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The last two weeks have been incredible trip back across the last three years (and in some places, the last fifteen years) as I’ve worked on my Just A Geek rewrite . . . and I’m down to the final scene in the book, which I will finish today.
I sent the 99% completed manuscript to my editor two days ago, and after reading it, he sent back a note, that he asked I share with WWdN readers.

Hello there, friends, fans, and freaks. This is Wil’s O’Reilly editor,
piping in to let you know where Wil has been lately. As he mentioned a few days ago, I’ve been cracking the proverbial whip (well, let’s just say it’s proverbial, to protect the innocent), and figured I’d write something about “Just a Geek” while I’ve got him slaving over a keyboard. First, let me say a “Thank you” to all of you guys, who made “Dancing Barefoot” nothing short of a phenomenon–I can honestly say that signing Wil as an author was made easier by every one of you who plunked down your cash to pick up a copy. It got my attention, and eventually got Tim O’Reilly’s attention, which is why you’re going to be able to buy “Just a Geek” at every store in the nation, rather than having to order it direct. Wil’s quite happy, I hear, as he and his wife were prone to squabbling over exactly how many stamps 100 pages of nostalgia cost to ship in today’s economy.
In any case, all prelude aside, I wanted to say just a word about “Just A Geek”, as I just finished reading the 99% complete manuscript.
It’s incredible.
You want this book.
You need this book.
All brevity aside, you’re all going to be very, very pleased. Without denigrating (yes, I paid a lot of college tuition to use big words like that, thank you very much) “Dancing Barefoot” at all, “Just a Geek” is a highly polished, well-written, wonderfully crafted novel that goes so much further than any of you can imagine. It’s a lot of fun, and that’s after way too many readings. I’m not trying to get you drooling too much (well, maybe a bit), but suffice it to say that the few days you’ve lost Wil on WWdN have paid off in spades. In fact, it’s as if Wil picked up a Queen of Spades on the river to make a gutshot royal straight flush, which is a pretty big deal where I come from.
I’m confident that you’ll start to see bits and pieces of JAG show up here, on oreilly.com, and of course at Wil’s appearances, but I just thought you all deserved to know that this is going to be a killer book. I’m not a flatterer, so take that as high praise. Wil has literally busted his tail to get this done, respond to hundreds of comments, add lots of new material, and generally become a terrific author. I can honestly and happily say that while JAG is great, I expect it to be only the first full-length book; only the initial offering in a long line. We’re excited here at O’Reilly to help you guys get as much of Wil as we can… to squeeze the very life out of him while his family laments what life used to be like before writing contracts… to ensure his mother knows his voice only by memory…
Oh… sorry… I got a little caught up in being an editor again. In any case, we all love Wil here, and expect to see a lot more from him in the months to come. We’ve also got some great surprises coming along, like a potentially mind-blowing foreword to “Just a Geek”, some opportunities for collectible copies, and much more… so stay tuned, right here.
I’ll go let Wil out of his cage … er … office … in a day or two, and you’ll get to read it all here.

Wow.
Thanks, Brett. I . . . don’t know what to say. I’m really happy with the way this book has turned out . . . but I don’t think I can take credit for the entire thing. A lot of people have given me valuable feedback along the way, including you.
I’m really not supposed to do this, but I’m going to share a tiny glimpse of what I’m finishing up today. Don’t tell anyone, okay?

I had my final costume fitting the next day, and the day after that, I found myself at the Melrose Avenue guard shack, half-an-hour early for my 8:30 am call time.
“ID, please.” The guard said.
I pulled my driver’s license out of my wallet, and gave it to him.
“And where are you going today . . . ” he looked at my license. “Wil?”
“I’m working on Star Trek.” I said.
“Enterprise or Nemesis?”
The Next Generation.
“Nemesis,” I said. “I play Wesley Crusher.”
He looked up at me. “Oh my god. You are Wesley Crusher. You look so . . . ”
Washed up?
“. . . grown up.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Do you know where to park?”
“Yeah. But I don’t know where our dressing rooms are.”
But I do! I do know where our dressing rooms are! They’re trailers on the street in front of stages 8 and 9. Mine is filled with Warhammer 40K figures and GURPS books. It’s right next to Brent’s trailer. It’s 1989, and I’m back. I’m back home.
“Okay,” he said, and gave me directions to an area on the lot where I’d never been before.
I parked my car, and picked up my backpack. Inside was my script, a notepad, and a few tapes: Only A Lad, Music For The Masses, and Squeeze: Singles 45 and Under . . . all of them music I listened to when I was working on the series. I remember, when I put them in my backpack, that I thought to myself, “Maybe I can sit in my trailer, listen to ‘Never Let Me Down,’ and imagine that I never left.”
I locked up my car, and walked toward the dressing rooms. Other than the addition of a back lot, Paramount hadn’t changed in any substantial way since I was on the show, and my thoughts drifted as I walked down those familiar streets on auto-pilot.
That’s where I met Eddie Murphy when I was sixteen . . . Hey! I crashed a golf cart there when I was fifteen . . . There’s the mail room . . . There’s stage six, where the bridge set started out . . . I almost got up the courage to kiss that girl at the Christmas party on that stage in . . . there’s the stage where Shatner told me, “I’d never let a kid come onto my bridge” . . . this street feels exactly the way it did when I worked here . . . here’s where my trailer used to be . . .
I stopped, and tears filled my eyes — tears of joy: It’s so good to be here, mingled with tears of sadness and regret: Why didn’t this happen years ago?
Because I wasn’t ready for it to happen. I walked a few more steps, and looked into the foyer that led into stages 8 and 9. Enterprise lives there now. At least they kept the stage in the family.

Okay. Back to work.

This will probably be my last weblog entry this week, because I’m in the final few miles of the Just A Geek rewrite marathon.
I was hoping to have it turned in by April 2, but I lost days while I was at the Grand Slam convention, and when I worked on Teen Titans. My mom, dad, and sister gave me a bouquet of flowers last week that included some lillies (my favorite, for those of you scoring at home, are stargazer lillies), and my plan was to have it all done by the time they opened . . . but now I will finish it before the last petal falls to the table, like in Beauty And The Beast.
My rocking editor at O’Reilly was kind enough to give me a few extra days to work on it, and the last 36 hours have been some of the most productive in my short literary life. I was really stuck on a few sections, like there was a dam across the little river of creativity in my brain, but it exploded sometime on Sunday, and the ensuing flood has been amazing. A few days ago, I was seriously worried about Just A Geek. I was happy with the second and third acts, but I thought the first act was total shite . . . well, all that shite was washed away by the flood, and I’m so happy with what I have, it’s taking all my strength (and respect for my contract) to not share big chunks of it right now.
We’ll all have to wait until June, I guess. I promise that it will be worth it.

My brother just opened up his very first CafePress store! His current design is a parody of the 24Hr Fitness design, called 24Hr Fatness. I have one of his shirts, and let me tell you something, Curly, it gets quite a response from the ladies.
I asked Jeremy to tell WWdN readers why he made the shirts, and here’s what he had to say:

I did it because I was tired of seeing the 24Hr Fitness employees walking around who were more out of shape than me trying to be all like “hey, you should join 24Hr Fitness so you can get into shape”. Yeah, whatever tiny, you have cheese on your lip.
I just hope that Cafepress leaves it up there, they have a thingy about not selling things that resemble other products. So we’ll see. If they sell and it gets taken down then I’ll do it my damn self! Jenn [his wife] and I are going to be working on a bunch more stuff too. Jenn has the “Party Monkey” and “Drag Monkey” line she’s been doing for fun for years.

Am I buggin’ you? I don’t mean to bug ya…
Okay Edge, play the blues…

Question for the Brain Trust:
In 1989, I was on this thing called SeaTrek, that sailed out of Florida.
I really need to know what city we sailed from, and I can’t find a damn thing about it on Google, other than the SeaTrek hompage. (The only thing I found there was this photographic evidence of what a complete tool I was.)
I’m hoping that someone who reads this will know someone who knows someone who remembers where and when we set sail.
Can anybody give me a little help?
Update: In the comments, Joe pointed me to an old UseNet post, identifying the port as Miami. Thanks, Joe!

I few weeks ago, I was asked to write something about Kurt Cobain for Black Table.com, because today is the ten year anniversary of his suicide.
I am always flattered and grateful when someone asks me to contribute to something, because it makes me feel like a “real” writer, but I often have to decline, because writing takes time, and time is something I just don’t have right now.
This was different, though, because I thought I had an interesting take on Kurt Cobain’s death, so I accepted. I wrote it up, re-wrote it, and then got buried in the Star Trek convention and forgot to send it in until one day after the deadline.
So it didn’t make the article, which is a drag, because the other writers are all respected and they all wrote great things. It would have been cool to be alongside them. They tell me it was cut for space . . . but I just read the other contributions, and it’s pretty clear to me that I’m not yet in their league.
I’m thrilled that I’ve had this realization while I’m suffering a crisis of confidence at the tail end of a rewrite, and I’m terrified about the “sophomore slump.”
But since I already put the work into it, it seems stupid to just file it off in the “never got published” directory.
Here it is:
The first time I heard “Nevermind,” I wasn’t impressed. As far as I was concerned, it was just a poor rip off of The Pixies’ “Doolittle.” When “Smells Like Teen Spirit” took over eMpTyVee and every radio station in the country, I got burned out pretty damn fast.
Then I read an interview with Kurt Cobain in . . . I think it was
Rolling Stone. Maybe it was Spin. But he said that there wouldn’t be Nevermind without Doolittle. Kurt Cobain was influenced by The Pixies? Okay, I’ll give it another try.
I listened to the whole album three or four times and I was hooked. The only other album that has completely pulled me in like that was Radiohead’s OK Computer. I bought “Bleach” within a week, and stood in line to pick up “In Utero” when it was released. I still think that Kurt’s version of “The Man Who Sold The World” is one of the most beautiful and haunting things I’ve ever heard.
For as much as I loved the music, I completely hated Kurt Cobain’s antics. The destruction of vintage guitars enraged me, the dresses and outrageous behavior in interviews just annoyed me, and over time it became difficult for me to appreciate the music on its own. By the time Kurt ended his life, I’d lost interest in Nirvana, and I told my friend Dave, “Well, what do you expect? Poor Kurt had all his dreams come true, and he just couldn’t handle it. Maybe he ran out of vintage Strats to destroy.”
Dave did his best to convince me that rock had lost a pioneer. Without Kurt’s music, he said, there wouldn’t be Perl Jam, or Soundgarden, or Alice In Chains. Without Nirvana, he suggested, Guns N Roses may still be sitting atop Rock’s Mount Olympus.
“Meh. There’s one less Junkie in the world,” I said. The truth was, I’d recently lost a dear friend to suicide, and Kurt’s death brought back a lot of unresolved sorrow over my own loss.
Almost a year later, I was listening to Chet Baker, an influential Jazz musician who was also a heroin addict when he fell (some say jumped) out of an Amsterdam hotel window in 1988. Baker was a trumpet player, with a soulful voice. There was always a touch of sadness and longing in his lyrical style — be it musical or vocal. I’d been reading a lot of Burroughs at the time, and I called up my friend Dave to rave about Chet Baker’s “How Deep is the Ocean?”
I told him how I could feel Chet Baker’s sadness, and I wondered if his addiction played a part in his music, the way Burrough’s addiction clearly informed his writing.
“Oh, you mean like Kurt Cobain.” Dave said. A statement, not a question.
I thought for a second. “Yes. Exactly like Kurt Cobain. I never thought of it that way.”
“So you maybe have a different opinion of him now?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” I surprised myself with my answer. “But I’ll never
forgive him for destroying all those vintage guitars.”
Dave laughed, “You’re such a dick.”
“Yes I am. But I’m a dick who can listen to Nirvana again.”
Here’s the part where I eulogize Kurt Cobain.
I didn’t know Kurt, and his death didn’t greatly impact my life. But I knew his music, and when I came to understand his addiction, and his frustrations with the music industry’s efforts to turn him into just another commodity, I felt sad for him, and mourned his loss.
I don’t think Kurt Cobain was that great a musician, and I can speak from experience, because even I was able to play along with most of Nevermind, without learning any new chords. But he was an amazing writer, and his real legacy can be seen in garage bands and on record store shelves all over the world. Dave was right: without Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, there would be no Perl Jam, no Soundgarden, no Alice in Chains, and Seattle would just be this mysterious city where it rains a lot.
I can’t believe it’s been ten years — a decade! — since Kurt Cobain died. Wherever he is, I hope he’s sipping Pennyroyal Tea.