Category: Books

dead trees give no shelter

Posted on 24 March, 2017 By Wil

Last year, a couple of weeks before Halloween, I had this idea to write a short, supernatural horror story. At the time, I was deep in the first draft of the short story that became a novella that really wants to be a novel (which has since been titled “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything”), so switching tracks to work on something different was intended to be a quick detour that would give me something to release for Halloween.

Once I got into it, though, Project Ravenswood took on its own life and it went from being a short story that I expected to finish around 3500 words after a week or so, to something I worked on for several months and just finished yesterday, at a little under 14,000 words. I retitled it “Dead Trees Give No Shelter”, and now I have to decide what I’m going to do with it. Part of me wants to hold onto it and put it out as part of the short collection it was originally intended to be part of, another part of me wants to release it right away as an ebook, still another part of me wants to pitch it to a couple of editors I respect, and still another part of me wants to record and release it as an audiobook original.

So I’m not sure what happens next with this story, because I’ve never worked this long on something that’s this (relatively) short, and I’m in unfamiliar territory right now. I do know that I get to do two things:

I get to erase it from the white board.
I get to go back to work on the novel.

Oh, and I get to release a new work of creative fiction for the first time in years. That’s pretty cool, and feels really good. However I get this story from me to you, I think you’ll enjoy it … or, at least, I hope you do.

Books

The Collapsing Empire

Posted on 21 March, 2017 By Wil

No, it’s not a political post. It’s an audiobook post. But I understand why you may be confused.

My performance of Scalzi’s newest book, The Collapsing Empire, is available today from Audible.

John and I are the same age, grew up in the same area, and have a lot of the same cultural influences. That means that we write and talk in a very similar vernacular. We’re also very good friends, so I’ve heard John talk a whole bunch, and I’ve also heard him read his own work a whole bunch. Put those things together, and what you get is a pretty great team, if I do say so myself.

I’ve been fortunate enough to perform a lot of Scalzi’s books, include Fuzzy Nation, and Redshirts. I love John’s writing, and it’s a joy to perform, so when I was asked to do The Collapsing Empire, I was thrilled. I’m super proud of the work we did on this book, and want to publicly thank my director, Gabrielle de Cuir, who has helped me do the very best audiobook work I can do, on this and other books.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about The Collapsing Empire!

Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible – until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars.

Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war – and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

The Flow is eternal – but it is not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well, cutting off worlds from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that The Flow is moving, possibly cutting off all human worlds from faster-than-light travel forever, three individuals – a scientist, a starship captain, and the empress of the Interdependency – are in a race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.

Here’s my non-spoiler review, from my Goodreads account:

As delightful and easy to read as Scalzi at his best (Redshirts, Old Man’s War), with characters who are going to stay with you whenever you have to put the book down … which you aren’t going to want to do.

I won’t discuss plot, at all, but I will say this much: like all great SF, and like the SF that has become accepted as classic, The Collapsing Empire works as a wonderful SF tale … but it also has important allegory, metaphor, and commentary on some things that are going on right now, for readers who are open to that sort of thing. For those who aren’t, it doesn’t beat you over the head with it, which is a pretty neat trick.

Yep. It’s a great book, and I’m grateful to be part of its life.

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stuff and things and another thing

Posted on 23 February, 201723 February, 2017 By Wil

I’m nearly finished with Ravenswood, and just about ready to give it to my editor for his Red Pen of Doom. Before I jump back into the short story that became a novella that is dangerously close to being a novel, I’m going to reward myself with a couple of fun non-writing projects. One of them is building and configuring (and hopefully playing) my PiCade kit. The other is just an idea, but I think it’s doable: I have a 7″ Android tablet that I don’t use very often, because the battery on it is crap. But I have this idea to keep it plugged in all the time, and use it to display a scrolling news ticker, the current weather, and my security camera feeds. It’ll live on my desk. Does anyone know if there’s an existing Linux or Android project that does that sort of thing? I don’t have the knowledge or ability at the moment to put all that together on my own, but I think I could learn, given enough time.

I’ll be on the pre-game show tonight, before the Kings vs. Bruins, on Fox Sports West, around 7:15pm, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

My friend, Robyn, is an amazing woman. She made a video this morning that I want to signal boost.

Anne and I are way late to the party, but we saw What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? the other night, and it made me want to rewatchWho’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Sunset Boulevard. I’ve mostly been watching genre films (SF, Horror, Anime) and I realized this week that Classic Amazing Hollywood Studio Pictures is also a genre that I need to watch more of. I’m also on Team Bette Davis Forever, now.

I finished Dune. As I hoped, it affected me much more deeply and significantly than it did when I was 12 and didn’t have the ability to fully appreciate it. I kinda want to dive straight into Messiah, but I’m going to read Neil’s new book, first, and then maybe I’ll finally read Fall of Hyperion.

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The library for Storytime With Wil just got a little deeper…

Posted on 13 February, 2017 By Wil

For a few weeks (months?) I’ve been doing this silly and fun thing on Monday nights. I pick a random Choose Your Own Adventure book from my collection, and I read it on my Twitch channel, letting the audience make the choices for me:

Last night, I had this dumb idea to get onto my Twitch channel, read a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and ask the people who were watching to make the choices. We did Inside UFO 54-40 and The Race Forever. I think about 200 people showed up (not bad, considering the short notice), and holy hell did we have fun. It was this great community experience, and I liked it so much, I’m going to try to make it a regular thing.

So it’s pretty much a regular thing, now, and I seem to have settled upon 6pm Pacific time every Monday, unless there’s a Kings game or I have some other pressing engagement.

Anyway, I always point out that I am not doing this for money, and I don’t mean to infringe on Choose Your Own Adventure’s IP rights or anything like that. I always point out that I’d rather beg forgiveness than ask permission, and I hope that if CYOA ever stumbles upon my thing, they’ll treat it as free marketing and not a thing to throw lawyers at.

So last week, someone from CYOA emailed me … and it turns out a lot of them at the publisher are fans of my work, including my Storytime with Wil thing!! Not only do they not want to sue me to death, she offered to send me a care package, and it arrived today.

BEHOLD:

I will read from at least one of these titles on tonight’s Storytime With Wil, which is at 6pm Pacific at Twitch.tv/itswilwheaton. Come by and join us, if you want! It’s been a positive experience for all of us, and seems to attract a really kind and clever bunch of friendly people.

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I think it’s time for a reboot check-in

Posted on 17 January, 2017 By Wil

I had decided that I wasn’t going to do these after a year, but since I’m still committed to the changes I made a little over a year ago, and I need to post something today, to keep the chain unbroken, I’m going to check in and see how I’m doing. I haven’t actually thought about these things until now, so when I give myself a grade today, it’ll be an honest grade, based on where I am right now.

If this is your first time hearing about the reboot, here’s what you need to know:

Just about one year ago, I took an honest look at myself and I didn’t like what I saw. I needed to reset a lot of habits, make some significant changes to the way I approached just about everything in my life, and keep working at it, even when it was hard.

I can’t even believe that it’s already been a year, and that it’s only been a year, because time feels like that when you’re 44, I guess.

Here are the things I decided to address:

Drink less beer.
Read more (and Reddit does not count as reading).
Write more.
Watch more movies.
Get better sleep.
Eat better food.
Exercise more.

Every month, I wrote a post that looked into each of those things I decided to change, and examined how I was doing with them. That was a helpful part of the exercise, because it made me look at myself and my choices honestly and fearlessly. At times, it motivated me to work harder, and at other times it encouraged me by making me realize that I was doing better than I thought.

This time around, since I haven’t done a public check-in since October, I’m going to give myself two grades on each point. One will be the overall since last time, and one will be for January. Here we go.

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