Category: blog

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It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton is almost … hear.

Posted on By Wil

Saturday night, Anne and I went to a screening of a friend’s new movie, called Locked (it’s fantastic; a tight, clever, surprising thriller that I think is about late stage capitalism if you squint). While we were waiting to go in, we ran into one of our neighbors, and we were having the talk you have with neighbors who you’re friendly with, who you like, but who you don’t really know all that well. They’re kind people, though, and I always enjoy chatting with them.

As we were talking, I noticed someone over my neighbor’s shoulder was looking at me. I have seen this look innumerable times in my life from someone who knows my work, and is just confirming in their mental reference library that the guy in the Sisters of Mercy T-shirt is the same guy they saw on their TV.

I could have given him the “yep, it’s me” nod that I have watched my famous friends do for years, but that just felt weirdly uncomfortable in the moment so I didn’t let him know that I knew that he was in the process of knowing. I put my focus and attention on my neighbor and listened to him.

That’s when this guy closed the distance between us in a couple of strides, looked me square in the face and said, “WIL WHEATON! I CAN’T WAIT FOR YOUR PODCAST!” Then he disappeared into the crowd.

I just about fell over. As long as I can remember, people have been stopping me to tell me something about Stand By Me, or Star Trek, or Big Bang Theory. That’s awesome. I’m grateful that audiences enjoy and remember the work I have done for other people. It’s genuinely wonderful to know that. But this is the first time — ever — someone has come up to me out of a crowd and expressed excitement about a little project I created entirely on my own, paid for out of my pocket, and made precisely the way I wanted to make it, with the help of some extremely talented people. This didn’t even happen with Tabletop until we were deep into the second season.

It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton is going to start hitting podcast apps in about 15 hours. It’s bracing that it’s actually here. I started working on this almost two years ago. More than once along the way, I ran into an obstacle that threatened to end it before it even began. More than once, the part of me that keeps Carrie’s Mom alive in my head yelled at me, “THEY’RE ALL GONNA LAUGH AT YOU!”* More than once, the fear of what may go wrong threatened to overwhelm and drown the excitement for what could go right.

But something inside of me kept telling me that this was a good idea. This was something that absolutely had an audience, if only I could find it.

This guy outside the AMC in Burbank (no, not that one, the other one) — a young guy, too! He couldn’t have been 30! — gave me this gift he didn’t even know he was giving me. His enthusiasm hit me like a super stimpack, and I let myself feel it.

That’s a huge thing for me, y’all. Growing up in a house where I was a target for the bully I had instead of a father taught me to keep everything that mattered to me as close to my heart and as far away from him and his mocking cruelty as possible. If I ever expressed joy or pride about something I did, he took it away from me and replaced it with humiliation. My brother frequently joined in on the fun while our mother sat quietly and let it happen. It wasn’t great.

Well … fuck that guy (disdainful). Fuck all of them, actually (celebratory). I’m so proud of myself and so excited for this thing I worked so hard to create. Of course I’m terrified! Of course I’m so nervous I can’t really eat! But that’s because I know I made something I feel good about, and I just really hope enough people respond to it to allow me to do more. I’m not worried that they’re all gonna laugh at me (and, for the record, Wil, that’s never happened so maybe you can stop doing that to yourself); I’m hopeful that they all find out about this thing I think they’re gonna love.

I know that a lot of you reading this have been with me for 25 years or so (holy shit can you believe that? Let’s take a moment to feel old, and to celebrate our defiant survival**!) with a front row seat to all the ups and downs, all the times things seemed bleak and all the times I got to celebrate something wonderful.

I had and have the courage and the drive to make this because I know that. I know that you all are there, because you’ve always been there, just beyond the glare of the footlights. I can’t always see you, but I can feel the energy out there in the darkness. I hear your laughter and applause. I can feel when something I make, because I thought it would be fun, turns out to be something you enjoyed or even loved.

I really believe that It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton is one of those things, and by this time tomorrow, we will find out if I’m right, and I will get to make more seasons.

I will absolutely need your help to make that happen. If you listen and you enjoy it, please rate and review, like and subscribe, and above all: tell your friends who you think will also like it that they (and you)can subscribe now at

Thanks, everyone, for all the support you’ve shared with me for a quarter of a century (oh my god i am so old) and for making it possible for me to take a shot at finally having my dream job.

*If you get this reference, you should schedule your colonoscopy.

**If your survival has not been defiant, please substitute your appropriate experience. Mine has been all kinds of defiant.

blog

I made a thing!

Posted on By Wil

Hi friends! I am so excited to announce It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton, my new podcast. Our first episode drops on March 26th.

This idea emerged from my creative self the same way that Tabletop did. It spung, fully-formed, into my face when my friend who has been writing since we were in high school told me that he had finally been published.

I was so excited for him, and I loved his story so much, I thought it would be cool to narrate it for him, one friend to another, in celebration of something that’s been such a long time coming. As I pulled my mic out of the closet, and opened up Audacity to do one of my signature DIY, lo-fi thingies, a voice in my head said, “Hey, man. I think this could be the basis of a podcast. Hear me out: you’re a respected and acclaimed narrator. What if you looked for new works from great authors who haven’t yet found their audience, and narrated them? What if you used the privilege you have earned to help boost other people’s creative voices and careers?”

This was a good idea, I thought. But I didn’t know that anyone else would agree, so I attempted to tackle it entirely on my own.

Two miserable, frustrating months later, I concluded that I am not cut out to be a slush reader, or a content editor, and if I was going to move this from idea to thing, I needed help. So I asked some friends who had relevant experience, and built an all-star creative and technical team to do all the things I couldn’t, which allowed me to focus on narrating the stories, which is the part of this I know how to do.

I’m going to yadda yadda over the next year, which was marked by starts and stops, enormous technical challenges, and lots of very good work that kept me going through all of it, and jump ahead to last summer, at the Burbank airport departure terminal A.

I was there with LeVar Burton, waiting to board our flight to a convention.

LeVar had just finished his podcast, which I loved and listened to regularly. When I went looking for a similar podcast to replace it, I couldn’t find one that checked all the boxes that his did … and that’s when I realized I was making the podcast I wanted to hear, profoundly inspired by him and all of his work. I absolutely wasn’t going to move forward without his blessing; he’s family and I’m not going to step on his toes.

So I told him all about it, and asked him if he was cool with it.

To my utter delight, he was as excited about it as I am, and he encouraged me the way a loving parent or family member encourages their kid to follow their dream. Even if this podcast doesn’t find its audience, and only lasts one season, that moment will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I’ve been doing lots of press, and I’ll share those links when they are released. For now, I’d love for you to see the video I made of myself recording the trailer that dropped today:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Wil Wheaton (he/him) (@itswilwheaton)

Here’s everything you need to know, copied from my official podcast page:

You may recognize Wil Wheaton’s name from his acting work in television shows like The Big Bang Theory, Leverage, and Star Trek: The Next Generation, or 1985’s timeless classic, Stand By Me. You may recognize his voice from one of the many audio books he’s narrated, including number one New York Times bestseller, Ready Player One, John Scalzi’s award-winning Collapsing Empire Trilogy, or even his own bestselling memoir, Still Just A Geek.

Now, Wil brings you It’s Storytime, with Wil Wheaton, a weekly audiobook podcast, featuring stories that Wil loves, pulled from the pages of Uncanny, Lightspeed, On Spec, and others. You’re going to meet authors you don’t yet know you love, including some who are being narrated for the very first time. Listeners will travel through time, meet some gods, watch people fall in and out of love, and more, brought to life by Wil’s remarkable narrative voice.

It’s Story Time With Wil Wheaton is available wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday, beginning March 26.

Subscribe now at

I hope you’re as excited about this as I am, and I hope you’ll help me let other people who would enjoy this, know that it exists. The easy part was narrating all these stories and writing all the stuff that went with it; the hard part is helping it reach its audience.

I’ll be checking comments for the next few hours, if you have any questions.

blog

eagles and books and odds and ends

Posted on By Wil

In a wonderful little neighborhood called Larchmont, there’s a wonderful little bookshop called Chevalier’s.

A friend of mine ran into Patrick Stewart there today, and when my friend mentioned that to me, I was reminded of the day a few years ago when Patrick saw my book there, and he texted me a picture of it, because he was excited for me. I’d misplaced that memory, and I’m so grateful that I found it today.

This isn’t Chevalier’s. This is Vroman’s in Pasadena.

I was going to post that on Bluesky, but it was too long. Rather than break it up across posts there, I took it as a reminder that my blog exists for a reason, and this is absolutely a lovely little memory that I can share on at Friday afternoon.

While I have your attention, I want to share some stuff that’s come across my event horizon recently. It’s on the other side of the thingy.

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blog

i say ‘thing’ in this post a LOT.

Posted on By Wil

A few hours ago, I finished my part of this project I’ve been developing and working on for a few years. Now, other artists are making their contributions to the project, as we move it closer to that terrifying and exhilarating moment when we give it to you.

I just wrote this in an email:

“This feels like I’m tempting Fate, but … I’m optimistic. I feel the way I did when we were working on Tabletop, before anyone had seen it. This just feels good, it feels like it fits into a space that is currently vacant, and even if it doesn’t find a huge audience, I know we made something special for the audience we did find.”

Tabletop is the most recent thing I did that totally belonged to me in every way that mattered (until it didn’t. heavy sigh.) and I didn’t realize how much I missed having something like this in my life until I was doing it again with this thing. Working on my own thing lights me up in a way that working on someone else’s thing can’t, even when I love working on their thing as much as I can possibly love working on anything.

AUGH! I am so excited for this I just want to slap it.

There are 13,500 of you subscribed to my posts. Thank you!

blog

a year later, a photo and memory dump from star trek the cruise vii.

Posted on By Wil

This month has been such an awful year, my sense of time is … “weird” is the best I can come up with … in a way it hasn’t been since the lockdown days, when every day felt like Friday, and it never felt like the weekend.

Anyway. When I woke up this morning and plucked the rectangle of doom from its charger, I fumbled it (like you do) and bumped the screen with my thumb as it slipped from my hand and tumbled to the floor, alarm screeching. I groaned, dragged myself out of bed, and then I carefully and mindfully bent over to pick it up because my body is just being such an asshole about the whole I’m fifty-two-almost-fifty-three situation. I silenced the alarm as I cursed the guy who set it for me yesterday.

At some point in the fall to the floor, the rectangle must have switched modes from endless delivery of doom to have some joyful memories because if you look like someone who is going to throw me into a volcano if I don't, because when I slid my thumb across the face to shut it up, it revealed a collage it had made me, from one year ago, when Anne and I were on Star Trek: The Cruise. Oh, little phone I didn’t know I’d have to name FuckTrump all over again when these pictures were taken, I can’t stay mad at you.

This morning’s bedhead went on a milkshake date, did some fun nerdy stuff, watched his favorite human hit one of the jackpots on a slot machine, and watched the sunset.

And I gotta tell you, the joyful memories were abundant, retrieved by all my senses and delivered to me in 7.1 4K Mega Digital Super Surround-o-Rama.

I remembered the kindness shown to me by literally every single passenger I encountered. How everyone gently respected my boundaries, how delightful it was to notice something in the decor that was an easter egg for nerds like me.

All it takes is a few graphics to turn a boring cruise ship elevator into a starship turbolift.
He was so patient while I nerded out and took a selfie.
Right after this picture, I asked him if knew where I could find Tuvix. It was awkward, I admit.

I remembered the hours I had the privilege to spend backstage with my extended Star Trek family, with my Space Mom and Space Little Brother I Never Knew About, before going on stage to perform with them for an audience that wanted to love us.

The Crusher Family Therapy Hour With Todd Stashwick was the first time I’d done improv in years. It was so much fun.

I remembered how great it felt to walk off every stage I was on, feeling like we met their expectations. (I didn’t remember, but was reminded by my blog, that I risked a raw, emotional, vulnerable performance, and was rewarded with a standing ovation.)

I walked off that ship feeling energized, inspired, grateful to be part of something so special, and I didn’t realize until this moment how much I needed to feel the memory of that, right now.

The 2025 cruise is happening as I write this, and I’m envious of my friends and family who are part of it … but I’m also really happy for them and my fellow nerds, because I remember.

I sent this picture to my godson, and he sent back “Who are you supposed to be in that picture? Is it AI?” I guess my sister hasn’t introduced him to Star Trek.
“Mom, I want Wesley.”
“We have Wesley at home.”
Wesley at home:

Thanks for reading, friends. I hope this finds you well. Before you go, if you haven’t subscribed to updates, I’d love for you to do that. I have an incredible announcement coming, and I don’t want you to miss it. (That’s why these horrible reminders are all over the place). A huge thank you and terrorist fist jab to the 13,000 of you who got this in email! I appreciate you.

/subscribe

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