who are /away from their computers.

ZAP! POW! OOFF! ZOK! BIFF! A post about comics and TPBs.

A couple times a year, I have to go through all the comics and trades in my office and put them into long boxes that live in the attic. When I do this, I always end up pulling out a few trades that I want to read again, so now you know what I've spent most of my discretionary (note that I didn't call it "free") time doing over the last week.

Because "I just want to read these and enjoy them" isn't good enough justification for me, I promised myself that I'd point out a few of the things I was reading on my blog, as sort of a Winter Festival Of Your Choice Gift Buying Service, or, uh, something. So, here we go.

Captain America Omnibus

Marvel

Writer: Ed Brubaker Artists: Steve Epting and Mike Perkins

Before Ed started writing Cap, I just wasn't interested even a little bit … but Ed made Cap sort of the Batman of the Marvel Universe for me: he's troubled, he tries to do the right thing, and he's a fucking badass. The omnibus collects the first 25 issues Ed did, leading up to the Death of Captain America, including the 65th anniversary special and the Winter Soldier stories. Keeping in mind that the stories in this volume were written during the darkest days of the Bush nightmare, I kept feeling like Captain America was standing in for America, itself, which added a layer to the story that was particularly moving to me. Of course, you don't need to reach for symbolism if you don't want to; it's a tremendously satisfying and compelling story without it.

Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E

Marvel

Writer: Warren Ellis Artist: Stuart Immonen

Warren took all these Marvel characters that nobody had thought about in forever and put them into one of the most entertaining and outrageous stories I've ever read. I mean, the first thing they do is fight Fin Fang Foom, who is a giant lizard who wears purple underpants. The dialog is brilliant, and the artwork is sensational. There are only two trades, because Warren only did this for a year, and I highly recommend picking them both up. After reading Nextwave and Global Frequency back-to-back, I have come to the conclusion that, for someone who claims to find superheroes less than awesome, Warren sure does know how to write an awesome superhero story.

The Five Fists of Science

Image

Writer: Matt Fraction Artist:Steven Sanders

Did you know that Edison and Tesla were rivals? Matt Fraction does, so he imagined what would happen if they took their rivalry to its steampunk conclusion. Also, Marconi and Einstein are there. Seriously, it's just amazing and so much fun to read. Science (SCIENCE!)

1602 

Marvel

Writer: Neil Gaiman Artists: Andy Kubert and Richard Isanove

Neil put the Marvel Universe in the year 1602 … you know, like you do … and then told a story that would be a joy to read, even if you didn't get to play "OMG look at how he modified [Classic Marvel Character]"! The artwork is perfect, and the reveals of certain identities are clever and organic; it would have been easy to just make setting this story in 1602 a stunt, but Neil never falls into that trap. You don't have to be intimately familiar with the Marvel Universe to enjoy this story, but if you are, you'll have access to smile-inducing moments that the muggles will miss. For the record, I blame 1602 (and DC's 52) for making me fall back in love with superhero stories, but that's a whole other post.

Batman: The Killing Joke

DC

Writer: Alan Moore Artist: Brian Bolland

It's the definitive Joker story. 'nuff said.

Astonishing X-Men: Gifted

Marvel

Writer: Joss Whedon Artist: John Cassaday

The X-Men have a problem, and to overcome it, they realize that they can't be Uncanny, they can't be Nifty, and they can't be Neat. They have to be … Astonishing. Who better to help them accomplish this than the man himself? This starts Whedon's fantastic run on X-Men, and it's as great to read now as when it was first published. 

You know how there's that one guy you know who liked comics, but after suffering through the Fantastic Four movies and the X-Men and Spiderman sequels, decided that comics suck, superheroes are stupid, and he wants a goddamn concerted effort to not come out of a fucking uptempo record when he has to do a goddamn death dedication? Give him Gifted, and let it remind him why he loved these stories and characters before Hollywood got its filthy hands on them.

Some current reads, too, that you may want to check out, since Wednesday is only two days away:

Osborn – Writer: Kelly Sue DeConnick Artist: Emma Rios. Norman Osborn is a very bad man, and he's in a secret jail with some other very bad people. What could possibly go wrong?

Secret Avengers – Writer: Ed Brubaker Artist: Mike Deodato. Because the Civil War and Secret Invasion sort of screwed things up, Steve Rogers puts together a group of Secret Avengers, which is pretty handy, considering the title of the book and all. It's up to issue 7, and I've just loved every single page.

Thor – Writer: Matt Fraction Artist: Pasqual Ferry. It's Thor. Written by Matt Fraction. If you know why that's awesome, you're probably already reading it. If not … just trust me and pick it up, starting at #611. Ferry's artwork is amazing, too.

Some of you may notice that there's a lot of Marvel Universe here. This is interesting to me, because until recently, I was a hardcore DC Universe guy … but that damn 1602 and Captain America made the Marvel Universe so compelling, I was able to stop being That Guy I mentioned above long enough to dive back in and let the Marvel Universe stand on its own. I'm still reading a couple of DC titles, like Batman and Justice League, but that's about it for me in the DCU at the moment.

What are you reading right now? Is there something amazing that I missed here? Sound off, if you please.

“perhaps, he thought, christmas doesn’t come from a store…”

But we all know the Grinch was wrong, and Christmas totally comes from a store! YEEEEEAHHH!!

Um.

Well, as threatened promised yesterday, here's the Wil Wheaton Holiday Gift Guide, a perfect place to send your friends who are wondering what to get you this holiday season, to show you how much they love you.

Books

Memories of the Future Volume One (Free Bonus! Memories of the Futurecast!)

The Happiest Days of our Lives

Sunken Treasure

Just a Geek (eBook from Google store) (From Amazon) (From Powell's)

Dancing Barefoot (Amazon) (Powell's)

Clash of the Geeks

Audiobooks

Just A Geek: Teh Audiobook

The Happiest Days of our Lives Free Bonus! Radio Free Burrito!

METAtropolis: Cascadia

The Android's Dream

Agent to the Stars

Boneshaker

 

Clothing

How We Roll from shirt.woot Available only until December 10, then it goes to the Land of Wind and Ghosts Forever and Sadtimes

Most of these Jinx designs will be discontinued very soon, if you care about that sort of thing:

The WWdN:iX Family Crest

Marshmallow Meeps

My Sword Glows Blue in the Presence of Rules Lawyers

Never Forget Your Roots

 

Other Neat Stuff

Awesome calendars, mugs and other things from my brother, Jeremy Wheaton, who is an amazing photographer.

The Memories of the Futuremug!

The Guild Season 3

Okay, that's it for now … but if enough people ask, I'll consider doing some kind of autographed picture or poster thing, but that will have to happen in the next 48 hours so I can get stuff shipped out in time. Leave a comment if you're interested. Costs would probably be about $25, which would include domestic shipping.

Happy shopping, everyone! The bursar at my son's university thanks you for your purchases.

on a long run

After spending so many weeks on location, it's been more of an adjustment than usual to settle back into my normal routine here at home. For the last week or so, I've come into my office, opened up a text editor, and just stared at the blank screen and insistently blinking cursor until, frustrated, I give up trying to find something worth writing about and just go read Reddit instead.

I don't think it's the end of the world that I haven't been able to motivate myself to write more than a few words at a time, and I've come to sort of grudgingly accept that, after months of creative output, it's very likely that my brain just wants to recharge its HP and MP. Since I can't force inspiration, I've gone back to the most comfortable and inspiring constant in my life: comic books and RPGs. I've been on a real superhero kick, plowing through 52 (which I wasn't interested in at the time it came out, but have enjoyed tremendously; I'm up to week 18, so far), a re-read of 1602, and a Marvel TPB called The Heroic Age. I picked up Joss' Astonishing X-Men, and I have Brubaker's Captain America Omnibus on my desk, too. I guess, after 20+ years of reading everything but superheroes, I'm making up for lost time.

I've also been playing Fallout 3 New Vegas a little bit every evening. It's taken me 17 hours to feel like I'm really doing anything, but I've enjoyed every moment of it, so far. I would like to point out that, though the Powder Gangers and Legion really hate me, I've only blasted their faces off in self defense. Thank you.

I haven't been able to get my gaming group together since … well, shit, it's been so long I can't remember. I think it was March or April. Wow. I have all these RPG books on my shelves in my office, and nobody to play them with at the moment … just like when I was a young geek, carrying around my red box set and a folder full of characters, just in case.

It feels good to be home, even though it's sort of like putting on a pair of pants I haven't worn in a few months. I'm hopeful that, by taking time to relax and consume things, I will be able to get excited and make things sooner than later.