Category: Books

For those of you who are wondering about the audio version of Happiest Days of Our Lives : it’s currently in post-production. My producer/partner/engineer/friend David, who should be working on it 24/7 and only stopping to occasionally eat and pee, had the nerve to go get cast as Eric Doyle on Heroes, and I guess the producers “like him” and “want to keep working with him” all the time, so he’s “kind of busy” with “that” and he’s working on the audiobook in his diminishing free time. GOSH! Uh, I hope it will be finished and available in the very near future. Like, maybe next week, but you didn’t hear that from me.

I mention this because I’ve come up with something cool and special that involves the audiobook and the special expanded edition of the book that I’m doing with Subterranean Press.

Months ago, I talked with Bill at Subterranean about taking something from the audiobook and putting it at Subterranean Online to help promote the special edition, and hopefully sell audiobooks. Everyone wins!

The thing is, David and I are already very busy, and it’s unlikely that we will be able to coordinate and record the extra material and get it edited together in time for a holiday release. I don’t want to do two versions of the audiobook, so I’ve decided to kill several birds at once, make a necklace from their skulls, and attach their feathers to football shoulder pads, just like that guy in Mad Max: using my rig at home (which isn’t nearly as nice as David’s, but is good enough) I will record audio versions of the stories we added to the expanded edition, and give those to Bill to put on Subterranean Online.

For free.

Yes, you read that correctly: it’s for free, as in, “Hey, look what Wil gave me for free! He sure is a neat guy!”

I hope that this will help sell the expanded edition by letting people who aren’t familiar with my work hear me perform it, and I hope that it will create interest in the audio version I did with David. It may even generate sales of Just A Geek: teh Audiobook, but I don’t want to get too close to crazy talk, so I won’t count on that. Additionally – and this is really important to me – the people who don’t want or can’t afford the expanded edition, but already have the MP edition will have a chance to hear the stories that they’re missing. This special edition wouldn’t even be possible without those people, and this is my way of saying thank you. It’s really important to me to take care of my customers, and I hope that this effort will convert unhappy people into happy people.

This plan was formulated in the middle of the night, when my brain wouldn’t let me sleep and not even the pouring rain could drown out its incessant babbling, so I haven’t worked out a release schedule yet. When it happens, I’ll be sure to post about it.

Hooray for awesome news that is awesome!

Shortly after I published The Happiest Days of Our Lives , Bill Schafer, who is the publisher and owner of Subterranean Press, contacted me about doing a special limited edition. I discovered Subterranean Press when they published John Scalzi’s Questions for a Soldier, and I fell in love with their special editions when I got Charlie Stross’ Missile Gap and Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. The idea of having my little book treated the same as books by John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, Ray Bradbury, and Neal Stephenson was awesome, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea – I didn’t want to put out yet another edition of a book people already owned, and I really didn’t want to do something that would devalue the 300.

I talked it over with Anne, sought advice from my friend and editor Andrew, and I asked some friends who have worked with Bill what they thought (it turns out that everyone who works with him adores him, which ended up being very important to me). After a few weeks of consideration, I realized that this was a unique opportunity, and I would be a fool to pass it up.

I got in touch with Bill and accepted his offer. We decided that instead of just doing a different printing of a book people already had, I’d look through the material that just missed the final cut, and put together a special expanded edition. I would also take all those pictures that are on the cover, and create a special photo insert section. (I’m really excited about this; my idea is to create something that looks and feels like a family photo album, complete with handwritten captions.)

I’ll be taking the Monolith Press edition (which has almost sold through its second printing!) offline in a couple of weeks, so Bill and I aren’t competing with each other. If you’ve been waiting to get a Monolith Press edition of The Happiest Days of Our Lives, or you wanted a copy of the book in time for the holidays, you should place your order soon. Like a set of car keys dropped into molten lava, it’s gone, man.

The Special Edition of The Happiest Days of Our Lives from Subterranean Press is now available for order, and it will ship in Spring of 2009. There are 2000 in the limited hardback edition, and 26 in the leatherbound lettered edition, which will come in a custom traycase.

Andrew and I have been working like crazy on this project for a couple of months, and over the weekend I finally felt like we’d put together something worthy of being called a special edition. I just love it, and I can’t wait for everyone to see it.

Edited to add: you may want to check out this awesome news that is awesome, about an audio accompaniment to the special edition.

I’ve been damn busy, and it looks to remain that way for the near future. I’m not complaining. However, I have, as the old saying goes, many spinning plates in the air, and my feet are tangled in a mob of lemurs.

Until I have some spare creative energy, or something worthwhile to say, the best I can do is point you to my friend Cherie‘s superawesome Steampunk long-short-story/novelette in the Fall edition of Subterranean Online, Tanglefoot:

Stonewall Jackson survived Chancellorsville. England broke the Union’s naval blockade, and formally recognized the Confederate States of America. Atlanta never burned.

It is 1880. The American Civil War has raged for nearly two decades, driving technology in strange and terrible directions. Combat dirigibles skulk across the sky and armored vehicles crawl along the land. Military scientists twist the laws of man and nature, and barter their souls for weapons powered by light, fire, and steam.

But life struggles forward for soldiers and ordinary citizens. The fractured nation is dotted with stricken towns and epic scenes of devastation–some manmade, and some more mysterious. In the western territories cities are swallowed by gas and walled away to rot while the frontiers are strip-mined for resources. On the borders between North and South, spies scour and scheme, and smugglers build economies more stable than their governments.

This is the Clockwork Century.

It is dark here, and different.

Want to know how awesome Cherie is? She’s currently nominated for a rather prestigious writing award . . . against Ursula LeGuin. Not bad for your first time, Cherie.

I’m back to the salt mines. Have a nice day, and watch out for the lemurs. They’re motherfuckingeverywhere.