Category: Books

One of my super secret projects isn’t a secret any longer…

Posted on By Wil

FINALLY, I can talk about this, and because a picture is worth a thousand words…

Felicia Day and I wrote a Fawkes story for The Guild comic together. There are two covers, the one above is by Paul Duffield, and this one is by Emma Rios:

 

Jamie McKelvie is drawing the book, which comes out on May 23rd.

Here's how Dark Horse is describing it:

Felicia Day and The Guild are back, along with costar Wil Wheaton, for a brand-new story spotlighting Fawkes, the dashing, debonair, and douchey leader of the evil guild Axis of Anarchy! His relationship with Codex threatened to tear the Knights of Good apart until he was thrown off a balcony for his treatment of her. Set after season 4 of the show, this issue reveals how Fawkes deals with his split from Codex and navigates the aggressive personalities of the Axis, and follows his journey to his surprising state when he returns in season 5!

Felicia and I talked to io9 about it last week, so if you want to know a little bit more, head on over there and check it out.

Because it’s a FAQ: some thoughts on self-publishing

Posted on By Wil

Reader M asked me:

I was wondering what your experience with Lulu.com has been to self-publish your books?

Did you engage (heh) them for marketing? For editing? Or simply for publishing??

This sort of inquiry is pretty much a FAQ at this point, so I thought I'd share a slightly-edited version of my reply to him with the rest of the class:

Hi M,

I've been really happy with Lulu. Everyone I've ever talked with there has easy to work with, and very supportive of my work. 

When I first took my work there, they reached out to me and offered to do some marketing for me, because it was the kind of relationship that made sense for both of us: I got good marketing and support, and they had a moderately high profile example to show prospective self-publishers what their marketing and support could do.

Remember, though, that the responsibility to promote falls on the author's shoulders, and a book will sell as well as you promote it. A publisher can only get you in a place where you'll be seen and then support you once you're there; nothing is guaranteed.

Also, it's a little cart-before-the-horse to be worrying about marketing and publicity when you're on the first draft. All the marketing and publicity in the world won't matter if you don't write a compelling story that engages (ha. ha. ha.) your readers. 

As far as editorial goes, a content editor is a VERY personal and important relationship to have, so I wouldn't grab one at random, or stay with one who doesn't work as hard as you do. You should work with someone who understands what kind of story you want to tell, has experience editing that kind of story, and who has earned your respect. Your editor is someone who you're going to be accountable to, who is going to help you make your work better, make you a better writer, and ultimately be more of a partner than you ever though they would be. Do not rush into an editorial relationship, especially when you're self-publishing.

Copy editors, though just as important as content editors, aren't as personal. You still want someone who is going to let your voice come through, so that's important, but they're mostly going to make sure those inevitable spelling and grammar errors don't end up in your final manuscript.

I've also learned that it's really important to have a designer layout your final book. After publishing a lot of books, I can tell you that we writers are good at putting words together, but we're not as good at laying them out on the page as we think we are. If you're doing an eBook, you can probably do it yourself in Sigil or whatever your preferred markup editor is, but for print, you absolutely want to work with someone who can build you an interior design that looks great. 

I encourage you to make sure your work is available for Kindle, Nook, and iBooks, as well, because people read in a lot of different places and formats these days. It's also a really good idea to establish relationships with indie booksellers and librarians, because they are awesome.

If you haven't, I recommend reading Dan Poynter's book on Self Publishing, as well as the Complete Guide to Self Publishing by Tom and Marilyn Ross. If you're on Google Plus, go add Evo Terra to a circle RIGHT NOW because he's the smartest indie publishing guru I've ever listened to. 

I hope this helps you a little bit.

Good luck!

Wil

My only disappointment with Lulu is that the company stopped doing digital files like audio books, but I understand that since they returned their focus to only books, it's been good for their authors. Finding a new place to host and sell my audio books has been a real pain in the ass. The Audible agreement is unacceptable to me, and everything else I've been able to find seems to be geared toward bands, so I'm still mostly in the wilderness at the moment (I say mostly, because Scott Sigler pointed me to what looks like a perfect solution for me, but nothing's been set in stone, yet.)

So there you go. This isn't exhaustive by any means, and while I'm not an expert, I have had a lot of experience so I mostly know what I'm talking about. I hope this is helpful for indie authors who Get Excited and Make Things.

If you have personal experience to share, or advice that's been helpful to you as an indie creator (not just authors), I'd love it if you'd leave a comment.

I’m selling some autographed books next week

Posted on By Wil

Anne and I unloaded a lot of stuff from storage last week, and I discovered that I have a lot of books that probably want to find a new home.

So this is just a heads up: next week, I'm going to offer signed copies of the Games Matter chapbook I made for PAX this year (I have about 40 copies) and 50 copies of the sold out Subterranean Press edition of The Happiest Days of Our Lives. They'll be available on a first come, first served basis. I'll give about 24 hours advance notice so you'll know when I plan to push the Big Red Button.

I'm also working on putting both of those books into the Kindle store, as well as getting all of my eBooks into the Nook store. (BARNES & NOBLE Y U NO MAKE IT AS EASY TO PUBLISH IN NOOK STORE AS AMAZON DOES IN KINDLE STORE?)

I found out last week that Lulu took all audiobooks out of my store (they're only doing books, now, sadly), so at the moment, there's no (legal, support-my-work) way to get them. I'm working on fixing that, too, and hopefully next week will find them available once again.

Yesterday, I turned in the first draft of [AWESOME PROJECT I LOVE AND CAN'T WAIT TO TALK ABOUT], and now I'm going to reward myself by brewing a batch of Stone Pale Ale using the recipe in the Craft of Stone Brewing Co book.

Flash Fiction: The Monster In My Closet

Posted on By Wil

About two hours ago, I thought to myself, "'There's a monster in my closet' would be a neat way to start out one of those scary short stories I loved to read when I was in middle school."

I wrote it down, then wrote a little more and a little more. Right around the time I realized I had no idea how it ended, the ending tapped me on the shoulder and said "boo!"

I've never done this before, but I thought it would be cool to publish it here without the usual editorial and rewrites I do on everything, because the idea of conceiving, writing, and releasing a short story in just a couple of hours is intriguing to me.

Added on 10/19: I made free-free and DRM-free ePub and Kindle versions of this story. You can get them at my virtual bookshelf if you like.

So, without any further introduction, here is my scary short story that I hope 12 year-old me would enjoy…

The Monster In My Closet

by Wil Wheaton

There is a monster in my closet. It’s standing in there behind my clothes, and it wants to come out. I don’t know where it came from, I don’t know how it got in there, but I know that it’s been there for a long time, waiting.

Mum and dad don’t believe in monsters (and until yesterday, neither did I), but during dinner tonight, I had to tell them.

“A monster,” dad said, wiping mashed potatoes off his beard. “Like, with claws and fangs? That kind of monster?”

“I haven’t actually seen it,” I said, “but I know it’s there.”

“How can you know it’s there if you haven’t seen it?” Mum asked.

“It’s like…” I thought for a moment. “It’s like when it’s cloudy, and you can’t see the moon, but it sort of glows behind the clouds, so you know it’s there.”

“So your closet was glowing, eh?” Dad said.

I shook my head. I could tell that they thought I was making the whole thing up. “No, dad,” I said, “but I could feel it in there, and –”

“And what?” He said.

“And if it comes out,” I said, carefully, “It’s going to kill us.”

“Well, I should expect so,” dad said. “Monsters are usually very serious about that sort of thing.”

Mum scowled at him. “Richard! Don’t make fun.”

Then she looked back at me and said, “you can have a night light in your room to keep the monster away.”

“And keep your closet door shut,” dad said, gravely, “everyone knows that monsters can’t open doors.”

“But –”

“But nothing. Now stop all this chattering and eat your peas before they get cold,” mum said.

I’m trying to deal with a monster, and all mum cares about is me eating my peas. Typical parents.

They walked me into my room when it was time for bed. Dad made a big production of opening the closet and looking inside. “Well, it looks like we scared it off,” he said. He didn’t notice that the lid of my toy chest was lifted up slightly, and I didn’t bother telling him. He pushed the door and it shut with a click. He shook the knob and pantomimed looping a chain around it that he secured with a pantomimed pad lock. He swallowed a pantomime key and rubbed his belly.

Mum brought in one of my old night lights, the one with the blue pony on it, and plugged it into the wall next to the bed. “There, sweetheart,” she said as she turned it on, “let’s just leave this on tonight.”

She kissed me goodnight. Then dad kissed me on my forehead.

“There’s a good girl,” he said, “sleep tight! Don’t let the monsters bite!”

“Richard!” Mum smacked him on his arm. “Sorry, sweetie, he’s just having a bit of fun.”

“Good night, mum,” I said. I tried not to frown too much at dad.

I heard them talking as they walked down the stairs.. “She just has a wonderful imagination, doesn’t she?” Mum said.

“She’s a dreamer, that’s for sure,” dad said. I heard ice clink into glasses, then, a moment later,  the creak of their armchairs as they sat down to watch television. 

I was starting to fall asleep when I heard it.

“Psssst.” 

I thought that maybe I was dreaming, but I pulled the covers up to my neck, as tightly as I could, and listened. 

“Psssst.” 

It came from the closet. “Psssst. Hey, kid. Come and open the door, hey?”

I felt my eyes widen, as a chill ran down my spine.

“Come on, kid, I won’t hurt ya, I just want to get out of here. Open the door and I’ll be on my way.”

The voice — its voice — was gruff, but not as gruff as I thought it would be.

“No,” I said in a small voice, barely a whisper. “You… you just stay in there.”

The handle shook a bit, and I screamed. Mum and dad were in the room before I knew it.

“It’s in there!” I cried, “it’s in there and it told me to open the door and let it out!”

They looked at each other. Mum walked across the room to me and sat down on the edge of my bed. “There, there, sweetie,” she said, “you just had a bad dream is all.

“Richard, open the door and show her that there’s nothing inside but clothes and toys.”

“No! Dad! Don’t open it!” I practically screamed.

“Fear not, my petal,” he said, gallantly, “Any monsters inside this closet will get the thrashing of their lives!” He walked to the closet and knocked on the door. “Anyone in there? Hmm?”

He winked at me and shadow boxed the air in front of him.

“Richard, stoppit and just open the door. She’s had an awful fright.”

“Daddy, don’t do it,” I said, suddenly feeling like I was seven years-old again. “Please.”

He smiled and said, “it’s all right, sweetheart. Daddy’s just going to show you that there’s nothing to be afraid of, and then we can all go back to sleep.”

Mum squeezed my hand. An audience laughed on the television downstairs. Dad turned the handle on the closet door and opened it. “Now, see? There’s nothing to–”

The monster was covered in dark scales, like a lizard. Its eyes were jet black, but reflected something red in their centers. It grabbed my dad by his shoulders and bit into his neck with long, sharp, white teeth.

Dad screamed and struggled against it. Clawed hands held onto him and a spray of blood shot across the back of the closet door, black and shiny in the dim light.

It slurped and gurgled and crunched, and in a few seconds, dad stopped moving. I realized that my mum hadn’t made a sound, but had let go of my hand.

She stood up, and walked toward the monster. It dropped my dad’s body to the floor and grinned at her, dad’s blood dripping off of its teeth and running down its chest. They stood over my dad’s body and embraced.

“I’ve missed you, darling,” the monster said to my mum.

“I missed you, too, my sweet,” she said, in the same gruff voice.

“Mu– mum?” I said. She ignored me.

“I would have come sooner, but you know that we can’t open them from the inside,” the monster said.

“Everyone knows that!” Mum said, and they laughed together. She turned to face me. Her skin was starting to crack on her face, revealing dark grey scales beneath it. Her eyes were turning black, reflecting something red in their centers.

“Come on over here and give us a hug,” she said, as sharp white fangs pushed her teeth out of her mouth and onto the floor where they bounced around like marbles. “Come and be mommy’s little monster!”

“WHAT IS HAPPENING?” I screamed.

“Stop that horrid racket and say hello to your dad — your real dad,” she said.

I reached around for something, anything, to use as a weapon to protect myself. When I stretched out for the lamp on my night stand, the skin on my arm cracked and split open. There were grey scales underneath it. 

“Oh no. No no no no no,” I said.

I reached up to touch my face, and pulled the soft pink flesh away. I felt the rough scales underneath.

“What’s happening to me?!”

I looked at my mum.

I looked at my dad.

I looked at the body on the floor.

I realized that I was ever so hungry, and my food was getting cold.

I got out of bed and joined my family for dinner.

—

Copyright 2011 Wil Wheaton. 

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The Monster In My Closet by Wil Wheaton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

You want to accept Anorak’s Invitation. Trust me.

Posted on By Wil

I love narrating audiobooks, because it gives me a rare opportunity to combine my love of reading with my love of performing into something that hopefully entertains people, and gets the Bursar at Ryan's college off my back for another month.

I did a few when I was much younger (Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and and Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers), then nothing for about ten years, when I did an audio version of Just A Geek, and then The Happiest Days of Our Lives. I guess someone liked the stuff I'd done recently, because I was invited to perform a story in METAtropolis: Cascadia, and that led to doing a bunch of books for Scalzi, which eventually led to the point of this post: Ernie Cline's upcoming book, Ready Player One.

I first discovered Ernie's work about ten years ago, when I heard him performing his sensational spoken word piece When I Was A Kid. I loved it so much, I submitted it to Fark, where it was greenlit, resulting in fives of album sales for Ernie (You're welcome, Ernie).

Years went by. Ernie wrote Fanboys. I wrote some books, too. Then, on a magical, unicorn-filled day earlier this year, my manager called and said I'd been asked to perform a new book called Ready Player One, by an author named Ernest Cline. I didn't even need to know what it was about; I knew it would be rad because Ernie wrote it, so I said yes right away. I had an incredibly good time reading it, marvelling every day that I was getting paid to read and perform a book that I loved. I counted down the days until August 16th, because that's when it would finally be released.

Knock Knock, Motherfucker: tomorrow's August 16th, and Ready Player One comes out in both print and audio editions. You can hear a sample of me doing my thing right now, though, because that's how we do things around here.

Ready Player One was in the New York Times this weekend, and I urge anyone who is on the fence about the book to go read it. Here, I'll make it easy and all linky.

Seriously? You're still here? Fine. Here's a taste:

With its Pac-Man-style cover graphics and vintage Atari mind-set “Ready Player One” certainly looks like a genre item. But Mr. Cline is able to incorporate his favorite toys and games into a perfectly accessible narrative. He sets it in 2044, when there aren’t many original Duran Duran fans still afoot, and most students of 1980s trivia are zealous kids. They are interested in that time period because a billionaire inventor, James Halliday, died and left behind a mischievous legacy. Whoever first cracks Halliday’s series of ’80s-related riddles, clues and puzzles that are included in a film called “Anorak’s Invitation” will inherit his fortune.

The world Ernie created for Ready Player One will blow your mind, and alternately make you wish you could live there, while being really glad that you don't. You'll want to meet the characters, and challenge them to a game of Galaxian (though they'll probably kick your ass. Damn kids in the future, I swear to god.)

It's already been bought by Warner Brothers, and will eventually be a film. I'm doing my best to call dibs on playing Halliday, but even if that doesn't work out, at least I got to play Wade in the audio version. Which you should totally go buy, because it is awesome.