See me at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

Comments (28)

1. First you try and bride us there with punch and pie and then you take it away?? No fair, I want punch and pie….and I really wish I could go to someplace as cool as a book fair at UCLA but alas a new job in western NY does not smile upon such fancies. Good luck and I hope you sell a ton of books Wil! and yeah, I guess I could cheer for the Bruins seeing as how my team sucks and probably won’t see the playoffs for a good long while…*sigh’s meekly GoLeafsGo*

2. yeah! no punch or pie? what the fluck?
   i live two miles from UCLA, but i wont be making the trek unless i can at least get some cookies.
   mmm. diddy reise.

3. No punch or pie? What a gyp! What about just randomly punching people instead?

4. can we bring our own snacks?

5. We want cake! Where’s our cake?

6. Wil, is that a shameless plea for pie?

7. Can’t you do a Wednesday or Thursday book signing? (hee hee, my days off usually)
   How is that Time Capsule treating you?

8. The cake is a lie..hey Kevin J Anderson! *winks at Wil*
   I’m in the middle of the Pacific so sadly I cannot ooze praise on you…I must ooze from afar.

9. Rad, I was going to the book fair anyway. Now I have an extra reason to look forward to it!!

10. Mr. W. If we are not gushing praise, telling you how great you are, how suave you are, and all the things that swell your head, can we still come? If we tell you that you are almost OK, a mediocre actor and a fair blogger, but buy a few books, will that make up for praise? See you there. Actually David will see you there. He wants the autographed books. I just want to read the new one you had best be finishing soon. And NO, I will not be bring the pie. Some day I will have to show you the photo of me getting the pie in the face at one of my birthday parties. (If you see me standing behind David, don’t go throwing a book at me. It is my credit card he will be using.) Regards, Bill

11. Whoa, caffiene hasn’t kicked in yet.
    I read it as:
    “If you’d like to meet me, shower with me…”
    I was about to jump on a plane but read it again more carefully.
    Knowledge is power… Have a good day

12. I :heart: you even more for the “go Bruins!” shout out.
    Wish I could go, but alas, too far away. Hope it’s fun for you!
    And onegirlmanyideas has got me hungry for Diddy Riese now!

13. Wil, saw that you are headed to Seattle next month. I look forward to talking with you. I am the Navy guy who was in Afghanistan who thinks you would be well recieved as a USO tour guest, or a Trek to the Troops guest.
    Joe

14. Okay I know somebody else asked this but that was before my time – when are you coming to Australia? Please please please come. We have pie, punch and the very best beer in the world.
    Pu-leeeeeeeez
    I promise to be good if you come

15. Aw come on Wil. I was really hoping you’d say that there would be cake, but I guess that would have been a lie.

16. I highly recommend Charlie Huston’s books too. I think you’d like them too. His run on Moon Knight is a real schizophrenic treat, also.

17. Awesome, you get to meet Kevin J. Anderson! Tell him hello for me!
    Oh, and shake your own hand for me as well…I can’t get there:-(

18. Wil there’s a small problem with your book tour…..It comes no where near chicago.

19. Hmmm… No pie? … Look, California’s kind of a long drive for me. So… when you comin’ to Fort Lauderdale? Huh? A while ago, I promised you a Guiness if you came to South Florida. Not enough? Okay. If you come to South Florida, I’ll treat you to a Guiness AND I’ll make a pie. How’s that? (Still no cake though. The cake’s a lie).

20. Wow, looks like alot of people here have an obsession with pie….??? Anyway, long time reader first time commenter here. Wish you could make it out here to the midwest a little with your tour or just come out here to hang out and party with us, St. Louis is a real happenin’ place ya know.:) Of course this is a Busch/Budweiser town, but I’m sure I could find you some Guiness somewhere….

21. Can we come by the booth and punch a pie?

22. Hi Wil,
    I’ve been a guest lurker on your site for quite a while. I finally kicked myself in the backside to create an account so that I could tell you how much I enjoy your writing. I really and truely do enjoy your work (believe it or not, that is a big deal for me). I don’t read very much fiction (probably because I write so much of it). However, I do enjoy your very honest and often humorously self depricating looks at yourself and life in general. I look forward to future books and I’m sorry that I won’t be able to see you at the LA book festival.
    Best regards
    Q
    ps – I wasn’t going to relay this story. However, it’s been long enough since the event and Rick is unlikely to read this post. Also, I was annoyed when I read how you had been snubbed by him.
    I knew Rick and Brannon (Brannon through a mutual aquaintance) during the second half of Enterprise. There were chats and e-mails about scripts and story direction. I always thought (and still think) that Rick is a very fine producer and that Brannon is a good writer (mostly when he is grounded by another good writer, such as Ron Moore). However, neither does well outside those roles. Rick is only a mediocre writer and Brannon doesn’t have the skills for the enormous tasks that are involved in producing (particularly a franchise like Trek).
    Anyway, to make a long story short, I got the last script for Enterprise. I recall that you said that you stopped watching it by this point(along with about 8 million others). Reading it, I could taste the bile working it’s way to the surface (I had to stop and take several swigs of Maalox straight from the bottle). This was the biggest piece of steaming horse crap I had ever read. Not because it was a bad story. It wasn’t (not really). It just wasn’t a fitting end to the show. Rick and Brannon had already screwed the pooch (oh that poor dog) with three years of trying to get it right. They could have at least given the fans of the show a decent send off. But that was not to be. I saw where they were coming from. They saw Trek as ending and wanted to do a nice tie in with the other shows. But what they didn’t realize was that Trek was only ending…for them.
    Telling Rick and Brannon that their script was giving me hives wasn’t going do anything. Production had already started. Even if I had any kind of pull with them (which I didn’t), there was no way to change it. But I couldn’t just leave it be.
    So, I plotted Star Trek Insurrection. A thought had occured to me (yes, I do get them occasionally). I did some quick math: 10 days finished script + 7 days shooting + 3 weeks post production = Kobyashi Maru, Captain Kirk style. This “forumla” was basically the amount of time it would take before it would be impossible to determine where a script leak came from. Not working on the show or Paramount, I had no job to worry about. However, a lot of other folks did, and knowing Rick as I did, he would be none too happy. So, when I was confident that the script had been floating around long enough that too many people had seen it to link a leak to anyone, I quietly contacted several internet outlets with the important points of the script.
    To say that the shite hit the fan is an understatment. Rick was LIVID! He wanted to know who had leaked the script. However, my calculations proved sound (which is incredible, given how bad I am at math) and he couldn’t pin the leak on an individual person or even a department. The script had passed through too many hands. Fan reactions was extremely negative. Rick and Brannon had said that they were giving the fans a “valentine.” What it really was, was a big middle finger (with neon lights and a fifty piece orchestra) and I felt that the fans needed to return the gesture in kind.
    It was a small victory. However, I though that Rick and Brannon needed to be put in their place after years of screwing around, only to deliver some ego stroking parting shot. They have, over the years, expressed varying degrees of regret for their decisions. I suppose this will be the closest they’ll ever come to saying, “We screwed up!” As one of the many people to have crossed swords with Rick, I thought that you might appreciate this little tale.
    Q

23. For anyone trying to find Dickson Court North on the UCLA campus: search for it under Points of Interest on the interactive campus map.

24. More of you might be able to see Wil live if he would, perhaps, respond to all his appearance request emails…

25. That’s OK, thanks to passover I wouldn’t be able to eat the pie anyways 🙂

26. Robert,
    I’m an atheist. Can I have your pie? 🙂
    Q

27. Hi Wil:
    Just thought you might be interested in a pretty cool event happening at Cal Poly Pomona (I work there) – it’s a Wireless Telecommunications Symposium, and it takes place April 24-26. Len Kleinrock (a “father of the Internet”) will be there, among others. Check out the speakers, etc. at http://www.csupomona.edu/~wtsi/speakers.htm – It’s not cheap, but there are options for people who just want to attend part (the Queen Mary reception or the Kleinrock dinner)…it’s for professionals and academics – there are “learning” components and talks about the future of wireless communications – and then there is also time to just party! I know a lot of people are pretty excited about it! – if you or anyone else wants to attend, just register online or call the number on the website. I hope to see you there!
    Best wishes.

28. Wanted to go, but Life intervened. Hope it’s going great!

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