Category: Books

happiest days gets a review

Posted on By Wil

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.

PayPal finally speaks

Posted on By Wil

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.

good news, great news, bad news

Posted on By Wil

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.

happiest days stuff (one in a continuing series)

Posted on By Wil

I spent all day today doing publishing stuff. I processed all the orders up until about 2p.m. today, and as soon as my new envelopes arrive tomorrow, I’ll stuff them and ship them, so if you got a confirmation e-mail from me yesterday or today, your book should arrive before the end of next week.

Based on early feedback from buyers, I’m changing a couple things for future orders. First, I have stronger, more reliable bubble envelopes that will protect the books better than the ones I used in the first batch. I thought they’d be fine because we used them for Dancing Barefoot, but I guess when they changed the postal rules for Canadian shipping, they also added claws and chainsaws to the equipment. Books aren’t getting damaged, but the envelopes sure are, and that’s making people nervous. Second, I found out today that it costs about 40 to 50 cents more to ship first class mail, which arrives in three days or so, instead of media mail, which has taken over two weeks for some people. I’m really sorry about that, by the way, for those of you who (like me) thought that when the USPS said, "This takes 2-9 days to arrive" that’s what they actually meant.

I also printed out all the
Canadian orders, which will have to be processed by hand, the way we
used to do it, because thanks to the fucking bullshit new US Postal
Service rules that I guess are new for 2007, I get to fill out a
customs form for each book, and have each one go individually through
the post office, so it costs $4 per book to ship, rather than $9. I
hope you really love this book, Canada, because it’s quite an ordeal to
get it to you. It’s almost like the US government wants to make it as hard as possible for small, independent businesses like mine to do anything with the rest of the world. Er, except send jobs to India. They’re totally cool with that.

I’m desperately hoping that the fucking bullshit with PayPal not telling me what item number goes with what order will resolve itself before the hard cover books arrive. If it doesn’t, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to sell them. (Incidentally, the signed and numbered hardcover will be limited to 300. I was going to limit it to 100, but would had to have charged an outrageously high price just to break even, and that’s not cool. Regardless, I’m guessing — okay, hoping — it will sell out very quickly, so I’ll give 24 hours notice before they go on sale.)

I want this to be fun and awesome again. The last few days, it’s just been frustrating and demoralizing.

trudging through fog

Posted on By Wil

In his blog today, Neil says:

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story
catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes
sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what
these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the
creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and
surprising ("but of course that’s why he was doing that, and that means that…") and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.

I’ve felt that with the narrative non-fiction that I write, especially while I was working on Just A Geek, and it’s the reason I keep trying to (privately) write fiction, even though I get terrified and give up after a few hundred words each time I do it.

A good friend of mine recently quit his very lucrative, very safe, very reliable job to pursue his dream to be an actor. I was equally horrified and impressed when he said he had to ditch what he called his safety net so he would be hungry and devoted and dedicated to the acting journey. I’ve done that journey, and it’s one of the most difficult journeys available to the hopeful artist. My friend is outrageously talented, though, so of course he instantly booked a job in a big budget movie with an impressive cast. He may not have the safety net beneath him, but it’s looking like he’s not going to need it.

Me? I can’t afford to cut away the safety net, because if I fall to my death, I take down the three other people who rely on me to support them.

I want to be a writer with a capital W, though, and it drives me crazy that I can’t just make something up and take a reader on a journey through someone else’s life the way I do with my own. I mean, I love to read fiction, I love to improvise scenes on stage, and I had more fun writing the Star Trek manga than I thought possible . . . but I get massive stage fright when I try to completely make stuff up. The last time I tried it and foolishly published the works in progress on my blog, it was a spectacular disaster. Oh well, at least it was spectacular.

I like writing, and I like blogging. Despite what many of us who keep blogs have argued over the years, I’m starting to believe that these are two different things, requiring different disciplines and abilities. While they use the same basic skill sets, the difference between them (for me, at least) is the difference between playing third base and right field. If I were to cut away the safety net, I’d have to stop blogging, I think, and just focus full time on being a student of creative writing. Yeah, I’m about fifteen years too late for that one.

However, when I wanted to be a comedy writer and improviser, I took classes to help me take my desire and whatever raw talent I had, and shape it into something useful, so I’m doing the same thing with writing. I read a lot, and not just as an audience member, but as a student. I have a couple of books on writing technique, specifically pertaining to short stories. I’ve been working through them, and the suggestions they give for technique — structure, finding stuff that I’m passionate about and using it as inspiration for a story — all seems so obvious to me when I read it, I’m surprised and not surprised all at once that I haven’t already thought of it.

I’m getting good advice and guidance from these books and blogs I’m reading by and about capital "W" Writers, and though it’s intimidating and overwhelming just about every step of the way (The Voice of Self Doubt keeps pushing his face up against the window of my soul and making scary faces at me, knowing that I’m unable to fully draw the drapes) Neil’s affirmation has been printed out and pasted on the wall right above my computer, so I can look at it and stay on target:

You
don’t live there always when you write. Mostly it’s a long hard walk.
Sometimes it’s a trudge through fog and you’re scared you’ve lost your
way and can’t remember why you set out in the first place.

But sometimes you fly, and that pays for everything.

If Neil Fucking Gaiman can admit to feeling scared, if Neil Fucking Gaiman can admit that, even for him, it’s a long hard walk, then I can also admit that it feels like that to me every single time I sit down and try to write fiction, and remember something John Scalzi said to me during dinner last week: "Don’t be afraid to suck."

It seems so simple, doesn’t it? It’s the advice I give to actors who are going in on auditions: "Don’t be afraid to suck, and don’t be afraid to do your own thing. The important thing is to entertain yourself and forget about the result."

Why can’t I take my own advice when it comes to writing? Probably because I have less experience as a writer than I do as an actor, and because I care about writing a hell of a lot more than I care about acting.

Maybe if I spend enough time trudging through the fog, I’ll run into Neil, and he can help me find my way out.