I just saw this at Geekdad, and the power of geek compelled me to share it, because d20s just make me so goddamn happy.
It was originally uploaded to flickr to emoeby … and you really want to go look at his photostream. Trust me.
sunken treasure goes on sale
As promised, Sunken Treasure is now officially on sale!
I have created two editions, a US Edition and a World Edition. They are identical in content, but the World Edition is in a slightly larger format, so it's $2.00 more. The trade off is that you don't have to spend a million dollars on shipping if you're not in the US. NOTE: Canadian customers have informed me that, by choosing the US edition, they can save $2 + GST. Yay!
Everything you ever wanted to know about Sunken Treasure (but were afraid to ask) can be found in this entry. Here's the book's description at Lulu:
Sunken Treasure is a short collection of my favorite pieces from my books and blog, including a production diary from my 2008 role in Criminal Minds, and excerpts from a collaborative fiction I took part in called Ficlets. As a bonus feature, it also includes the never-before-seen script to a sketch I wrote and performed at the ACME Comedy Theater.
If you ever wanted to know where to start with all my writing, Sunken Treasure is the book for you.
The book is 90 pages long. The US edition is $13 + shipping, and the world edition is $15 +shipping.
Some of you may notice that I missed my noon Pacific release time today by about an hour. That's because, at 11:30 this morning, I got a crazy awesome idea (one in a series, it would seem): As a bonus and a thank you, for the next 48 hours everyone who purchases the book will get to download a live audio performance of See a Little Light, an outtake from Happiest Days of Our Lives, which I included in Sunken Treasure, because it turns out that I liked it a lot, and shouldn't have cut it from Happiest Days in the first place. When you place your order, you should get a thank you e-mail, which will have a link to the file's download location. I'll keep that link alive until about 1pm Pacific on Friday, when it will be sent to the land of wind and ghosts.
I'm super crazy excited that everyone who wants this, no matter where they are in the whole world, has a chance to get it, and I can't wait to hear your feedback.
I know that some of you are interested in the practical nuts and bolts of how this whole thing came together, what it was like to use Lulu, why I'm trying out Lulu, and some other publisher-y things. I've kept a lot of notes about this whole experience, and I'll put all this stuff in its own post, probably next week some time.
binary bubbles!
According to Flickr, about 2500 people have peeked at the cover of Sunken Treasure since I mentioned it on Twitter yesterday. I just love it, and before I release the book at noon Pacific today, I wanted to give everyone who reads my blog a chance to see it (and hopefully get as excited about it as I am) now.
The general consensus is that it's awesome, especially the little binary bubbles. I totally agree, and want to publicly thank and give credit to my pal Matt for designing it.
Edited to add: The release is going to be delayed just a little bit, but when you find out why, I think you'll agree that it was totally worth the wait.
Edited again to add: Yay! It's officially on sale now.
from the vault: the autumn moon lights my way
I reached into the vault and pulled this entry out today because a reader recently commented that it was one of her favorites, and what do you know, it's one of mine, too.
When I wrote this, Ryan and Nolan were barely 16 and 14, in the middle of what Anne and I called "The Pod Person Phenomenon" where our sweet, wonderful little children were taken in the night and replaced by Pod People who suddenly thought we were so lame and wanted to argue about everything, regardless of how insignificant it actually was.
The Pod People eventually departed as rapidly and unexpectedly as they arrived, but the moment I captured in this blog was a joyful island in the middle of a stormy sea of exasperated sighs and rolling eyes:
the autumn moon lights my way
I heard Led Zeppelin coming out of Ryan's room, so I put down my Sudoku book (yeah, I've been hooked for about a month), walked down the hall, and knocked on his door.
"Come in," he said.
I opened, and entered his sanctuary: astronomy posters hung from his walls, and a stack of books (Les Miserables, The Count of Monte Cristo, Macbeth, Divine Comedy and a host of other books that your average AP English student with a 4.0 in the class reads*) sat on his desk. A pile of (clean? dirty?) clothes lay in a heap at the foot of his bed. He sat at his desk, looking at The Internets.
He turned around in his chair. "What's up?" He said.
"Oh, I just heard you listening to Zeppelin II, and I didn't want to miss a chance to share in something we both love, that I happened to introduce to you in the pre-Pod days," I thought.
"I . . . just wondered what you were doing." I said.
He got very excited. "Oh! I found this awesome Family Guy Website, and I was downloading audio clips from it, and putting them on my computer." He clicked a few times, and showed me the website.
"When I was your age, I did the same thing, with The Prisoner and Star Trek," I said, "on my Mac II."
He frowned. "Weren't you on Star Trek?"
"Yeah," I said, "but the sounds were from the original series."
He looked back at me.
"So it was geeky, but it wasn't totally lame," I said. Why did I feel like I our ages and roles were reversed?
"What's The Prisoner?" He said.
"A show that I love, that I don't think you're geeky enough to enjoy."
He clicked his mouse, and iTunes fell silent.
"Wil," he said, "you didn't think I'd like Firefly."
"Touche," I said with a smile. "Any time you want to watch The Prisoner, I am so there."
Actually, any time you want to do anything, I am so there, because I don't want to be a stranger to you for the next five years, and I'll close the gap any way I can.
"Okay," he said. "Maybe after school some day next week."
"When –"
"When my homework's done," he said. "I know, Wil."
He wasn't snotty. He wasn't rude. He wasn't impatient or unpleasant. He just . . . was. I saw a lot of myself in him.
"I need to work my a–" he began, "I need to work very hard this semester."
I nodded my head. "I'm glad you know that, Ryan."
He turned back around to his computer. I stood in his doorway and looked at him for a minute.
He may not have my DNA, but I've given him some of the things that matter in life.
"Ryan?"
He didn't turn around. "Hmm?"
"I love you."
"I love you too, Wil."
"Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song.
I'm goin' 'round the world, I got to find my girl, on my way.
I've been this way ten years to the day, Ramble On,
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams."*Yeah, I'm proud of him. Sue me.
We ended up watching a whole lot of The Prisoner together before he went off to college, and we watched a lot of Twin Peaks, The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits, too. I meet grown-up kids and their parents all the time these days who tell me that watching Star Trek together was important to them, and after watching these shows with my own kids, I totally understand what they're talking about.
Ryan is in his sophomore year right now. Every day, it seems, he sends me a text message or an e-mail, or calls me and his mom to tell us what's going on at school, or just to tell us he loves us. While I do miss him, I can't be too sad, because my whole goal as his parent was to raise a smart, capable, independent, successful and responsible person.
Every day, it seems, he affirms for me in some way that we were successful.
justice is served, edo-style!
I understand that SciFi Channel has just finished serving up a special kind of Justice.
From our first season on TNG, it’s full of growing pains, but it remains one of the most unintentionally hilarious we ever did, and if ever there was an episode worthy of a Riff Track, well, I think this one should get it. Hell, maybe I’ll do it myself.
Anyway, if you’ve just seen it for the first time in recent years or ever, I think you’ll get a kick out of the review/recap that I did for TV Squad:
After dropping some human colonists off in the Strnad solar system, the Enterprise notices a rather nice Class M planet in the nearby Rubicun system, called Rubicun III. Picard sends an away team down to the surface to find out if it’s a good place for some shore leave, and they return with some very good news: it’s clean, it’s beautiful, it’s populated with friendly humanoids . . . and they really like to do the nasty.
“At the drop of a hat,” according to Geordi.
“Any hat,” Tasha says, knowingly.
Picard sends a second, larger team down to the planet to see exactly how many hats they’re going to need. Because every responsible Starfleet parent would want to send their children down to the galaxy’s longest running planetary orgy, he orders Wesley Crusher to see if the planet is a good place for kids to hang out.
[…]
Down on the planet, Wesley is jogging around with his new friends. Unlike the adults, who are busy getting their freak on in Plato’s Retreat, the kids are busy showing off their gymnastic skills. One of the Edo boys walks on his hands! Oh! Wesley got served! But wait! Wesley serves back with some cartwheels and a roundoff, and IT’S ON!
In fact, it’s so on, the girl (who was played by a really sweet girl named Judith Jones, who played my girlfriend on an after school special called My Dad Can’t Be Crazy, Can He?) gets so hot for Wesley, she asks him if he’ll “teach her” how to “play ball.”
Oh, you bet, baby. Uncle Wesley will teach you how to play ball. Why don’t you just slip into this latex bodysuit and put on this wig first, and then we’ll play all sorts of ball, you dirty little bitch.
Uh. What just happened? Sorry about that.
Wesley tells them to get a bat. When they don’t know what it is, he describes Worf’s penis. It’s not awkward at all.
[…]
After extracting a promise that the Edo won’t kill Wesley before sundown, Picard takes Rivan with him back to the Enterprise. Once there, he shows her “god” (this is, quite honestly, a nice little homage to the original series. Whenever Captain Kirk took a hot babe back to the space ship, he showed her god, too. Sometimes, he showed her an entire pantheon of gods. And he never called her back, baby, because that’s just how he rolled, leaving broken hearts all over the galaxy. Awww yeah.) The problem is, god is pissed, and shakes the ship until Picard beams Rivan back down to the planet. Poor Picard, he brought her all the way home, and he didn’t get to drop a single hat.
This review will be in my forthcoming collection of first season reviews, Memories of the Future.
Bonus! If you want to listen to me perform this review, you can enjoy to this audio from the 2008 Phoenix Comicon. Double bonus: you can also hear me read Blue Light Special, from Happiest Days of Our Lives.
Shameless plug: You totally want the Happiest Days of Our Lives audiobook.
Man, that turned into a shameless plug really quick, didn’t it? I mean, it really got out of hand! Brick killed a guy.
“I stabbed a man in the heart with a trident.”
“I saw that!”
Um. Kids, when you start quoting Anchorman and then talk about it in Bob Saget’s voice, it’s time to end the blog entry and just hit publish.