My friend Dr. Pauly reviewed The Happiest Days of Our Lives!

Very few authors are able to connect with their readers, but Wil
Wheaton is not like most writers. His words are like a sleeper cell.
You have no idea they have penetrated deep inside of you, then they
spring to life and attack your senses when you least expect it.

[…]

Probably the hardest part about reading any of
Wheaton’s books is that I’m constantly day dreaming while I’m supposed
to be reading it. My thoughts drift because his words instantly trigger
flashbacks and old memories. That’s a powerful gift to have.

My
only complaint was that the book was too short. I wanted more. I equate
Wheaton’s style to Hemingway in the sense that he has an amazing
economy of words. The result is short but powerfully loaded pieces.
Although the book physically contains only thirteen short stories, the
impact is much greater. The stories, images, and memories that Wheaton
stirs up inside your head continues to fester and entertain and inspire
you long after you’re done reading his last page.

Pauly is an inspiration to me, and I aspire to write as well as he does one day. His praise of my work means a lot to me. 

I hear that a lot of the 300 are getting their books. This is awesome, and I’m happy to hear that those of you who’ve gotten your books are as excited to have them as I am for them to be in your hands. Because I’ve processed all the hardbacks out of the computer (the outstanding orders are just waiting to be sorted and filled with books), I was able to put softcovers back up for order again.

In non-HDoOL news, I just found out that a deadline was moved up from the middle of
January to December 4, so I’m probably going to be AFK (well, AFB,
anyway) for the next week or so, except when my brain demands a break
from it all and forces me to come post psychotic ramblings in my blog
about the time a Nosferatu became a Deadhead and lived out of a
converted school bus for six years, tripping his fangs off by drinking
the blood of spun out hippies in 1960.

. . . uh-oh. It’s starting already.

I just did a recount of the limited edition hardback oversells, and my count from Sunday was way off. I didn’t oversell by 24, I only oversold by 6!

While this still sucks for six people, it sucks considerably less for eighteen people, who lived in an eigenstate of suck for the last 36 hours or so. Of course, those eighteen people won’t know they were a cat in a box until they get their books, and see a number between 282 and 300.

Some of you will be getting shipping notices shortly, if PayPal can get its shit together. It’s been infuriatingly wonky this morning. International customers won’t get confirmations, because I have to process your orders manually, but your books are also shipping at the same time.

Speaking of The Happiest Days, it got a very nice review at Slashdot:

Where once it seemed as though Wil had something to prove in his
writing – that he was over showbiz, that he was over Star Trek –
Happiest Days is full of simple stories. The day he bought a Lando
Calrissian action figure essentially by mistake, a simple outing for
ice cream with his sons; they’re everyday events but artfully told. In
total he has about thirteen short tales in the chapbook-sized novel,
ranging from just two pages long to a few dozen.

Some of his most evocative stories (and the reason this review is here)
are all about Wil’s growth as a nerdling. The most evocative for me was
the chapter ‘a portrait of the artist as a young geek’, which details
Wil’s introduction to tabletop roleplaying. From his first brush with
the infamous ‘red box’ D&D set at Christmas 1983, to his experience
teaching his kids how to roll up characters under the 3.0 rulesset, the
story reminds me (and may remind you) of a D6-laden past.

And really, that’s what Wil makes this a book about. It’s about his own
past, his troubles, his triumphs, but in reality this is meant to be a
book that reaches out to you as a reader. If you see something of
yourself in the kid who agonized in the toy aisle, if you see something
of yourself in the dad who argues with his kids over the radio station
(and rocks out to 80s synth-pop), then the purpose of the Happiest Days
has been fulfilled. Or at least, as I see it.

I’ve vowed that I won’t play Rock Band until I get at least half the 300 processed, but now that Slashdot is sending people to Monolith Press, I have extra incentive to get them all processed, so we can start taking softcover orders again. PayPal is making that as difficult as possible, with the timeouts every goddamn two minutes, but if the server blots out the sun with arrows, I shall process orders in the shade!

Uh . . . yeah. if I may take a page from Lloyd Bridges in Airplane, I picked a bad day to sleep in.

Wow. I hoped it would happen, but I didn’t think it would happen so fast!

I took a break from the computer to go eat dinner with my family, and while I was up, we sold the last copies of the signed, numbered, limited edition of Happiest Days of Our Lives.

The really sad news is that we oversold by 24 books, and I’ll have to issue refunds to those people. Please accept my apologies in advance, but it looks like if you placed your order after 5:30 or 6pm PST, you’ll be getting a refund from me.

I wanted to reprint my final update from the liveblog and open mic thread:

5:18pm: So I’m adding things up, and here’s how it
looks right now: 177 orders from the US. 16 orders from the Canada. 11
orders from the the UK. 13 orders from the the Europe. 5 orders from
the Australia/New Zealand. That works out to 217. There are also about
twenty or so orders that I can’t easily search for in Thunderbird,
because they’re eChecks, or because PayPal didn’t include the item
number in the e-mail subject. I think it’s safe to assume that I’ve
sold about 240 signed, numbered, limited edition hardback copies of The
Happiest Days of Our Lives. If things continue the way they have, the
remaining copies will probably sell out with the next 24 hours, if they
don’t sell out over night.

This is a very big deal, and an important affirmation for me. The
paperbacks haven’t sold on the same pace as Barefoot or Geek, and I was
worried that for reasons I didn’t understand, a lot of people like to
read my blog, but didn’t want to — or weren’t able to — support my
writing efforts by buying my books. Today, however, tells me that a lot
of you were waiting for something special, and all of you who are part
of the 300, and that subset of you who participated in the open mic are
part of something that was and is very special to me.

Maybe it’s corny to feel good about this, but I love the sense of
community I feel here, and spending some time today with so many of you
turned a cool day into an awesome day.

Self-publishing is hard. Making it through the media filter is hard.
Just getting the damn hardbacks available for sale has been maddening.
But today made it all worthwhile.

I’ve felt discouraged and frustrated lately, and I’ve been doubting
whether or not I can make a living doing this. Today, you all showed me
that, while it’s not going to be lavish, and it’s certainly not going
to be easy, at least it’s possible.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me over the years, and to
everyone who supported me today. I sincerely believe you’re getting
something special and wonderful, and it’s very close to my heart. It’s
not a stretch to say that you’re all getting a big part of me when you
get one of my books, an even bigger part of me than the average
audience gets when they watch or listen to me act.

Thank you all, most sincerely, for being a part of this, one of the happiest days of my life.

Now I’m going to celebrate by playing some games with my family (looking like Ticket to Ride: Europe and maybe Settlers) before I have a Stone IPA, which I think I’ve earned.