When I was in my early twenties, I fooled around with writing different things: slam poetry, short stories, essays about the things that are important to a guy in his early twenties . . .
Soul Coughing, William Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, my friends Dave and Dave, and a bar called The Two of Clubs all combined to inspire me . . . but nothing I wrote back then was any good.
This week, I’ve been listening to far too much Soul Coughing (as if there is such a thing!) and it’s inspiring me again. I feel this mixture of inspiration and compulsion well up inside me — I actually feel it press out against the inside of my chest — and I want to write a smoky, whiskey-soaked story about a guy who gets into a lot of trouble.
Tonight, I was listening to Ruby Vroom right after I dropped Ryan at baseball practice. I drove home straight into the setting sun, and I heard this character in my head say, in an exhausted voice, “I wondered if I could drive fast enough to catch the Sun, and I didn’t mean chase it around the world. I meant drive right into the heart of that motherfucker, and melt. I looked into my rearview mirror, and pressed my foot into the floor.”
I don’t know how that guy got there, and I don’t know what the scratch mark will reveal when it traces across the surface of my mind, but it’s going to be interesting to look.

I forgot to mention this until just now: On Saturday the 23rd of October, I’m going to be at the Dallas Comic-Con at the Plano Center, in fabulous Plano, TX. I’ll have copies of Just A Geek, Dancing Barefoot, and the last few preview CDs for the audio book version of JAG. For all you Munchkin players out there, I’ll have a very few “Heart of the Anomaly” cards, as well.

wil wheaton!!!

photo by: ilisu

for wendy
who lead me to this book

So let me explain what is going on here: Wendy is a friend of mine, and she sent me a note that this sweet girl had my book, and posted about it on her buzznet moblog.
I thought it was too cool for words that someone was so excited to have my book, they took a picture of themselves with it!
buzznet has this new premium feature where you can add anything from a buzznet blog to your own blog using xml-rpc, and I thought this was as good an image as any to try it out.
Neat!

It sounds like lots of people have been tuning into the stream of my performance from Gnomedex, and enjoying it. That rules!
There was a suggestion in the comments from the last post that I should do each chapter live, and put the whole thing together into a collection of “live” performances. My friend Jim actually suggested something like that to me about a year ago, and I’ve been planning to do it with Dancing Barefoot. The plan is to set up four performances down at the ACME theatre (two a night for two nights) and then cut together the best stuff. The results of that recording will be “Dancing Barefoot — Live” or something spiffy like that.
I know I’ve mentioned the Just A Geek audiobook before, but it’s almost finished! David Lawrence has been helping me produce it, and we’re about 50% completed. I’m working on it some more tonight, right after I’m on The David Lawrence Show. (David and I are going to talk a lot of politics and stuff, which should be interesting because we agree on most things, but sharply differ on others.)
I just started Sean Astin’s book, and even though I’m only 18 pages into it, I am having a hard time putting it down. Wouldn’t it be cool if Sean and I did some book signings and things together? When I finish his book, I’m going to call him and suggest it.

Linucon trip report is in the works, but it was honestly such an amazing weekend, I’m having a very tough time picking out just the highest of the high points.
Until it’s finished, though, I’ve got something that I think WWdN readers are really going to like:
IT Conversations has put up the audio of my reading from Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot at Gnomedex!
Quoth the website:

You may know him for his portrayal of Cadet Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but inside the skin of an actor is a geek trying (successfully) to get out. He’s the author of the weblog, WilWheaton.net, and two books: Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek. In this presentation recorded at Gnomedex 4.0, Wil reads original unexpurgated excerpts from his books, takes questions, and sits down for an interview with IT Conversations. It was one of the highlights of the weekend. Guaranteed to entertain, whether you’re a Star Trek fan or not. This is Part 1 of 2.

The audio is outstanding, but it’s not the best performance I’ve ever done (that honor is currently assigned to my performance at Linucon.) As I’ve mentioned before, I was terrified when I went up there, and I can hear the tension and apprehension in my voice as I try to connect to the audience . . . but about thirty minutes in, I think I got more comfortable and hit my stride. I’ll post part two when it’s out.
The entire performance is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license, so please, please, please share it with people.
I’d love to hear feeback from anyone who tunes in.
UPDATED: In the comments, tsu points us to Part Two. Cool! Thanks, tsu!
Updated again: There is also Video of the performance (.wmv) available as a torrent file (mpeg is on the way, apparently. Sweet!)