Category Archives: Books

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in the heat of the summer better call out a plumber

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

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.

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it’s storytime with wil wheaton episode 6 – if we make it through this alive by a.t. greenblatt

Happy Wednesday, friends! I’m here to remind you that there’s a new episode of It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton, waiting for you wherever you get your podcasts.

This week’s story is called If We Make It Through This Alive, by A.T. Greenblatt, originally published in Slate.

Here’s my intro as written. (The final that you’ll hear is a little different; this is too long, so I edited it on the fly in my head for the episode):

I must confess that dystopian fiction currently doesn’t have the impossible distance from the present for me that it once did. A story about three women navigating crumbling roads and misogyny in equal measure on a dangerous and frequently deadly road race could have come from this morning’s paper; we just happened to pluck it from Slate.

Get ready to meet three women who have come together with everything at stake, to literally drive toward a shared goal, without losing sight of their individual goals — or themselves — along the way.

This is If We Make It Through This Alive.

I’ve been working on an audiobook for six days, that we will finish tomorrow. This book is so much fun, and I have walked out of the booth on two different days, feeling like I did good work1 that day, like I made some cool art. I am exhausted at the end of each day, and I wake up tired, but I love this so much I can’t wait to get back into the booth to go back to work. What a blessing that is!

  1. I’m not sure if this comes across in text, but I know that my fellow actors know what I mean. It’s when we exit a scene and reaffirm to ourselves: “This is why we do it.” There are scenes that we get through because it’s our job, and there are also scenes that offer us the privilege of doing Good Work, of making Good Art in that moment. Scalzi gives me a lot of those gifts, and this author has given me a couple of wonderful surprises to unwrap. ↩︎
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see into the trees

I get these e-mail updates when someone registers here as a new user. For months, I see one or two every couple of days, and e-mail subscribers are holding steady just under 14,000. I feel like I’m in a bit of a growth plateau, which is a thing that happens.

Weirdly, yesterday morning, new user registration emails started pouring in, and didn’t stop all day. It looks like roughly 250 new accounts were created, which is a m a z i n g … if they are real people and not weird bots. So… are you a newly registered reader? If yes, would you Introduce yourself? Don’t be alarmed when the system tell you that I need to approve your comment; that’s by design. Thank you.

And now, on to the post.

I am profoundly scattered and distracted, on the verge of total overwhelm, because I’ve been working my face off on an audiobook that’s been as much fun as I expected, but is leaving me exhausted at the end of every session. It’s been interesting to note how my vocal fatigue starts to creep in right around 4 hours, about half an hour after my mental fatigue begins to do its thing. Somewhere in the world, there are a lot of recordings of me just hilariously messing up words because my brain can’t keep up.

It can sound ludicrous to anyone who works a 9-5 when I say that after 4 hours of work I’m damn close to both physical and mental exhaustion. It sounds ludicrous to me! But that’s a long time to be performing without a break, and I honestly can’t even imagine what going to six hours or more would feel like. I know people do it, and I tip my hat to them.

The work has been satisfying. The story and the characters are such a fun sandbox to play in, and it feels good to walk out of the studio every day feeling happily exhausted, and creatively fulfilled. I presume that most of you reading this know my whole story, so you know how hard it is for me to feel like I’m worst at what I do best, and it isn’t even something I ever wanted to do in the first place. Narrating audiobooks has opened up this whole amazing world to me where I’m pretty good at what I do best, and I love every second of it. I am so grateful that I have been able to take something that was imposed on me (being an actor), and pull something out of that that truly belongs to me (my narrative voice and skill set).

I feel like this is a good moment to pause and promote a little bit of that. I have been told that I have to promote my work so much I feel like it’s the only thing I do, that it’s way too much, that everyone is sick to death of hearing it … and then do a little more. Good lord. I remember when I thought that making the thing was the hard part; turns out that just letting people know the thing exists is so much harder than I remembered or anticipated.

So.

Here’s Still Just A Geek — currently on sale at Audible for $7.99 — which is roughly 24 hours of you and me sitting together on a long car trip while I tell you my life story to this point. My publisher tells me that it continues to outsell the print version, which is nearly sold out all over the place and is apparently becoming something people are collecting.

Uhhhh… okay? That’s not what I expected but thank you? That’s amazing.

Here are two stories I recently did for John Scalzi that I can confidently recommend to literally anyone whether they already like his work or don’t even know about it: Starter Villain and When The Moon Hits Your Eye. Both are a whole lot of fun, a little silly, light and easy without being empty calories, featuring characters who were deeply satisfying to discover and voice. (I mean, the dolphins. IYKYK).

Right now, Cory Doctorow is touring Picks & Shovels, the second novel in what I hope is an ongoing series that never ends, featuring a character named Martin Hench. I did this, and Bill Gates’ memoir, Source Code, and When The Moon Hits Your Eye, while I was doing the first season of It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton and —

Dang. When I put it that way, I sound much more employed and accomplished than I feel. That’s probably a good thing for me to be aware of, so I can recalibrate my internal sensors to be more reliable.

Anyway, this work of the last four or five months is significant to me, and significant in my career. It’s a moment when I massively leveled up without even noticing that it was happening. It’s kind of like in Fallout 76, when I’ll be out in Wes Tek farming Super Mutants with my fun new “make everything explode” perk, and not even realize I’ve leveled up to a new perk pack. I wasn’t paying attention to the XP, because I was having so much fun doing the things that generated it, and now I have all this fun XP, new perks, and a better build than I did before. I can do things now that I didn’t know I would ever be able to do before. (That’s just for whoever is in the me and Fallout 76 Venn Diagram. The rest of you can safely move on, or ask someone who knows).

It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton news and updates.

This week’s episode ends the first season, which is a major bummer because I feel like we’re just getting started, still introducing the show to the audience, still reaching for that tipping point. I originally planned to do ten, but we could only get seven, and I had no idea that three would be such a big and meaningful number. Let this be a lesson: listen to De La Soul, people. They know what they’re talking about.

Here is an obligatory link to the podcast homepage.

Here is a link to the podcast Patreon.

Here is where I tell you that I’m doing an AMA about these stories and everything that we did to bring them to you, a week from tomorrow (that would be Tuesday, May 6) for everyone who is in the Book Hound tier. I’m trying something I’ve heard on other podcasts: you can ask me questions in the voice mail format, that I can listen to and answer. I expect it will be fun to interact this way, and if it goes well, and I do more episodes, I’ll make it a monthly thing, maybe even weekly. The link for that will be posted to the show’s Patreon by the time this post goes live.

Finally, a teaser for this upcoming episode:

“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 … so I invite you to take your seat, because the house lights are coming down and I’m about to begin.”

Thanks for reading, and thanks for listening. I’m glad you’re here.

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It’s Storytime with Wil Wheaton episode 5 – can i offer you a nice egg in this trying time by iori kusano

It is Wednesday, my dudes, and that means we have a brand new podcast for you.

This week, it’s can i offer you a nice egg in this trying time, originally published in Uncanny Magazine. It’s an absolutely beautiful story that hit me with some unexpected twists in the very best way. Here’s how I introduced it in the show:

I remember being a kid in the late seventies, looking through this book I had called The Catalog of the Future1. It was filled with imaginary vacation destinations, floating cities (in the air and in the sea), rockets, wireless phones, all beautifully illustrated. With a little assistance from my young imagination, I could pretend this catalog had been plucked from the future, that everything inside it was real, and one day, I would live there.

I was a weird, lonely, scared kid. I treasured the escape and the sanctuary I found inside the covers of this book.

Today, in a story that landed on me like an uppercut, I’m going to take you to a Waffle House, somewhere in North America, where we will meet a guy who had his own version of that catalog, his own glimpse of a world where the things that made him weird in our reality made him special and gave his life purpose2. And we’re going to find out how it feels for him to know that he can never go back.

This is Can I Offer You An Egg In This Trying Time?

I can’t believe I’ve already released five episodes. It feels like I’m still waiting for this to begin, in the weirdest way.

I want to remind y’all that I have a Patreon for the show with an ad-free feed, some looks behind the curtain, and my personal reflections on each story. I’m about to do an AMA about the podcast for subscribers using a thing my producer showed me, which lets people leave a voicemail that I can listen to and then answer. I think it’s going to be fun. So look for the official announcement in the coming days.

I’m tired, y’all. I’ve been doing a LOT of writing and there’s been a lot going out, without very much coming in. I’m working on a new audiobook all this week and next week, and my Creative Self is very busy with that. So I don’t have more for you today other than these links to my show in some of the more popular places:

And I think that everyone who is going to subscribe to blog posts has already done that, so this is likely the last time I put this thingy into a post:

Thanks so much for all your support, and for trusting me with your time and attention. I can not overstate how much it means to me.

  1. I misspoke here and regret not fact-checking myself. The book is actually called The Kid’s Whole Future Catalog and you can read it at the Internet Archive. ↩︎
  2. This is my favorite trope in speculative fiction, the one that lands on me the hardest. Oh, to live in a world where the things that made me a weird target for bullies actually made me special (like we all were, but didn’t know when we were kids). ↩︎

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