Category: Books

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you walk outside, and everything just says “SOON”

Posted on By Wil

There is a massive winter storm barreling toward us right now, expected to arrive in the next 18 or so hours. Yesterday, it was unseasonably warm and stupidly beautiful. Today, it’s eerily calm, under grey skies. The air is so still, it carries the train whistles from all the way across the valley, and every lawnmower in town sounds like it’s next door. You walk outside, and everything just says, soon.1 Even the corvids and squirrels seem reluctant to come out of the trees, It never rains in Southern California, man. It pours.

This past weekend, though, it was great, and I was grateful for it.

Last Friday, Anne and I celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. We have both been so busy and overwhelmed for so long, we planned to skip our usual weekend getaway and just go out for a really fancy dinner, instead. So we went to Mozza in Hollywood, where I think Anne discovered that pasta can actually be wonderful and not what her husband struggles to assemble in our kitchen.

We had such a wonderful meal, and such a nice time out, on a Friday night like PEOPLE WHO GO OUT TO DO THINGS! And that would have been enough, but about two weeks ago, Anne said that she was really missing our usual weekend away, and how did I feel about using points to go somewhere close? I admitted that I, too, was feeling sad we weren’t going to have two days of absolutely nothing but Us. Funny how we both really wanted to do this together, but kept talking ourselves out of it because we’d agreed together that we would.

Anyway, she found a place, cashed in some points, and we spent the weekend up in Santa Barbara. It was nothing but long walks, petting dogs, eating incredible food, and prioritizing each other, our relationship, our friendship, and our marriage. Each of us truly is married to our best friend, and even after 26 years (30+ total), we still have all kinds of fun goofing off together. We have consistently done the hard work of being married and being a family, and that investment pays off at like fifty million percent all the time.

It’s just like … it’s such a blessing and so awesome to spend our lives together, and be mom and dad to our kids. We have worked really hard for a good life, and I’m grateful that I’ve worked so hard to heal my PTSD, so I can actually enjoy living it.

And now…

This week’s story dropped earlier today! It is Disassembling Light, by Kel Coleman. It originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue 385.

This is a magical story (meaning that Magic features prominently in the narrative) about a man who holds tremendous knowledge and skill in his heart, and the hopeful apprentice who comes to learn from him. It also makes me wonder what good is knowledge, if its holder doesn’t freely share it?

You can get It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton wherever you get your podcasts. Here’s some links to the more popular services:

You can also support the show on Patreon, where you’ll get the show with no ads, as well as some spiffy extras that all the cool kids are into these days.

Today, I recorded two episodes. One of the things we did is the most beautiful, heartbreaking, I-need-a-minute-to-compose-myself story I have read in a long, long time. I’m so excited for you to hear it. It’s also the source of the show’s first official blooper, where you will get to hear me use all my, uh, colorful metaphors in rather creative ways.

I would absolutely love to hear your feedback on the show, if you’re a listener. I feel like we’re doing good work, and putting good art into the world, but I have no idea what the audience thinks if I don’t ask, because we aren’t exactly in a theater together. Although, if I can figure out how to stage one of these stories, I’m into seeing what that would look and sound like. Maybe something cool is there, way off in the mysterious future.

  1. Unfortunately, it’s not the soon we are all waiting for ↩︎
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I’m a Lego! And a new It’s Storytime – The Odyssey Problem by Chris Willrich

Posted on By Wil

Oh shit. I just hit publish, so the email already went out, and I am not going to send another. I can’t believe I forgot to even mention that Lego revealed a whole lot about the Enterprise D set that drops later this month. Can you believe I forgot this? It’s been such a full and exciting day, this got eclipsed like Darth Cheney finally joining Kissinger at the War Criminal’s table on Tuesday.

I woke up to a flood of text messages from friends who all wanted to make sure I knew about it (I love my friends so much) but my favorite one said “new contact image for you just dropped” with this image attached

I am beside myself. I’m a minifig, you guys! And I am so so so so happy that they chose this version of Wesley, specifically. Way to go, buddy!

Okay, I now turn you over to me from about ten minutes ago:

I should have posted this yesterday. My bad! I’m working all week on a narration that I have wanted permission to do for years. YEARS. Every night I go to sleep super excited to get back to work, and every morning I wake up excited that I get to do this.

That said, it’s been hard work, and I’m exhausted. You’d never believe it was possible to get exhausted, I bet, sitting in a chair and reading all day. And you’d probably be right, if that’s all I was doing. In fact, I wouldn’t have believed it, myself, if I didn’t have firsthand experience. But it’s performance, if you’re doing it right, and performance takes energy. Four straight hours of performance is a lot of performance, it turns out.

To be clear: I love that I’m exhausted. It feels earned and it’s satisfying. It’s also, uh, exhausting. I am entirely out of mana at the end of the day, and I didn’t think reaching into hit points for my blog was the best idea.1

I don’t know when I can get into the details of this — I have such a story to tell about today’s work — but I hope it’s soon.

Oh! This is SUCH a good excuse to put in my subscribe thingy. If you don’t want to miss that post, or any other post, you can do that here:

Nice.

If you follow my Instagram, you may recognize that I’m working in the same booth where I record It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton. Allow me to use THAT to now fulfill the promise of the blog title, and tell you that a new episode dropped yesterday.

This week’s story is The Odyssey Problem, by Chris Willrich, originally published in Clarkesworld Magazizne. Ohhhh it is so good. I’d love to hear what you think.

It’s Story Time With Wil Wheaton is available wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now at

You can also support the show on Patreon, where you’ll get the show with no ads, as well as some spiffy extras that all the cool kids are into these days.

Oh! Oh! Reminder that Corey, Jerry, and I are coming to a city near you2 with a 35mm print of Stand By Me. Tickets are available for three screenings:

December 5 at Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, New Jersey

December 4 at Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire.

December 6 at Lynn Memorial Auditorium in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Everything you need to know, including how to buy tickets and VIP packages is at stand by me live dot com

Hey, hasn’t it great to wake up yesterday and finally have the day you voted for? It feels good, doesn’t it?The beginning of his end is upon us, friends.

  1. Actually, I can confirm this, as I just realized while proofing this post that I am currently dipping into hit points. ↩︎
  2. Offer valid if you live near Red Bank, NJ, Concord, NH, or Lynn, MA. Offer void in Iceland, for some stupid reason. ↩︎
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It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton – The Dark House

Posted on By Wil

And we’re back! My podcast, It’s Storytime With Wil Wheaton, returns today with a spooky story to celebrate the spooky season.

This week, it’s The Dark House, by AC Wise.

A photographer’s obsession with an unsettled subject exposes two friends to a darkness that won’t be contained by frames…

It’s so good! I had a great time narrating it.

If you’re interested, take a look at my Patreon for a feed with no ads and a bunch of cool behind the scenes extras. If you subscribe before 5pm Pacific tomorrow, you can watch me do a live reading of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Oh! And starting today, you can get most of the Patreon stuff through your Apple account with Apple Subscriptions, if you prefer to do it that way.

I love that I get to do this, and it means more to me than you know that so many of y’all tune in and love it with me.

I’m around all day today, and I’ll be checking in here if anyone wants to talk about the show.

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in the heat of the summer better call out a plumber

Posted on By Wil

Back in the old days, the good old days, when it was generally accepted that Fascism and Nazis were bad, bloggers would write these posts that were sort of recaps of what we were doing, what we’d been doing, with some links to stuff we liked. This is one of those posts.

Good morning. I’m in Jackson, Mississippi, for the Mississippi Comi Con. Come see me if you’re local! I’m here all day today and tomorrow.

My travel yesterday was basically uneventful, once I was actually on a plane and in the sky. My connection in Dallas was delayed three different times, and each time the airline told me that my gate had been changed from where I was, to the gate that was farthest away in the terminal. So I spent a couple hours walking back and forth, which honestly wasn’t bad at all. I probably got in more steps walking in that terminal than I get on a typical Thursday.

The invention of noise canceling earbuds has made all the difference for me, with travel. I can wrap myself in a bit of a cocoon, and just get where I am going without a lot of sensory overload and overwhelm. Usually, I just listen to one of my playlists, but I have a mountain of Audible credits that I’ve been turning into books. For the last week or so, I’ve been going back and forth between Rip It Up And Start Again, by Simon Reynolds, and Peter Hook’s book about Joy Division1. They are both oral histories of the post-punk movement from around 1976 to 1990, from different points of view. The parts where they overlap are just fascinating. Hookie has his memories of specific events, and Reynolds collects memories from other people who were at the same event. I’m sure there are other books, from other members of other bands, that would fill in even more details. This is one of the reasons I just love history so much, and why it’s so satisfying to track down primary sources.

When I wasn’t listening to those books, I read a short story that’s one of the Hugo finalists2, Marginalia, by Mary Robinette Kowal. It’s featured in Uncanny Magazine, which is where a TON of finalists were published this year.3

I usually arrive hungry (thanks, Anthony Bourdain4) but I did some math in Dallas and realized I wouldn’t be landing until almost 11, and I didn’t want to eat at midnight, even if my body insisted it was only 9pm. So I looked around the terminal and my choices were Starbucks and Whataburger, or some combination of granola bars, a dodgy-looking apple, and a sad Wil. So I chose Whataburger and OMG it was perfect. I don’t usually eat stuff like that, and it was like BOOM COMFORT FOOD from the first bite. It reminded me of the little burger shacks that were in parking lots in the Valley when I was a kid, with those perfect drive-thru fries that you’d eat half of before you got home. My body wasn’t thrilled that I put a burger and fries into it so late in my day, but my body’s been kind of a dick lately, so it can just deal with it.

ANYWAY. I finally got to my hotel. Finally got checked in. Got to my room just around 1130pm, not hungry, but wide awake. Neat.

I watched some YouTube, read some blogs, and finally fell asleep around 1am local time. I slept shockingly well, woke up feeling fully rested, and now I’m trying to find things to do until it’s time to go to work. I’ve actually run out of brain cycles for reading, or even listening to someone else read — does that happen to other people? You really want to keep going because you’re so interested or enthralled or whatever, but your brain is just like, “dude I can’t. I’ve run out of focus and I don’t know what to tell you.” It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me.

While I was trying to wind my brain down, I watched this video about merch5, and now I want to record myself narrating a very short …. something … that’s up to about 5 minutes, and release it on extremely indie, extremely DIY, cassettes and vinyl. When Sean Bonner and I did Saturday Night Massacre back in 20176, as part of the Kickstarter one week project thingy, we wanted to do something like this, and I can’t remember if we actually made physical media or not. I don’t think we did, but just because we ran out of time. It looks like it isn’t too difficult to get the things made, though. It’s just the fulfillment that would take some meaningful time.

If I created some bespoke physical media that cost around $30 all-in after shipping, would you be into that? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll prioritize accordingly.

Oh! Speaking of physical things … we have a new enamel Good Morning Nerds pin for you at Stands! Check it out!

I love the image of my bookcase they put on the card, my glasses, and the spout of hair that always explodes off the side of my head. It’s the little details, y’all..

And I brought Trek Side of the Moon back at Cottonbureau.

This con marks the official beginning of my 2025 Summer Convention Season. Over the next month or so, here’s where I’m scheduled:

  • July 4-5 I will be in Montreal for Montreal Comic Con
  • July 11-13 I will be in Knoxville for Fanboy Expo
  • July 20-22 I will be in Atlanta for ATL Comic Convention

I think there are one or two others that I’m not remembering, but that’s July. I really should have a page with this information that I can link to, rather than relying on my memory, but I’ve never done more than five shows in a calendar year before now, and my memory has been more than enough to keep them all straight. This year, I’m doing more than I have in a long time because I feel like we need to get out and do the fun things, get together with our fellow nerds in a safe place to express ourselves and see each other, now more than ever. Everything is terrible, but at least we can have a few hours, a couple days, of peace and respite, surrounded by people who love the things we love, the same way we love them.

Community is important in the best of times. It’s VITAL when we have thugs brutalizing, terrorizing, and kidnapping our friends and neighbors, under orders from a wannabe despot who seeks to use the power of the State — power that belongs to the people — to wage war against citizens who won’t accept him as our king. Going to conventions, game days at your local game shop, Neighborhood Nights Out in your community, and gently interacting with other people is a massive bulwark against tyranny7, according to professor Timothy Snyder, one of the leading experts in the world on the subject.

So do your patriotic duty and go to a convention this summer! It’ll be fun! Joy is resistance!

I’m so blessed and so grateful that I attract kind, creative, enthusiastic people when I am at a show. I always get the most surprising and beautiful things, and I love to share them. As always, I’ll be posting to my Instagram stories from the con. Clever is my Kryptonite, and there are always clever people at these things.

Okay, that’s all for today. I hope everyone has the most wonderful weekend possible. Take care of yourselves, and take care of each other.

  1. He has the most soothing voice, ever. I feel like I’m sitting in a cafe with him while he tells me all about this time in his life. The way he makes me feel as I’m listening to him is what I hoped to give to people who listen to Still Just A Geek. ↩︎
  2. I have this idea to narrate all the finalists in the short story category for my podcast. I don’t think we’ll be back in production in time to do this before the awards are handed out, but it’s something I’d love to do next year, and every year after that, if they’ll let me. ↩︎
  3. Have I mentioned that Lynne and Michael Thomas, who edit Uncanny, found all the stories I read in the first season of It’s Storytime? If I can afford it, I’m hoping to work with them again. They are amazing. ↩︎
  4. May his memory be a blessing. ↩︎
  5. As it relates to DIY and indie creators. This guy is as enthusiastic about this kind of thing as I am, and loves to make fun stuff just because it’s fun to make. There are a lot of ancillary benefits, as he observes, but even if you’re not someone who would enjoy (or is looking for) those particular benefits, his excitement, enthusiasm, and creativity shine though. I can see how just making this thing he thought was silly and fun affected not only his creativity, but the whole band’s creativity. ↩︎
  6. GodDAMN was this project fun. The history, the Kickstarter, all of it. It’s one of those things we did because we wanted it to exist, and we didn’t care if a hundred people or zero people liked it. As it turned out, 138 people liked it. That’s a nice, even, 140 when you count both of us. ↩︎
  7. 12. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life. ↩︎
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it’s storytime with wil wheaton episode 7 – end of play by chelsea sutton

Posted on By Wil

Well, here we are in Spain. I feel like I am just getting started, and I wish I had more new episodes yet to come, but we have come to the final episode of what’s turning out to be one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever done. I set out to make ten episodes for the first season of the podcast, and through a series of unfortunate events, lost two of them. That means that this is the final episode of my proof of concept, shakedown cruise, for what I hope will become a weekly series that runs for years.

I have learned so much during this process about myself, as a creator, producer, and host. I’ve learned a lot about promotion and marketing. I don’t know precisely how much XP I farmed through the whole thing, but I’ve gone up a couple of levels. I know how to do this, now.

I honestly don’t know what comes next. I’m going to have an all-hands meeting with the team to look at total downloads other metrics, and they will tell me if it looks like there is enough audience to attract sponsors and Patreon subscribers.

My gut tells me that it isn’t going to happen. I don’t feel it catching and growing the way I did with Tabletop. That’s probably because the podcast space is crowded, and even though I’m not necessarily competing with another audiobook podcast (I think I’m the only one), I am absolutely competing with every other podcast in the universe, because there is only so much time available, and those True Crime podcasts are pretty great. But I’m hopeful that my gut is filled with a lifetime of disappointment and sadness, so it’s not giving me truly useful advice. I’m hoping that I get good news, wihle bracing myself if it doesn’t come.

All of that said, if this is all I ever get to do, I am so happy and proud of this. I do not regret taking this chance, investing my time and money and spirit. From a creative standpoint, this is a huge success. I am so proud of my work, I feel so good about it, and I am so grateful that I am closer to my artistic self now than I was six months ago, entirely because this whole effort demanded that I give it everything I had to give. To get there, I had to really clean up and get rid of a lot of baggage and lingering bits of my former life as an on-camera actor. A wonderful and unexpected benefit of that (other than the genuine emotional healing and trauma recovery) is that I have a much clearer picture of who I am as a person and an artist.

I am supposed to be coy and play it cool, fake it ’till I make it and all that, but I am going to tell you, even though they all tell me I am not supposed to, that I want to do this podcast as my daily job more than anything. I want to feel the satisfaction of putting something good into the world, the joy and the rush and the art that only happens when I’m narrating audiobooks or working in animation. And since animation doesn’t seem interested in giving me feedback on a single audition going on for two decades now, I’m going to lean hard into narrating audiobooks.

If you’re in the audience for It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton, I need you to know how grateful I am that you’re trusting me with your time and attention. The world is on fire, everything is terrible, and we all desperately need to find as many moments of peace as we can. It’s my hope that I can tell you a story once a week, and for an hour or so, you can get a rest from all of *gestures broadly at everything*. I sincerely hope I can keep doing this for you (and for myself), and if I do, you’re the reason why.

And a very very very special thank you to everyone who supported me on Patreon. You are part of a very small group of people (much smaller than I anticipated) and I hope you enjoyed the things I shared specifically with you, as my way of saying thank you.

So enough about me, let’s get to the reason you’re here… this week’s hopefully not final episode of It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton!

Every single story I did is wonderful, and I love each one on its on merits for specific reasons. This week’s, however, is a stand out for me, among other great work. This story is almost a monologue, and I can see myself doing it as a one act play at the theatre where it is set, just down the road from here. Every story I narrate uses at least some of the skill I developed when I was an actor, but this one just demanded that I use all of them.

Actually, let me restate that: it gave me permission to feel the joy that actors must feel when they give a fulsome performance that goes all the way to the marrow of their creative selves. That was rad.

Our editors did some very gentle work on this, too, that fills out a bit of space and makes the whole thing just so much more than I even hoped it would be. I’m so excited to share this with all of you.

Here’s my intro:

This is the part of my introduction where I talk about the story you’re about to hear, where I write what I call “the magazine heading” which will help you press pause on the real world and come with me into Story Time. This part is challenging for me; I need to summarize just enough of the plot to entice you, without giving away anything important.

I’m struggling with this part more than usual today, because this story doesn’t fit neatly into any single category. It’s a ghost story, it’s a love story, it’s a gorgeous monologue that cries out to be staged in the real life theatre where the titular play is set. It is a beautiful way to wrap up our first season. There is nothing I can say about it now that adds anything to it, so I invite you to take your seat, because the house lights have come down, and we have to begin, if we are going to get to the End of Play.

You’re going to love this, I promise.

As always:

You can also support the show on Patreon, where you’ll get the show with no ads, as well as some spiffy extras that all the cool kids are into these days.

Thanks, everyone. I’m so glad you’re here, and so grateful that you’re part of this.