Category: Books

Warren Ellis wrote a pretty fantastic short short story called Jack Baby that I saw yesterday:

I dipped the old jar down into the creeping slurry and scooped a pint
of shit-water out of the Thames, down where the sewers meet the river.
It’s come to this, I said to no-one: making jenkem rather than seeing
the Jack Baby.

Seal up the jar, watch it ferment for long
sleepless days, and then inhale the gas off the top. Jenkem: ghetto
drugs. An hour of laying like a corpse and seeing dead things instead
of the orgasm-jerking and spacewalk day of a Jack high. But I couldn’t
afford Jack, and I didn’t want to think about the Jack Baby.

There’s a lot of atmosphere, character, and story wrapped up in the 200 words or so that make up the entire thing, and I had to read it twice to fully absorb it. It was totally worth it.

When I manage to wring fiction out of my brain, it will be because I am inspired by stories like this. I mean, how in the hell can Warren come up with stuff like — well, just go read it, and see if you don’t have the same reaction. 

Ken Denmead, who edits the Geekdad blog at Wired, wrote a review of The Happiest Days of Our Lives this weekend:

This is a wonderful little book.  I hate to use a diminutive like
"little," for fear of implying that THDOOL is less-than significant in
some literary way; it isn’t.  It is a charming, heart-warming,
laugh-inducing, tear-jerking, and even envy-inducing read.  It is not,
however, long.  I’d like to argue that this is a plus.  Indeed, I think
THDOOL is enjoyable in part because of its length (or lack thereof).
It is, after all, a collection of short-form writing (blog-posts),
collected, expanded, massaged, and served with a steaming side of
post-modern nostalgic recollection.  This is the face of contemporary
introspective non-fiction, and it is exactly what we all like to read
and write nowadays.  Reading THDOOL is all about getting the quick-fix
of checking your RSS feeds in the morning and skimming the new posts,
but then getting to take a little longer to sit down and savor
something just a bit more significant.

Have I pointed out that everything in this book, though it started online in one form or another, was completely rewritten, updated, expanded upon, and "de-bloggified’? The Happiest Days isn’t just a cut and paste, and maybe I should have made that more clear before? Anyway, I’m very happy that Ken noticed that, and mentioned it.

There will be good reviews and bad reviews, and not everyone will like what I write, or how I write it. I’ve learned over the years to make a conscious effort not to give too much importance to any of them, but I have to admit that getting such a positive review from someone who I respect and enjoy reading every day made me squee just a little bit.

Okay, a lot.

I was helping a friend troubleshoot and .opml issue a few days ago, and ended up building the mother of all vanity searches with this thing called monitor.

I was going to delete it last night, but I’m glad I didn’t, because I found this great review of The Happiest Days of Our Lives with it this morning:

The book is a compilation of stories from Wil’s earlier years. The
stories make for a great read. Some will make you laugh, while others
will sadden you. And more than one is very easy to relate to. I really
enjoyed the book. Reading it caused me to recall some great memories
from my past as well.

Yesterday at work, I loaned one of my books to this guy Robert, who is a makeup artist I worked with a million years ago on Star Trek. They’d hired him to do special effects makeup on the background actors playing fans, but wouldn’t let him use real pieces, because it would look too good. He ended up using the stuff you can buy  at Cinema Secrets, and it still looked great. I’m telling you guys, the authenticity is so great, you’ll swear we were at a real convention.

Anyway, Robert sat down with it and started reading between setups. After about an hour, he came over to touch me up and make me look awesome for a closeup. While he put powder on my shiny face, he told me how much he liked the stories in my book, especially Blue Light Special, which he could relate to, and I am the Modren Man, which he said cracked him up.

I told him how happy that made me, and asked him to tell people about the book, because word of mouth is what sells books, not advertising. Think about this: when is the last time you bought a book, DVD, or game because of the advertising? I don’t think I’ve done that since I realized advertising was bullshit about twenty-five years ago. I have, however, bought lots of books, games, DVDs, and CDs because my friends told me how much they loved it, and thought I’d like it.

Reviews are important for books, because they can convince people who are on the fence to take a chance on a book, but even more important is word of mouth, especially from your friends, family, and other people you trust to give you good, honest advice.

I’m not going to be reviewed by Booklist or any of the major newspapers, and it’s unlikely that I’ll get a chance to go on television and radio to let people know about The Happiest Days of Our Lives who don’t know about it already. I’m counting on readers who feel my book was worth their time and money to tell their friends, and help me reach people who I haven’t reached already.

If you’ve read The Happiest Days of Our Lives, and you felt it was
worth your time and money, please tell your friends and family about it. It makes me so happy (and relieved) that it’s already happening a little bit, right here on the Internets.

After two weeks of phone calls and e-mails, I finally got an e-mail back this morning from the executive escalations department at PayPal.

Here’s the money shot:

regarding the system is not passing the item number or the title through with the address and buyer’s information on multiple shipping orders, we did not have a known issue registered for this concern or a solution, so we submitted this issue to our technical department so they can assist. Unfortunately they do not have a timeframe for when this will be resolved.

Translation: we don’t know why this is happening, we’re not going to help you troubleshoot it, and you’re fucked. Thanks for your tens of thousands of dollars of business over the last seven years, sucker.

What this means, practically, is that the problem is somehow my fault, but I don’t know how to fix it. Until I can figure out exactly why this system works for everyone else in the world and not for me, I effectively have a store that can sell one item from one shelf, and that’s not really going to work for me.

So, Occam’s Razor says that there’s something screwy with my server configuration, my html or php code, or something else at Monolith Press, right? There’s something going on that’s preventing the form at Monolith Press from passing all the appropriate information along to PayPal’s order processing system, right?

Actually, no. When I export my account history to a CSV file, to check and make sure that all the appropriate fields are being filled in, the item number and description are right there, exactly as I entered them when I created the form.

So Occam’s Razor really says that I am doing something wrong, but I really have no fucking idea what it is or how to solve it, and I have no idea who to turn to for help, now. This is the most frustrating thing in the world.

The good news is the hard covers were just dropped off.

The great news is that they look beautiful, feel great, and are exactly the way I wanted them to be.

The bad news is that I can’t sell them, because PayPal still hasn’t been able to hep me solve the item number problem when I try to ship multiple orders.

I feel helpless and frustrated, at a time when I should be celebrating.

Hopefully, I’ll find a way to resolve this before the end of the weekend.