Quick announcement: This Sunday, the 24th of October, I will be appearing at the Grand Opening of a brand new Borders in the Santa Anita Mall.
Check out what Borders says on their website:

Join us for a discussion and signing with this ever-popular actor turned writer. Despite early stardom in the motion picture Stand By Me, and his role as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Wil left Hollywood in pursuit of happiness on an extended hiatus from acting to write full time. In his newest book, Just a Geek, Wil shares his deeply personal and difficult journey to find himself with stories that reveal an honesty and disarming humanity.

I’ll be reading from and signing Just A Geek, and Dancing Barefoot, and I’ll do my best to read fast, so I can take questions. Also, if you’re a WWdN reader, I’ll have a few “WWdN Monkey” ribbons that are leftover from Linucon, and a couple of the “Heart of the Anomaly” cards for Star Munchkin, too.
I’m really looking forward to this event — I grew up about 20 miles away from this mall, and I used to go there often when I was a kid, so I feel like I’m closing the circle here, this time as a “local” author.
The weekend was awesome. I started out with some ADR work on Teen Titans Friday morning, for Titans East Parts One and Two . . . holy shit. It’s not secret that I love Teen Titans, and it’s no secret that I’m fiercely proud of my work there . . . but holy shit holy shit holy shit. The episodes just keep getting better and better, and this story arc is the best I’ve been in so far. It’s dark, it’s a little scary, and the animation is SO FREAKING COOL! I actually had my very first “cool, dry superhero” line on Friday. I got to say, “Something tells me you guys don’t like water . . .” right before I . . . uh, I mean, Aqualad does some seriously cool superhero stuff. I can’t wait to see this episode when it airs.
Friday afternoon, I went over to the set of a movie to do some research for a magazine article that I’m writing — yeah, you read that correctly: I get to write a magazine article! I can’t say anything more than this: I’m entering some new territory with this piece, and it’s going to totally rock when it’s done.
Friday night, Anne and I took the kids to Knott’s Halloween Haunt. She and I have gone almost every year for the last decade, and I’ve been going since I was 14 . . . but it’s the first time we took the kids. It was super cool, because they’re old enough to have fun getting scared in the mazes, but not too old to be embarrassed about going with their parents. We didn’t get home until after 2 a.m., and we all slept until 10 on Saturday.
Saturday was another big day, because Ryan was going to his very first High School dance Saturday night. He had been excited about it for three weeks, but I wonder if it was as important to him as it was significant to me and Anne . . . I remember when Ryan’s feet couldn’t touch the floor when he sat at the dinner table. We drove him and his friends, and they all had a great time. Again, we finally got into bed after 2am.
Sunday we slept as late as we could, and spent the day cleaning our house. Sunday afternoon we watched Nolan play in his basketball league, and by dinnertime last night, we were all ready to fall asleep!
I was able to stay awake until about 9:30, but I was so wiped out from the weekend, I fell asleep during the ALCS. That’s a pretty big deal, since I’m a huge baseball weenie. I’m hoping for a Red Sox / St. Louis World Series, if you care about that sort of thing.
So it was a great weekend, and I can’t believe that it’s already 9am on Monday. I’m off for some voice over auditions, then I’m actually working on a game this afternoon. I don’t think I’m allowed to say what it is, yet, but it’s an established title in a successful franchise. It should be extra fun.
updated: Whoops. I keep forgetting to mention this: the audition I had a few weeks ago was for CSI:Miami. I did a *really* good job, and I probably would have booked it, but they changed the part from male to female. When my manager told me that, I said, “Well, can I go back there in a wig and a dress?”
“We’re not quite to that point in the career, Wil,” he said.
Har. Har. Har.

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.