Tuesday night, I asked Andrew (my editor and good friend, for those of you who are just walking into the theater for the first time) if he thought we could put together a chapbook for the 2008 Geek Tour . . . and have it ready to give to the printer about 18 hours later.
Andrew is a fucking rockstar, and over the next 90 minutes or so of manic IMing we put together something that I’m massively proud of. The result of a fucos that can only be born in terror is something really, really special.
See, the other chapbooks I’ve done (and I try to do a different one each summer) are all pretty cool, with nifty bits of stuff that’s awesome, but this one is different than anything I’ve done so far.
My author’s note! Let me show you it!
Every summer, I make one of these limited chapbooks and take them with me on the inevitable summer convention tour. In the past, I’ve pulled material from whatever I’m working on, as sort of a fall preview, but this year the book I’m working on is so top secret, I’d have to print the chapbook on self-destructing paper, and while that would make it a very limited edition, the costs associated are kind of prohibitive.
So for 2008’s limited edition chapbook extravaganza, I’ve put together the first ever Wil Wheaton Sampler. With the help of my editor Andrew, who is a former ninja warrior and recreational time traveler, I’ve pulled together things I like from all three of my books, my blog, and this groovy collaborative fiction project I play with called Ficlets. I’ve also included, for the first time anywhere, one of the scripts I wrote for a sketch comedy show at the ACME Comedy Theater.
If you like what you see here, and would like to read more, come visit me online. I’m at wilwheaton.typepad.com.
Namaste.
Wil Wheaton
May 2008
I was going to call this Wil Wheaton’s Hot Cocoa Box Sampler (Farkisms FTW!) but I have a tradition of using song titles that I didn’t want to break, so this one is called Sunken Treasure, with the subtitle "Wil Wheaton’s Hot Cocoa Box Sampler." Hee. Awesome.
I am so proud of this. It’s one of the things I was working on during my massive deadline panic. The collected stories are some of my favorites, and I’m thrilled to include outtakes from Happiest Days as well as a script from ACME, which I’ve never reprinted anywhere before.
As always, this will be limited to 200 copies, and will become available at Super-Con this weekend in San Jose. If I’m lucky, I’ll sell about half of them this weekend, and I’ll have the remaining 100 to bring with me to the rest of the cons on the 2008 Geek Tour. I don’t have any plans to sell these online, but I like this little book so much I may change my mind on that later this year.
Oh, speaking of the 2008 Geek Tour, I’m adding another stop next month, which will be announced in its own post a little later today.
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Hey Wil!
Glad to hear you have another book coming out. I hope this next stop you announce is somewhere in or near Fort Worth Texas , but I know its unlikely. But I can still hope , til then I’ll just enjoy my memories from your performance in Las Vegas at the Con last year where I with my sadistic ways first made my Molly blush with the drop of a hat ! *Drops Dark Side of the Moon hat* LOL
I had a dream last night about playing Bunco with you. It was a bit odd. you kept dropping your dice.
That’s namaste for you, I guess.
Boss on the chapbook.
Awesome awesome. Please tell me I can get one at PAX in August!
still very depressed you didn’t make an “official” stop in NYC. Oh well, next time.
I will probably miss you at Comic-Con in San Diego this summer, as I’ll just be coming home from 3 weeks in Israel the night before it ends, but kudos on the chapbook.
Am I really late on this, or do I have the pleasure of introducing you to The Secret Lives of Stormtroopers?
Were you in an Emergent type Fucos, like the Qeng Ho?
“Half,” you says. Snort, snort. I will not be surprised if you have to reprint before SD, or only have 25 to sell.
🙁
That sadface is for you not having something else for me to blow my money on at ECCC. Oh well, it’s probably a GOOD thing that I didn’t spend more than I had already…
I believe it’s Hot Cocoa Sampler Box, not ‘box sampler’.
-Sarah Jessica Farker
We just saw you in January in Phoenix! I wish you had had these then. I would have bought one in heartbeat. Any chance you’ll change your mind and print enough to sell online? Those of us that can’t get to another event on your tour this year would certainly buy them up. I especially want to read your ACME script.
If you print more you’ll sell more. 🙂 Even if you only print 200 in an edition and sell 1st printing books, 2nd printing books, etc. I’d totally be cool with buying a third printing or something — I just want to give you shiny rocks for bound sheets of dead trees. (No pressure or anything! This is just my lame attempt at trying to get you to print enough that I can get one and be funny. 🙂 I totally grok that you have limited runs because it’s hard work to mail these all out yourself. And if you spend all your time mailing books you have no time to blog and write more books. I’m just trying to score a chapbook because I’ve never gotten one before. 🙂 )
Can’t wait to hear about the new book and the new tour stop.
Cheers!
@calyxa: OMG you’re right. I’m retarded.
Well, at least there’s only 200 of these.
*facepalm*
On Fark right now, you must all check out the extended awesomeness in this thread:
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=3589646
Why oh why do all the cool things happen on the West Coast?
*cries*
Man, I hope I can get a copy of Sunken Treasure at PAX. Man, can’t believe it’s so close…
Sigh. Why didn’t you do all these cool things on the left coast when I lived there?
[subliminal message]You want to sell the chapbooks online so that people who don’t live on the west coast can get them[/subliminal message]
Hey Wil, If you should decide to release it more widely I’d definately buy one. It’s kinda difficult to get from the UK to any of the American conventions
OK, a straw and a camel’s back have finally resulted in serious trauma. I don’t want to be that whiny guy, but I’m starting to feel like a second-class fan here.
“Hey, your performance / Q and A session at Con X was awesome / informative / inspiring” (but most people here are never going to hear it).
“I’m putting together a book” (but we probably won’t be able to get a copy if we’re anywhere but the West Coast).
Yes, I know, I could make the effort, but attending PAX, for example, would set me back the best part of £1,000, which I (and I guess a lot of your UK-based fans) just don’t have (have you seen our gas prices recently?!? I mean, seriously, £1.11 a litre?!?). As for British cons, comicbookconventions.com lists a grand total of 2 for the UK and it’ll be just as tough for you to get to us as it is for us to get to you.
Anyway, to give some kind of point to this, while I understand that making your work available to a wider audience dilutes what is (I assume) meant to be an exclusive experience for our con-going WWDN brethren, there are others here who need reassurance that they’re a part of the Wheaton-verse too. For the past couple of weeks, it’s just felt like I’ve been outside, nose pressed to the glass, while an awesome party rocks on inside, is all.
(I got to use “brethren”! Word-of-the-day toilet paper FTW!)
Gratz on the new chapbook.
🙁 cause you go to cons out west and I only manage to get to Origins anymore. So if you decide to sell them online I’d queue up. 🙂
Wil said:
“Oh, speaking of the 2008 Geek Tour, I’m adding another stop next month, which will be announced in its own post a little later today.”
(taps foot, waiting)
Wherever this next Geek Tour stop is, the fans who might go are surely anxious to hear all about it. Plans must be made, and all that.
So spill, already!
At your convenience, of course.
Why should the San Jose Con get all the love? Just because it’s “Super”?! Whoop-d-effin-do.
You shoulda (that’s a word, ask anyone in Texas) started selling them at Emerald City, I would’ve bought one fosh. If you’re not going to sell them online, perhaps I could just paypal you the cash and you’d send me one off the books, hmmmmm?
WWDD: We didn’t think up the chapbooks until after ECCC. It wasn’t an intentional slight. (Wil wasn’t kidding when he said the whole thing got put together in less than 24 hours.)