Category: Books

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. ↩︎

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.

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:

• Apple Podcasts
• PocketCast
• Spotify
• Pandora
• iHeart
• Amazon
• or grab the RSS directly from me right here.

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). ↩︎

It’s Wednesday, which means I get out of my comfort zone and promote the hell out of my podcast!

This week’s story is The God of Minor Troubles, by Megan Chee, originally published in Strange Horizons.

For my introduction, I wrote:

From a mortal’s perspective, a god is a god is a god. Omnipotence isn’t really on a spectrum; it’s pretty binary.

The gods don’t see it that way. From the moment humans dreamed them into existence, they’ve fought among themselves to determine which mortals they will hear, what responsibilities they each will have, and how those responsibilities will be divided amongst the firmament. While mortals merely hope their prayers will be heard, it turns out that some of the gods answering them aren’t particularly thrilled with their assignment.

I am about to introduce you to one of those gods, who does not yet know that it’s actually pretty major to be the god of minor troubles.

Remember:

• When someone asks you if you’re a god, you say YES.
• When someone prays to you for help with their troubles, they don’t particularly care if you think they are minor or not. Just answer the damn prayer.
• These stairs go up.

I’m so grateful to Megan Chee, and all of the authors who said yes when I asked them if I could narrate their work, because they are helping me celebrate, promote, and support the Arts with this project. When authors are as excited to hear me, as I am to speak their words, I feel like I’m doing something right. When audiences share that same excitement with me, I know that it so worth it to do this work and take this risk.

Before I get to the links and stuff, I want to speak directly to you. I don’t know who you are, but you’re reading this, you’re listening to the podcast, you’re allowing me the privilege to do this thing that matters to me more than just a job ever would. I’m only able to do this with your support and I need you to know how grateful I am for that. I hope I’m sharing authors, ideas, and narratives with you that you wouldn’t have found on your own, and that you’re inspired to share that with your friends and family, and even go looking for more from them.

Okay, I’m going to go back to talking to everyone, now.

If you aren’t already a subscriber, here are some convenient links:

• Apple Podcasts
• PocketCast
• Spotify
• Pandora
• iHeart
• Amazon
• or grab the RSS directly from me right here.

I also have a Patreon with an ad-free feed and some nifty extras that didn’t fit into the primary show, if you want to support me that way.

Thanks for listening, thanks for subscribing, thanks to everyone who has rated and reviewed us. I appreciate it.

If you’d like to receive these posts by email here ya go: