a happy accident
A few months ago, a casting director needed to get a picture of me with my luxurious beard. Since I haven't had any headshots taken since I grew this magnificent beard, my son and I took my camera out onto the patio so he could take a quick picture that would be good enough for e-mailing on short notice.
While we were getting the shot set up, he was fooling around and took a picture of just my arms, folded across my chest. We laughed a bit, and I didn't think about it again until I'd uploaded the pictures into iPhoto, and they stacked up on top of each other the way you see here.
I didn't plan for it to end up this way, but I think it looks cool and weird, so I thought I'd share.
my 2009 PAX panel schedule and chapbook announcement
Yesterday, PAX 2009 completely sold out, days before the con even begins. I'm so happy for everyone involved, from my friends who make the show happen, to the over 50,000 gamers who are about to participate in the best three days of the year.
My panel schedule looks a lot like this:
Saturday, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Serpent Theatre
Pitch Your Game Idea
You’ve got 45 seconds to deliver your idea to our panel of experts. The top three pitches will be picked for prizes and swag! (Please note that this is an open forum — there’s nothing keeping anyone, judges and attendees alike, from stealing your ideas! If you’re not comfortable with this, please don’t pitch your idea!)
Panelists Include: Jeff Kalles, Greg Hjertager, Wil Wheaton
Sunday, 2:30pm – 3:30pm, Serpent Theatre
Wil Wheaton presents: THE AWESOME HOUR!!1
Wil Wheaton first came to PAX in 2007, when he gave the keynote address that your parents won't stop making you listen to in the car. In 2008, he returned for a panel that asked and answered the burning question, "Can Wil Wheaton really be a panel all by himself?" This year, Commodore Wil Wheaton welcomes you aboard the USS AWESOME for 60 minutes of story-telling, lingerie-dodging, mirth-making, myth-making, iconoclasting, and the obligatory burning-questioning … ing.
Presented by Wil Wheaton
I'm also tremendously excited to announce that I was able to put together a limited-edition chapbook of mostly-unpublished short fiction that will only be available at PAX. BEHOLD THE INTRODUCTION!
The Day After and Other Stories
Every year, before the summer convention season gets underway, I pull a few excerpts from whatever I plan to release in the fall, take them to my local print shop, and make a deliberately lo-fi, limited edition chapbook to take with me on the obligatory summer convention circuit.
I’ve done previews of Dancing Barefoot, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Memories of the Future, and in 2008, I pulled together a sampler that eventually became Sunken Treasure.
While Memories of the Future is 2009’s “big” fall release, it didn’t make sense to me to release a Memories-based chapbook this summer, because one already exists.
It looked like there wasn’t going to be a 2009 entry in the traditional Wil Wheaton Zine-like Chapbook Extravaganza, until I realized that I have several pieces of unpublished fiction sitting in my office, just waiting to be published.
“Hey,” I said to myself, “people keep asking me to write and release fiction, and I’ve been waiting until I have an actual novel to give them. But these things totally don’t suck, and I bet readers would enjoy them.”
“That is an excellent idea, me,” I said. “And have I mentioned how smart and pretty you are?”
“Oh, stop it. You’re embarrassing me,” I said.
Together, myself and I collected some of my (mostly unpublished) fiction and put it into this chapbook, for safe keeping.
Even though this is limited to just 200 copies, it represents a significant step for me in my life as a writer, because it’s the first time I’ve collected and published stories that I made up. (You know, like a writer does.) I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for your support!
Wil Wheaton
Pasadena
2009
There will be just 200 signed and numbered copies of The Day After and Other Stories at PAX, which I'll have at my table in bandland. Depending on how it sells and the feedback I get from people who read it, I may decide to do a wide release, similar to what I did with Sunken Treasure.
This is the cover for Memories of the Future, Volume One
This is the cover for Memories of the Future, Volume One.
I looked at a bunch of different designs (and at least one of them may be a variant cover at some point) but when I saw the comp that ended up leading to this cover, I knew that this was the one I'd want to use, because I just love 1950s and 1960s pulp Sci-Fi covers. For me, they evoke a unique sense of nostalgia that is strangely timeless, and that's something I hope to do with the text in these books.
I asked my friend Will Hindmarch, who did the interior and cover design, to talk about the process a little bit, and here's what he had to say:
We went through a few cover designs before settling on this one. I see it as a mix between classic, pulpy Penguin covers and a bit of modern texture-driven design. The decision not to do an actual fake distressed cover, here, with ragged edges and all that, was deliberate. So it has some of that distressed texture, but it's cleaner than a beat-up, hand-me-down copy pulled out of an attic somewhere. This is some remarkably clean copy you found in a second-hand shop somewhere.
The thing also needed to intuitively evoke Star Trek memories without being too on-the-nose. I immediately latched on to that familiar uniform shape and did two or three variations on that idea. This is the one that Wil grabbed out of my various sketches. We wanted something that sort of looked back but was also sort of about the future, but we needed something that we could riff on for a series of books. So it's got a formula that we can tweak and alter as we move forward. I think, once we have two or three of these covers sitting next to each other, they'll interact in fun ways.
I'm already looking ahead to the imagery for volume two.
Memories of the Future, Volume One will be released next month. I will announce the exact date soon. A little more information about Memories of the Future, Volume One can be found here.
Leverage – The Two Live Crew Job
Early feedback from tonight's episode of Leverage is overwhelmingly positive, which delights me. I'm so happy to hear that so many people liked it.
If you've seen the show already, you may get a kick out of the pictures I took during production and just added to Flickr, but there are spoilers, so don't look if you don't want to see them. (And no fair complaining at me if you don't listen and get spoiled.)
I'm sure John will have a post at his blog in the very near future where you can ask him questions about the spin-off (with robots!) that I'm getting.*
If you have questions or comments for me about the show, feel free to leave them here and I'll do my best to respond in a timely manner. Seriously, I'll really appreciate the distraction.
*I'm not really getting a spin-off. That's my little joke. Ha! Ha! I am using the Internet!