Category: Books

scalzi’s new book is out

Posted on By Wil

What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t remind everyone that John Scalzi’s newest book, Zoe’s Tale hit bookstores today?

John says:

I’m really proud of Zoë as a character; I think she’s one of the best I’ve ever written. I also think that that in many ways Zoe’s Tale is the best book in the entire Old Man’s War sequence, which is saying something, considering it’s the fourth book in the universe, and two of them have got Hugo nods. But there it is: The amount of work I had to do to get Zoë right is also reflected in the rest of the book as well. It’s good.

I’m also happy to say that the goal of making this a standalone novel seems to have been achieved: I’ve heard back from folks who have read the book cold, without having read the other books in the sequence, and it’s worked for them. This is good news because, as most of you know, Zoe’s Tale was written with an eye toward opening up this universe to younger readers who might have missed the other books; it’s the book I can point to when someone asks if they can give a book of mine to their daughter or nephew or whomever.

I’m currently reading (and loving) Soon I will be Invincible,* but as soon as I finish it, Zoe’s Tale is at the top of my list, leapfrogging over a giant stack of books that just said, “Hey! We’ve been waiting in line here! Come on! No cuts!”

Sorry, giant stack of books, but I like the Old Man’s War universe so damn much, it always gets cuts.

… okay, back cuts behind Immortal Iron Fist. Sorry, The Terror, you’ll have to keep waiting. (But if Zoe’s Tale is anything like the other books in the Old Man’s War universe, you’ll only have to wait a few days. I usually have a damn hard time putting them down.)

*Link and title fixed. I was in a hurry to get out of the house when I wrote this post this morning.

various awesome things

Posted on By Wil

My story The Art of War in the latest Star Trek manga got a really nice mention at Trek Movie dot Com:

Fans of Wil Wheaton’s blog or books know him to be an adroit writer of nonfiction, an almost Mark Twain for the geek crowd if you don’t mind such a comparison. Yet his “Art of War” story shows he is talented with fictional narratives, too. The story involves Kirk and a Klingon named Kring both trapped together in a collapsed mine on the planet Angrena. The “enemies forced to cooperate” situation isn’t unique to science fiction or to Star Trek, be it the film Enemy Mine or “The Enemy” and “Darmok” episodes of TNG. These kinds of narratives succeed if there is something different about how they are told and if they provide the reader with something to think about with the characters or a social lesson. Wheaton does all of these things with his comic.

They gave me 10 out of 10! Dude!

My friend and editor, Luis Reyes, is also getting rave reviews for his story, The Humanitarian, which I still haven’t seen because my damn contributor’s copy hasn’t shown up, yet. Luis is a great guy who took one in the chest when TokyoPop . . . uh . . . popped . . . a few months ago. I remember talking with him about his story while he was working on it, and he was really hopeful that people would like it. Sounds like they did: “Once in a while, a Star Trek story is so incredibly good that it stays with you forever.”

Cheyenne Wright did a pretty awesome drawing of a guy who looks like me, but cooler.

scaled.wil_color.jpg

How much do you want a shirt that says “GE [lightning bolt] EK” right now? I guarantee it’s not as much as I do.

Depeche Mode: The Singles 1986-1998 is available from Amazon MP3 for 3.99 today only. I am not ashamed to admit that I loved Depeche Mode when I was a teenager. Any DM fans out there notice how, depending on your age, your seminal DM album is either Music for the Masses or Violator? Mine is the former, though I still love the latter.

xkcd and Diesel Sweeties made me giggle so hard it hurt my chest. Thanks for nothing, guys.

This isn’t awesome, but it’s important that I share: there’s a current crop of e-mails going around that appear to be from CNN or MSNBC. They’re not. They go to very well-designed pages that can fool people into installing malware. I don’t ask this often, but please share this bit of news with your friends who are . . . vulnerable . . . to this sort of attack.

There’s some really cool new stuff at Propeller 2.0 that I’m excited about, including the growing awesomeness of the Geek group.

Great Showdowns of the 8-bit Era is beautiful. (via reddit)

That reminds me: If I collected some of my favorite Games of Our Lives into a book, would you be interested in buying it? (Note that it was all WFH and as such the AV Club owns all the material; I’d have to convince them to give me permission, but before I bother trying to do that, I wanted to gauge interest here.)

I hate that NBC is delaying their “live” prime time Olympics for West Coast viewers, but their online coverage is incredible. If you’re only watching the Olympics in prime time, you’re really missing out on some great events, like Table Tennis, Archery, Rowing, Soccer, and Handball. I mean, gymnastics and swimming are neat and all, but there’s a lot more to the games than just those events. Durr.

Jefbot hates me, but it’s all in good fun. The next strip in the series is gold, Jerry. GOLD!

Top Shelf is rapidly becoming one of my favorite publishers. Like Vertigo or Blue Note, I can pick up anything from them and know I’m going to love it. I want to do a proper review at some point, but the book Super Spy by Matt Kindt is absolutely magnificent, and proves that graphic storytelling exists as literature. You can see one of the stories in the book here.

Finally:

Me: Ah! I hate this song! Change it! Change it!

Ryan: Hey, when we played the endless setlist, you said –

Me: We were playing for five hours! I don’t think anyone should be held accountable for anything they said, did, or turned off during the endless setlist. Now let’s never speak of this again.

Ryan: But –

Me: NEVER. AGAIN.

Ryan went back to school this morning. My ribs hurt so much, I couldn’t hug him as much as I needed to, making an already-difficult goodbye extra painful. He’s grown up and matured so much in the last six months, I just love having him around. He’s really grown into a fine young man, and is someone I’d like to hang around with even if he wasn’t my son. I’m going to miss him a lot.

eight year-old me has a new best friend

Posted on By Wil

WWdN reader Cherish B. sent me this adorable story about her son and Happiest Days . It made the dad in me go “Awwwww” and the author in me go “Yay!” so I had to share:

He looked at the pictures on the cover and asked, “Who’s that?”

“His name is Wil.”

“Oh! I like Wil. He’s going to come over and play with me.”

“That’s a nice thought, but Wil is a big person.”

“Then he will come and pick me up and we will go to the park.”

I love how four-year-olds think that seeing a nice picture of a person wearing footie pajamas means you’re instantly friends and want to hang together.

I love that I got to write a book that I’m proud of that actually means something to the people who read it. I am truly a lucky guy.

this is the heavy heavy monster sound

Posted on By Wil

I’m still in head down mode until I finish Scalzi’s intro, which is due today, but I had that magical moment yesterday when I moved some things around, added a few paragraphs, then sat back in my chair and said to the empty room, “There it is! I can finally say ‘it’s coming together.'”

Once I get to this point in a project, it’s like I’ve been flailing around in a twisty maze of passages, all alike, and I’ve finally been handed a torch and a map. I never know when it’s going to happen on a particular job, but I’m always relieved when it finally does. One day before the deadline isn’t the best time for it to happen, but it’s not the blurst time, either.

This is one of the reliable steps in my writing process, like the “this sucks, I suck, everything I do sucks, I’m the suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked” step*. There are other, less-amusingly-named-but-equally-reliable steps in my writing process, and even the frustrating ones give me reassurance, because I know that I’m on track. There’s being stuck, and then there’s being stuck, you know?

These steps come in random order, and the ones where I feel stuck usually last from a few hours to a few days. There isn’t a reliable trick to get through them, but knowing that there are these mile markers along the road has given me a lot more confidence as a writer.

Currently, I’m in a step I call “I really need to finish the thing, but I think I’ll write something else instead.”

Yep. Right on schedule.

*This is the step where I constantly repeat my own advice to myself: Don’t be afraid to suck. It’s easier to fix something that’s broken than it is to fill up an empty page.