blog

dead trees give no shelter

Posted on By Wil

Last year, a couple of weeks before Halloween, I had this idea to write a short, supernatural horror story. At the time, I was deep in the first draft of the short story that became a novella that really wants to be a novel (which has since been titled “All We Ever Wanted Was Everything”), so switching tracks to work on something different was intended to be a quick detour that would give me something to release for Halloween.

Once I got into it, though, Project Ravenswood took on its own life and it went from being a short story that I expected to finish around 3500 words after a week or so, to something I worked on for several months and just finished yesterday, at a little under 14,000 words. I retitled it “Dead Trees Give No Shelter”, and now I have to decide what I’m going to do with it. Part of me wants to hold onto it and put it out as part of the short collection it was originally intended to be part of, another part of me wants to release it right away as an ebook, still another part of me wants to pitch it to a couple of editors I respect, and still another part of me wants to record and release it as an audiobook original.

So I’m not sure what happens next with this story, because I’ve never worked this long on something that’s this (relatively) short, and I’m in unfamiliar territory right now. I do know that I get to do two things:

  1. I get to erase it from the white board.
  2. I get to go back to work on the novel.

Oh, and I get to release a new work of creative fiction for the first time in years. That’s pretty cool, and feels really good. However I get this story from me to you, I think you’ll enjoy it … or, at least, I hope you do.

Books

The Collapsing Empire

Posted on By Wil

No, it’s not a political post. It’s an audiobook post. But I understand why you may be confused.

My performance of Scalzi’s newest book, The Collapsing Empire, is available today from Audible.

John and I are the same age, grew up in the same area, and have a lot of the same cultural influences. That means that we write and talk in a very similar vernacular. We’re also very good friends, so I’ve heard John talk a whole bunch, and I’ve also heard him read his own work a whole bunch. Put those things together, and what you get is a pretty great team, if I do say so myself.

I’ve been fortunate enough to perform a lot of Scalzi’s books, include Fuzzy Nation, and Redshirts. I love John’s writing, and it’s a joy to perform, so when I was asked to do The Collapsing Empire, I was thrilled. I’m super proud of the work we did on this book, and want to publicly thank my director, Gabrielle de Cuir, who has helped me do the very best audiobook work I can do, on this and other books.

But enough about me. Let’s talk about The Collapsing Empire!

Our universe is ruled by physics, and faster-than-light travel is not possible – until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transports us to other worlds, around other stars.

Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war – and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

The Flow is eternal – but it is not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well, cutting off worlds from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that The Flow is moving, possibly cutting off all human worlds from faster-than-light travel forever, three individuals – a scientist, a starship captain, and the empress of the Interdependency – are in a race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.

Here’s my non-spoiler review, from my Goodreads account:

As delightful and easy to read as Scalzi at his best (Redshirts, Old Man’s War), with characters who are going to stay with you whenever you have to put the book down … which you aren’t going to want to do.

I won’t discuss plot, at all, but I will say this much: like all great SF, and like the SF that has become accepted as classic, The Collapsing Empire works as a wonderful SF tale … but it also has important allegory, metaphor, and commentary on some things that are going on right now, for readers who are open to that sort of thing. For those who aren’t, it doesn’t beat you over the head with it, which is a pretty neat trick.

Yep. It’s a great book, and I’m grateful to be part of its life.

blog

and now, the weather.

Posted on By Wil

My brain’s been doing this really neat thing every night between the time I shut off the light and fall asleep. I can’t recall specifically when it started, but for several weeks, now, before it begins its nightly delivery of nightmares and stress dreams, it opens up this box of memories labeled THINGS YOU FEEL BAD ABOUT, MAKE YOU SAD, OR OTHERWISE UPSET YOU AT SOME POINT that it recently found, pulls one out, and then spends as much time as it can doing a fucking power point presentation about it.

Most of the things in this memory box aren’t even recent. Most of the things in this memory box are from years, or even decades, ago, when I was still a little kid. None of them are particularly traumatic; most are things like “remember when this kid was a dick to you?” and “remember that time dad laughed at a thing you cared about?” and “you know, when you were 12, you could have been nicer to that guy…”

Last night, my brain was too tired to be a dick to me, and all I can recall from the few moments between turning off the light and going to sleep is listening to the white noise machine do its thing. My asshole brain didn’t dump a bunch of shitty dreams on me (that I can remember, anyway) and it even let me stay asleep for close to 8 hours before it woke me up.

And then, while I was reading the paper, it was all OH HEY I FORGOT TO BE A DICK TO YOU LAST NIGHT and it unloaded this memory on me.

(more…)

Games

Fury of Dracula!

Posted on By Wil

Here are two of my very favorite episodes from this season of Tabletop.

I’m delightfully busy at the moment, so instead of writing all about how much I love this game and a whole bunch of other things, I’m going to hit publish, eat breakfast, and go to work.