WWdN: In Exile

in which a book builds a bridge

Earlier today, I spent about an hour composing a post, filled with links to groovy stories I'd found in the last couple of days while I found links to submit to Propeller. I added brilliantly trenchant commentary to each link, in what was destined to become a post for the ages.

You, dear reader, would have been so awed by the majesty of this post, you'd sign up for Propeller, and join me in the world of social news bookmarking. We'd form a network of like-minded people -- a social news Voltron, if you will -- and soon all of our stories would find their way to the front page, for great justice.

Satisfied with my work, I hit publish, and began clearing my shelf for the inevitable awards that would soon follow.

When I returned to my computer, the browser said, "Hey, Wil, just thought you'd like to know that the post you made has been saved. Enjoy your awards!"

I thanked it, opened up my blog to bask in the glow of my brilliance, and saw that the post wasn't there.

TypePad ate it. Destroyed it. Sent it off into the land of wind and ghosts. I stared at the computer, agog, until my mouth dried out and my jaw grew sore. I couldn't believe that it was just . . . gone. It was like it never existed.

After much furious . . . behavior . . . and fruitless searching for the post in question (which TypePad claims just doesn't exist, like I didn't spend an hour putting the goddamn thing together) I will now attempt to recreate the part of the post that was the most important to me:

Have you read Little Brother? I tore through it in about 4 days, and absolutely loved it. I gave it to Nolan when I finished, because I thought he'd enjoy it, and it would give us something cool that we could share.

I don't know what it's like for other parents of teenagers out there, but getting Nolan to pick up a book for more than three pages has been nearly impossible for the last eighteen months or so. He used to love reading, but  . . . well, there are new friends at school this year. 'nuff said.

I don't have scientific data to back me up, but I've anecdotally witnessed a direct relationship between someone's willingness to read and their level of education, success, expectations for themselves, and general, uh, interestingness they bring to the table. I guess that makes me one of those "elitists" we keep hearing about, but with that in mind, you may understand why it's been pretty damn important to me that I instill a love of reading in my kids.

"I read this in about four days," I told him when I presented the book to him, "and I would have read it faster if I'd had more time. Once it gets going, it's hard to put down."

"Okay," he said, "I'll give it a try."

"I'd really like to have this thing to share with you, and I know that you're haven't been all that inter-- What?"

"I'll give it a try," he said.

"Wow. That was easier than I expected." I thought.

I didn't ask, but I secretly hoped that maybe he wanted to have something like this to share with me as much as I wanted to have something to share with him. Stranger things have happened.

"Okay, cool." I said.

"But I'm probably not going to finish it as fast as you did," he said.

"I totally understand," I said. "No pressure, and I won't take it personally if you don't dig it."

I set it down on the desk next to him while he played Diablo and walked back into my office. The symbolism of this gesture was not intentional, but also was not lost on me.

A little while later, I walked back out into the living room, and found him sitting on the couch, reading. He appeared to be about 50 pages into it.

"What do you think?" I said.

He held up one finger in the universal "wait a minute" gesture, and continued to read.

"What?" he said.

"I asked you what you thought, so far."

"It's pretty good," he said, noncommittally, before he went back to reading.

"Cool," I said. I couldn't believe he was already that far into the book, and though his words were carefully chosen, his body language said that it was much more than just "pretty good." Rather than press the issue, I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of iced green tea.

Later that night, I noticed that he was sitting in the chair by our family iMac, but instead of playing games or talking to his friends on iChat, he had his head cocked to one side, Little Brother open in his lap. He'd made some serious progress in the book. I noticed that he had Firefox open to a Google search about [spoiler redacted].

I nudged Anne and pointed to Nolan.

"He's been reading that pretty much non-stop since you gave it to him," she said quietly.

"That rules," I said.

Over the next two days, I'd see him sitting on the couch, sitting in my favorite reading chair in our den, sitting in the chair by the iMac. He was always in the same pose, head cocked to one side, Little Brother open in his lap. We talked a little bit about the characters and the events in the book, and he asked me lots and lots of questions about the technology and real-life issues Cory presents in the book.

Flashback: Long before Little Brother was published, I had dinner with Cory. He told me that he was working on this book for teens that was supposed to have lots of real-life lessons in it about privacy, security and civil liberties. At the time, he told me how he hoped kids would read it and head to Google after each chapter to learn more. Nolan was doing exactly that.

Yesterday was the third day since I gave Nolan the book. After school, he bounded into the house and flew into my office. I looked up from my work and saw him holding Little Brother in outstretched arms.

"I love this book!" He said. "I seriously can't put it down!"

"That's awesome," I said, "but it's not interfering with your schoolwork, is it?"

"No," he said, "I'm reading between classes, and only in class when I've finished my work and made sure the teacher was cool with it."

I loved it that he took it to school with him. He's been spending more time than I'd like with non-reading, non-motivated kids who are, I fear, really in danger of holding Nolan back from realizing his potential. It's a small step (and maybe it's only temporary) but I was nevertheless thrilled that he was reading at school, unafraid of what his current peer group would think. I was hopeful that escape velocity would soon follow.

"That's great, Nolan," I said. "I'm so happy to hear that you're enjoying it."

We talked a little bit more about some of the events that had unfolded in the book that day, and he pointed out that he had about 100 pages to go.

"I want to finish it right now!" He said, before pulling the book close into his chest and hugging it. He lowered his voice and dramatically added, "But . . . I must wait. I must . . . savor it."

I laughed with him. "Don't you love it when you're into a book that's so good, you don't want it to be over?"

"YES!" He said, before he raced back out of my office.

"I haven't seen him this excited about anything in months," I thought. "This is better than I ever could have hoped for." I made a mental note to send Cory a thank you card.

After dinner last night, I found him in the living room, sitting in the chair in front of the iMac. The room was dim, mostly lit by the glow of the computer's monitor. It silhouetted Nolan's now-familiar stance, head cocked to one side, book open in his lap. It was, for me, a "remember this" moment.

He must have sensed me standing there, because he turned around and said, "Eighty pages to go, but I'm really stopping now. I'm going to finish this tomorrow."

I remembered all the times I've gotten close to the end of a book and put off finishing it. I remembered the way it felt to sit in the pull between wanting to know what happens and not wanting it to be over. I could see that Nolan was enjoying that feeling himself. I chose not to point it out.

"I'm so glad you're into this," I said. "I'm really glad we've been able to share this book."

"Me too," he said.

Earlier today, while I was writing the first version of this post, Nolan sent me a text message that said, "OMG it's over!!! So great, so great!!"

I sent back "Ha! I was just writing in my blog about how much you liked it. Yay!"

He replied, "Yeah, pretty amazing."

My heart swelled. I wonder what he'll read next?

happiest days made a bestseller list!

Happiest Days of Our Lives is currently number one on Mysterious Galaxy's paperback bestseller list. <-- That link has been fixed. Stupid goddamn firefox not copy and pasting correctly grumble grumble.

It's a dynamic list, and that link will likely reflect this little bit of excitement for just a short time, so I used my screenshot-fu to capture and preserve the moment:

To keep this in perspective, Mysterious Galaxy is just one store, where I did a heavily-attended reading and signing last month, so I'm not under the delusion that I've grabbed a brass ring here, or anything like that . . . but it still feels pretty damn good to see this.

I believe that Mysterious Galaxy still has some autographed copies of Happiest Days and my other books, so if you're looking for one, knowing is half the battle.

Geek Tour 2008: San Jose Super-Con - Updated

This weekend, the 2008 Geek Tour rolls into San Jose for Super-Con!

Original Announcement:

May 17-18
Super-Con
San Jose, CA

When I worked on NUMB3RS, I met the guys in charge of Super-Con in San Jose. In fact, they were a big part of making Alt Con 9 (the fake con in the show) look and feel as real as it did. I haven't been to San Jose for a convention since the only way to get there was via mule train, so I'm looking forward to traveling up the coast in more modren style, perhaps by zeppelin or auto-gyro.

I don't have a lot of details for this one, and I don't even know if I'll get a chance to perform from my books, make balloon animals or just stand around making lists of things.

However, I'll have a booth of awesome, where I'll be hanging out on Saturday and Sunday, trading books and pictures for shiny gold rocks. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to visit with some cool people while and angry guy complains about it. That's always pretty fun.

I'm hoping the copies of Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot that I ordered at great expense to myself arrive today, because if they don't, I won't have any of them for this show, which would be sad. [see Update at bottom]However, I should have shiny new copies of the second printing of Happiest Days, and 2008's chapbook-o-rama, Sunken Treasure.

Uh, this is also pretty goddamn cool: The original cast of MST3K will be getting together -- reuniting, if you will -- for the first time since the exciting rock climbing portion of the film began. I'm kind of excited to listen to whatever they have to say, and hope I can trade them shiny gold rocks for their automagraphs on my copy of Manos: the Hands of Fate.

UPDATE: FedEx and UPS came through for me. I have the second printing of Happiest Days, as well as copies of Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot. This means that, if you like, you can trade me shiny gold rocks (or Kongbucks) for The Complete Works of Me, Wil Wheaton.

Of course, now I have so much stuff to take and no time to ship it, so it looks like me and the 101 are going to spend about 5 hours of quality time together tomorrow. And again on Sunday. Good thing I have Dimension X on my iPod.

introducing sunken treasure

Tuesday night, I asked Andrew (my editor and good friend, for those of you who are just walking into the theater for the first time) if he thought we could put together a chapbook for the 2008 Geek Tour . . . and have it ready to give to the printer about 18 hours later.

Andrew is a fucking rockstar, and over the next 90 minutes or so of manic IMing we put together something that I'm massively proud of. The result of a fucos that can only be born in terror is something really, really special.

See, the other chapbooks I've done (and I try to do a different one each summer) are all pretty cool, with nifty bits of stuff that's awesome, but this one is different than anything I've done so far.

My author's note! Let me show you it!

Every summer, I make one of these limited chapbooks and  take them with me on the inevitable summer convention tour. In the past, I’ve pulled material from whatever I’m working  on, as sort of a fall preview, but this year the book I’m working on is so top secret, I’d have to print the chapbook on self-destructing paper, and while that would make it a very limited edition, the costs associated are kind of prohibitive.

So for 2008’s limited edition chapbook extravaganza, I’ve put together the first ever Wil Wheaton Sampler. With the help of my editor Andrew, who is a former ninja warrior and recreational time traveler, I’ve pulled together things I like from all three of my books, my blog, and this groovy collaborative fiction project I play with called Ficlets. I’ve also included, for the first time anywhere, one of the scripts I wrote for a sketch comedy show at the ACME Comedy Theater.

If you like what you see here, and would like to read more, come visit me online. I’m at wilwheaton.typepad.com.

Namaste.

Wil Wheaton
May 2008

I was going to call this Wil Wheaton's Hot Cocoa Box Sampler (Farkisms FTW!) but I have a tradition of using song titles that I didn't want to break, so this one is called Sunken Treasure, with the subtitle "Wil Wheaton's Hot Cocoa Box Sampler." Hee. Awesome.

I am so proud of this. It's one of the things I was working on during my massive deadline panic. The collected stories are some of my favorites, and I'm thrilled to include outtakes from Happiest Days as well as a script from ACME, which I've never reprinted anywhere before.

As always, this will be limited to 200 copies, and will become available at Super-Con this weekend in San Jose. If I'm lucky, I'll sell about half of them this weekend, and I'll have the remaining 100 to bring with me to the rest of the cons on the 2008 Geek Tour. I don't have any plans to sell these online, but I like this little book so much I may change my mind on that later this year.

Oh, speaking of the 2008 Geek Tour, I'm adding another stop next month, which will be announced in its own post a little later today.

yet another post about writing . . . and stuff

If you play poker long enough, you will eventually hear the phrase, "I'd rather be lucky than good." Usually this phrase is delivered by a good player who has just gotten unlucky.

While dumb luck is certainly desirable when you're playing cards, good, skilled players will always triumph over unskilled but lucky ones in the long run.

This makes me think of something I once heard about working hard and staying focused, so when you have those inevitable encounters with good luck, it's like a collision of two peaks, rather than a peak and a trough. It went something like, "Work hard, and you'll be in a position to benefit from good luck." or "Hard workers make their own luck."

(For those of you keeping score, that would be poker and physics in the same post, and I'm just getting started. Go me.)

I've been doing more interviews than usual lately, and with all the talking about how I got where I am today, how I feel about it, and what's next, I've spent a lot of time thinking -- I mean really, seriously examining -- those questions, long after the interview is over.

"Who am I? Why am I here?"

(Oh, Admiral Stockdale. We are so glad that we hardly knew ye.)

I keep coming back to feeling lucky, and how grateful I am that I was in the right place at the right time with so many things, starting with the first post on my blog, all the way back in the middle ages. A lot of success is timing, and I started doing this at a time when not a lot of other people were, so I got to load up my wagons and hope I didn't die of dysentery while a bunch of us made permanent the trail that was originally laid out by guys like Dave Winer and Doc Searls. If I'd started blogging at any other time, I'm not sure I'd be writing this post right now.

I was also lucky to have my blog and my love of poker converge at a time when it made sense for PokerStars to hire me and take me on some of the most outrageously fun adventures of my life. If either event had peaked at a different time, I wouldn't have been a proud member of Team Blog in 2006, and made some of the greatest friends I've ever known.

When I realized I had Dancing Barefoot sitting within the manuscript of Just A Geek, I was lucky to realize that the rules for publishing were changing, that bloggers could be authors and authors could be bloggers. I know this seems obvious now, but at the time it was a pretty controversial idea. When it came time to publish it, I had this crazy idea of doing it entirely on my own, and my predictions about how it would work out were correct. Luckily for me, I was willing to take a very big and very scary chance. (Unluckily, when O'Reilly was mismarketing Just a Geek, my predictions also came true. Maybe I should change my name to Zoltan and sit in a box at the fair.)

Most of all, though, I've been blessed by the incredible generosity of people who had no reason to help and guide me, but did anyway: John Scalzi and Warren Ellis are two who you'd recognize, and the rest of the list could fill a 2 gig flash drive in a single-spaced text file. That I wrote in vi because I couldn't find the text editor in emacs. God, that joke never gets old.

There are countless other moments where I got lucky, and an equal number where I've gotten unlucky, but  -- and this is where I get to my point, such as it is -- through it all, I've never relied solely on luck, and neither should you. Through it all, I always kept working as hard as I could to not suck, to never be satisfied, to not get complacent, to appreciate my successes and learn from my mistakes.

I guess what I'm saying is that luck sort of just shows up, I guess, whether you need it or not, while only you can decide to work hard, or not.

Right.

Now, all of that is prelude to what I really wanted to share with this post: some resources that I've come across recently that I think are quite useful for writers, especially noobs like me.

Oh! Jeebus, this is harder to put together than I thought it would be, so bear with me, okay? There's one other thing: don't ever take for granted the kindness and generosity of experienced people who are willing to help you, and when you're finally in a position to do the same for other people, do it.

Still with me? Here ya go:

From mental_floss, a collection of books that aspiring writers should read, and some totally useful grammar rules (including my personal nemesis, the correct usage of that and which.)   

If you're considering self publishing like I did, you should look at all of SFWA's resources for writers, but especially Writer Beware, which identifies many of the scams and dangers that are out there for those of us who don't know any better.

Books that I read when I was building Monolith Press that made all the difference:

• The Complete Guide to Self Publishing by Tom and Marilyn Ross
• The Self Publishing Manual by Dan Poynter
• Jumpstart Your Book Sales by Tom and Marilyn Ross
• The Purple Cow by Seth Godin

One book that everyone should read, whether you're a writer or not, but especially if you're working essentially on your own: Upgrade Your Life (aka The Lifehacker Book) by Gina Trapani.

Finally, an important note to all artists: nobody in the world will work as hard as you will to promote your work, nobody will care about promoting it as much as you do, and your work will be as successful as you work to make it. Hopefully, you'll get lucky like I did and get some good word of mouth and connect with a passionate group of people who will tell their friends about you, but that's never going to happen if you don't work hard -- really, really hard -- to make it happen.

Okay. That is all. Now, I am going to go for a jog with my wife.

Updated to add: VT makes a massively awesome point: get out of your own way. Or, as I put it, don't be afraid to suck. It's easier to fix something you don't like than it is to fill up a blank page. Trust me, I hung on that cross so you don't have to.

in which i write a prequel

Ficlets is this cool collaborative writing project that I occasionally play with as I work out my creative writing muscles. Ficlets takes the philosophy that creativity is born of necessity and applies it ruthlessly: writers only get 1024 characters -- not words, but characters -- to tell a little bit of a story.

Where Ficlets really shines, though, and what makes it so unique and inspiring, is that it's a collaborative writing process; each story has a link attached to it that can be used to write a prequel or sequel to any of the stories people submit (which are all released under a creative commons license.) Stories can have lots of different prequels and sequels, too, as each ficleteer finds and expresses their own inspiration.

There have been some fantastic prequels and sequels written around some of the stories I've put up there, but today was the first time I was ever inspired enough to write one of my own.

Last night I saw that Will Hindmarch (a very creative a hoopy frood) had written a really quirky and awesome story. I instantly wanted to build upon it, but nothing came into my mind. I told my brain to run it as a background process until it returned something useful, and at 7 this morning I suddenly woke from a deep sleep with the entire idea fully formed (core dumped, if you will) in my head.

Because the ficlets are so short, it's not really practical to excerpt them, so I'll just direct you to Will's story, A Loaded Gun in the Mailbox, which you should read first, and my story, An Unremarkable Factory.

The challenge I gave myself was to not just write an interesting piece of fiction inspired by Will's, but to also write it in a style that flowed well with his. At the risk of sounding entirely too pleased with myself, I'm very happy with the result.

If you want to take the Creative Commons experience all the way, listen to tracks five and six of Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts I while you read mine. I had them on while I wrote it.

highlights from my damn geeky weekend

So my geeky weekend was totally awesome, and there were a few moments I thought I'd share. Before I get there, though, I need to clear something up: On Friday, as I was running out of the house, I said "Go see Iron Man this weekend. It is awesome. I saw a preview screening on Monday, and other than the score (which is absolute crap) the movie is damn near perfect. I think it’s the best comic book movie since Sin City, and blows Transformers and the last two X-Men movies into oblivion."

Uh. Yeah. I don't know how, but I managed to leave Batman Begins and Ghost World out of that, which is further evidence that I am a complete moron. Lots of people disagree with me about Sin City and X-Men. Those people are all wrong, of course, but my leaving out Batman Begins and Ghost World is just inexcusable. I deeply regret the error, and hang my head in shame while I carefully fold up my nerd cape. I'll be in the corner for a little bit, thinking about what I did.

Okay, now that we're done with that, allow me to share some highlights from my weekend with you:

Friday night I said to Anne, "When I finish this martini, I'm going to think it's a great idea to have another martini. It will, in fact, be a very bad idea for me to have another martini, and I'd appreciate it if you'd remind me of that fact when the time comes."

When the time came, she wasn't at the table. Oops.

Saturday morning, we unsurprisingly slept too late to get breakfast at the hotel, so we went to a supermarket and got yogurt, bananas, juice and stuff. I think we ended up having a more healthy and less expensive breakfast than we would have had at the hotel.

I wasn't nervous at all about my reading at Mysterious Galaxy, which was really weird. In fact, while we were driving there (Anne was driving, I was reading from my book because I got it into my head that it may be a good idea to try something new about 20 minutes before showtime) I said to Anne, "You know what's weird? I'm not nervous at all." It was at that very moment that I got nervous.

There were more people at Mysterious Galaxy than I was expecting, and when I walked into the store, the whole place fell silent and everyone was staring at me. You know how you walk into a room and feel like everyone was just talking about you? It was like that. I mean, they probably were, but it was still weird. It didn't do much for the nervousness.

When I started my reading, I heard words coming out of my mouth, but I didn't know what they were. I do that when I'm nervous and haven't prepared any introductory remarks. If you were there and noticed this, thank you for not booing me.

I usually read blue light special and maybe exactly what I wanted, but I thought the MG crowd would be entertained by and relate to beyond the realm of the starlight. It turns out that they liked it, so my last minute decision to change the usual program was rewarded. In the future, though, I think I'll stick with the cards, lest I get a visit from Nick Fury when I'm done.

Unrelated to this post: Time Machine is making a backup right now, and it's making my mouse jumpy. That is SO FUCKING IRRITATING.

Right. Back to business:

After I was finished reading, I took some questions. The thing about this is that nobody ever has questions when I say, "I'd be happy to entertain your questions," but when I'm signing their book, they have tons of questions, so instead of getting to tell my hilarious and charming jokes to everyone, I get to tell them to one person at a time. I must come up with some way of helping people not feel self conscious when it's Q&A time. I should also clarify that I don't mind answering questions or getting my geek on when I sign your book. In fact, I've noticed over the years that when I sign books for people, we almost always end up having some huge geek moment about movies or software or other geeky topics. I absolutely love that and hope it won't ever go away.

While I was signing books, a girl about my age walked up to the table. She extended her hand and said, "Hi, I'm Gina."

"Hi Gina," I said. "It's nice to meet you."

"I'm a blogger," she said.

"Oh? Cool!" I said. "What's your blog?"

"It's called 'Lifehacker,' and --"

It was at this point that I completely lost my shit and spent the next eleventy hundred minutes telling her how much I love Lifehacker. I think I slimed her pretty hard, but she wrote the nicest thing in the universe about me on Lifehacker today. Uh, wow. Thanks, Gina!

I also met a reader who nearly made me cry when she told me about her relationship with her stepdad, and how my books were a part of it. Stepkids: it means more than you'll ever know when you tell your stepparents how much you love them, and when that moment finally comes where you accept how much we love you back, it's the most cherished moment in our lives.

Saturday night was much more sedate and responsible than Friday night (and how lame and old am I that 3 martinis now qualifies as crazygonuts?)

Sunday morning, we got up early enough to eat breakfast in the hotel, and I wished that we hadn't. I had a waffle with berries and maple syrup, but forgot to ensure that the "maple syrup" wasn't that corn syrup bullshit that makes me sick to my stomach before I infected the entire waffle with it. I still ate about half of the waffle, though, because I was so hungry.

"I am really looking forward to eating lunch at Stone," I said to Anne, "because I'm seriously thinking about going all Karen Carpenter on this breakfast."

We eventually made our way up to Escondido, wandered around the beer garden (which is awesome and beautiful) and settled in for a nice long lunch.

It ended up being longer than I'd initially planned, because the restaurant was ridiculously busy yesterday, and we didn't get our food until about 15 minutes before I was supposed to go read. As I watched tons of people stream in with my book in their hand, I got the nervous stomach and couldn't eat. Awesome. Greg Koch, who is the co-founder of Stone and invited me, reminded me that, once people are in the beer garden, they relax and live on "beer time," which is much more laid back than real time. This actually put me at ease, which is very hard to do before I am about to perform.

Oh! Please enjoy this moment from lunch, which I sent to Twitter:   Anne: It's Jedi day! Me: What? Anne: May the Fourth be with you. Me: OMG I am so sending that to Twitter.

My reading was great. There were about 50 people there, and I felt like my introductory remarks were much better than they were at MG, probably because I spent some time really thinking about what I would say. Amazing how preparation helps me feel prepared, isn't it?

There were lots of questions when I was done, and I had a good time answering them (some marginally inappropriate answers were brought to you by Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale.) I think everyone had a good time, and Greg said that I could come back with future books, which I intend to do as long as I can keep coming up with stuff that's worth reading.

After the reading, we had dessert, and I was finally able to enjoy a Ruination IPA. Anne drove us home in time to watch one of the funniest episodes of Family Guy I've ever seen, and I ended the night watching one of the most exciting NHL playoff games I've ever seen.

It was a fantastic weekend, and I want to thank everyone from Mysterious Galaxy (which has autographed copies of all my books, now, if you want to order them) as well as everyone from Stone who put on these events. Most importantly, though, I want to thank everyone who made the effort to come out and spend some time with me this weekend. I did my best not to suck, and I think I mostly succeeded.

this is one hell of a geeky weekend

I just put the finishing touches on the note for the house sitter (my favorite new addition to the standard boilerplate: how to hook up Rock Band without messing up my tours) and I'm about to head out to San Diego for some awesome geekery this weekend.

Before I leave, though, I had to say: Go see Iron Man this weekend. It is awesome.  I saw a preview screening on Monday, and other than the score (which is absolute crap) the movie is damn near perfect. I think it’s the best comic book movie since Sin City, and blows Transformers and the last two X-Men movies into oblivion.

Need a little more convincing? Go see it for the pitch-perfect performances, lead by Robert Downey Junior, who absolutely makes this film so enjoyable. io9 says, “Iron Man is the first comic-book movie that’s actually better than its source material. That’s partly because Iron Man is one of the most boring characters in the history of comics, but it’s also because the movie manages to transcend its source.” I was never a fan of Iron Man, but I'm positively looney for this movie.

If you're looking for other ways to get your geek on this weekend: tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day, there's a Maker Faire in the Bay Area, JPL's Open House is in Los Angeles and there's a BarCamp in San Diego.

Oh, and did I mention that I'll be in San Diego?

Geek Tour reminder: San Diego May 3-4

The 2008 Geek Tour rolls out of Los Angeles this weekend and into San Diego!

Saturday, I'll be reading from The Happiest Days of Our Lives (and signing all of my books) at Mysterious Galaxy Books:

Join us on Saturday, May 3, at 2:00 PM, when we host Wil Wheaton for his new collection of essays, The Happiest Days of Our Lives. Maryelizabeth's review below of The Happiest Days of Our Lives reads in part: "Whether he is writing about subjects one can identify with or less familiar topics, Wil's stories are truthful, insightful, and above all, entertaining." Join Wil in celebrating life as a writer, a parent, and a proud geek. And don't forget to stop by Comickaze to check out Wil's contribution to Star Trek: The Manga, and take part in Free Comic Book Day.

Mysterious Galaxy is an indie booke shoppe that specializes in Science Fiction and Fantasy. I went there with Just a Geek, and this will be my first time back since then. I think 30 or 40 people came out last time, making a great audience for the reading, while still being small enough that I could talk to everyone who was there.

Sunday, I head up to North County for a stop at the Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens:

To boldly go where no book club has gone before (er, except for ours, that is), Stone Brewing Co. proudly announces another season of Book & A Beer Club…On the Grass!

Once again we are inviting beer geeks and bookworms alike to participate in a monthly meeting that pairs awesome beer with lively intellectual discussion. The premise is simple: read a book and have some great conversation—and great beer!—in a beautiful outdoor setting.

Wil’s most recent book, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, will be up for discussion, and this evening’s event is sure to be provocative, fun and enlightening.

Guests are welcome to bring their own lawn chairs, and blankets will be provided for those without to keep you from grass-staining your chinos. An RSVP is appreciated (though not required) at 760.471.4999 x1700.

Some of my favorite beers in the world are crafted by Stone, and Stone's owner, Greg Koch, has a lot of the same beliefs about marketing and making stuff that is awesome that I do. At his brewery in Escondido (in North San Diego County) he has an incredible restaurant and gorgeous beer garden. A few times a year, he invites authors to come out for something he calls Book and a Beer, which is exactly what it sounds like. We'll have Stone Pale Ale, Stone IPA, Arrogant Bastard, and all sorts of non-beer drinks if beer isn't your cup of tea. I suspect this will be an intimate gathering, but it will most certainly be an awesome one. If you've ever wanted to have a beer with your old pal Wil, now you can do eet.

I am so looking forward to this weekend. I can't wait to get my geek and beer on!

Alan Moore reads Rorschach's Journal

I'm way late to the party on this one, and didn't even know it existed until about fifteen seconds ago.

Listening to it gave me chills. I want to go re-read Watchmen right now so I can hear Rorschach's real voice.