WWdN: In Exile

title of the blog post

When I was reading back through my archives in preparation for Wil Wheaton versus Paul and Storm last week, I thought, more than once, "I really need to write more." Each time, though, my calendar grabbed focus and shouted at me like Jules in Pulp Fiction until I begged it to stop.

I miss writing every day, even though I'm grateful for all the other work I have had and continue to have that gets in between me and filling my stupid blog with stories about life, the universe, and everything. The truth is, I've been working on projects that I won't be able to talk about for months, so the majority of my life at the moment is Off The Record. Whatever I can talk about, I sort of do in mostly real-time on the Twitters and the G Plusses and the Tumblrs, which leaves me with nothing much to write about on my blog except crap like this. 

But today, it is Sunday, and I have a bit of time to write. I don't know why, but I only needed to sleep for 5 hours last night, and I've been up since 6am. I have had a coffee, I'm eating some steel cut oats, and the rest of the house is asleep. I could read this stack of comics that's been piling up for two months, or I could settle into the couch with A Game Of Thrones (I'm 60% finished after reading until 1am)... but I feel that need to write that I hear real writers have, so here I am, writing about nothing so I can at least write about something.

Our trip to Portland and Seattle was amazing. Anne and I got to PDX a day early so we could go to Ground Kontrol and see some of our friends who live up there. Paul and Storm and Liz and Logan (and Ted and Carol and Alice) all came down a day early, as well, so we ended up having one hell of a goof off day before we had to work.

Our plan was to eat dinner at Deschutes before going to Ground Kontrol, but Deschutes was having their Abyss release party, and the wait for our large party was going to be a minimum of 90 minutes when we got there. I called Rogue, which is just a couple of blocks away, confirmed that they had room for us, and we went there instead. The food was pretty good, but the beers were just spectacular. I had the YSB, the Smoke (which won Gold at the Great American Beerfest for a very good reason) and samples of the Double Mocha Porter (ZOMG) and the Double Chocolate Stout (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE).

Yep, this is real. We sat in a room with a red neon sign that said WILLS ROOM.

Storm drank all the things, and we all staggered (some of us *cough*Storm*cough* more wobbly than others) to Ground Kontrol, where we played video games for about two hours. 

This is the part where I'd try to write a narrative to recreate the awesome time we had, but the part of me that creatively needs to do that isn't responding at the moment, so here are a couple of pictures, instead:

Ground Kontrol to Major Us

I was a Robotron Hero, with Stars in my eyes.

Avoid spikes!

I beat Storm at Joust, even though I was feeling a little... blurry.

But Storm came back and OBLITERATED me in Dig Dug, even though he was playing from the bottom of about six beers at the time.

I suck at Punch Out, but that's never stopped me from playing it.

I signed their TNG pinball machine, then played the hell out of it. I never ranked higher than Ensign, though. It was like the machine knew, or something.

All pictures taken with Vignette and © 2011 Wil Wheaton. 

It was an incredibly fun night, and when I fell into bed around 1am, I slept the sleep of the mostly victorious.

The next day, we slept late and took our time getting going. We ate breakfast at Mother's, one of my favorite places to eat in PDX, before going back to our hotel to take a nap. Yes, that's exactly what happened, and it's how I know I'm getting older: I love to take naps. Normally, I wouldn't take a nap when I'm visiting a city I love, but I was tired and knew I had to perform that night, so I was responsible, which is another way I know I'm getting older.

The show at the Aladdin was fantastic. Local musical duo The Doubleclicks opened for us, and -- just as Paul promised -- they stole the show in 15 minutes. Here, listen for yourself and be amazed.

The Doubleclicks are my favorite. They're sisters, they play the ukulele and the cello, and they sing about nerd stuff like D&D, dinosaurs, WoW. They are just delightful people, too, and I can't wait to perform with them again.

The audience in Portland was, as always, great. I told stories about gaming and how much I love my wife before Paul and Storm joined me to provide music for my final two stories about playing T-ball when I was 6, and WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER.

Anne and I took the train up to Seattle the next afternoon. It's a beautiful trip, and if you ever need to travel between the two cities, I highly recommend it.

Seattle was freezing cold (literally), raining and snowing when we got there. We dropped our stuff at our hotel and went to the Triple Door for soundcheck before the show. The Triple Door is fucking FANCY, man, and we sold that bitch out! Team Seattle turned out in force, and gave me many gifts of local craft beer to take home.

It was another great show, even though I think we went a little crazy with the Captain's Wife's Lament... but I blame John Roderick for bringing the Steamfunk groove back so many times. If you were there, I'm sure you understand (and I'm sorry.)

I told different stories than I told in Portland, including two things I've never done in public before (that was scary for me), but it seemed to go over better than I expected. After the show, we stayed out until 3am with everyone from the show. When I slept, I slept the horrible sleep of someone who is snoring because he's so tired so he keeps waking up his wife and she keeps waking him up so he'll stop snoring.

Our flight home on Friday was uneventful, exactly the way I like my flights to be. I finished reading Petrograd from Oni, (I highly recommend it), and then I fell back into A Game of Thrones until we landed.

Thank you to everyone who came to both our shows, and a very special thank you to The Doubleclicks, John Roderick, Molly Lewis, and Jason Finn for joining us.

living in another world

Well, last week really got away from me, didn't it? I meant to write some blog stuff last week, but I was too busy working on [AWESOME SECRET THING] and [OTHER AWESOME SECRET THING THAT'S DIFFERENT FROM AWESOME SECRET THING]. It looks like my plan to sell some books will have to wait for a few days, too, because all of a sudden it's Monday and I'm leaving for Portland and Seattle tomorrow to do a couple of Wil Wheaton vs. Paul and Storm Shows.

I spent most of today working on [AWESOME SECRET THING], and then got down to putting together my setlist for the shows. I had a pretty good idea about what I wanted to do, but I went looking through my blog archives anyway, just in case there was something I'd forgotten about that would be fun to perform.

Going through those archives is weird and wonderful. I don't remember writing most of the posts, but I clearly recall the events that inspired them. What started as a quick skim through the archives turned into a couple of hours spent reliving the high points of the last couple of years. It was time very well spent.

While I combed the archives, I found some flash fiction while that I thought was worth reposting, because it's super short and I don't think it sucks:

239 Sycamore Street

    Ian missed living in a city that didn’t keep any secrets from him, where everything was out in the open: junkies, hookers, pan handlers, rich snobs and bad cops. You knew where you stood with everyone in the city, and everyone in the city knew where they stood with you.

    In the suburbs, though, everyone had a secret. Two houses up, the Doyles were overdue on three months’ of bills, but they kept paying the gardener to come and keep up appearances. Across the street, Mrs. Canton practically begged every delivery boy who came to the door to fuck her, except on Sunday when she went door to door, passing out bible tracts. Next door, Doctor and Mrs. Thompson argued quietly and intensely almost every night about their son, who they’d put into a group home for troubled youth.

    Day after day, Ian smiled and waved to his neighbors, while recording all of their secrets in journals and photo albums.

    When the police finally found the bodies buried in the loose dirt of his basement, his neighbors were shocked: “He was quiet,” Doctor Thompson said. “He kept to himself,” Mrs. Thompson added.

    “He never left his garbage cans out. He kept a lovely lawn,” The Doyles told investigators.

    When the handsome young reporter from Channel 6 came to her door, Mrs. Canton smiled carefully and said, “Would you like to come inside and talk about it over a cup of coffee?” 

+++

Perchance To Dream

    The best part of my day? That’s easy: those few blissful seconds right after I wake up, when I just feel my head against the pillow and the warmth of the blanket, before it all comes crashing back down on me and I remember where I am. That’s when the worst part of the day begins.

    There are guys in here who talk about their dreams. Not like what they want to do with their lives or what they’d do with a million dollars; I mean their actual dreams, where they can fly and talk to animals and shit, but I never remember mine. I haven’t remembered a dream for … well, long enough that I can’t remember what the last one was, and I have a pretty good memory. Like, when I was a kid, there were these smokestacks that I could see from the motorway when we were getting close to home. They were tall, with four rings of red lights around them every five meters or so. The top ring of lights blinked slowly, and on nights when the weather was bad, I could still see the red glow reflecting off the clouds, even if I couldn’t make out the smokestacks in the dark. I would tell my mum, “I can see the smokestacks, mummy!” And she would reply, “That means we’re almost home, darling.”

    On cloudy nights, I lie back on my bed, look out through the bars, and imagine that I can see a soft red glow slowly blinking against the orange reflection of the lights, telling me that I’m almost home.

+++

These short short short stories aren't perfect. I think 239 is the stronger of the duo, but there's some nice imagery in Perchance to Dream that makes it worth reposting.

But the point isn't to be perfect. The point is to get excited and make something creative. I need to remind myself of that from time to time (in this case, "time" being every day or so) or I'll get so stuck trying to get to the mythical Land of Perfection that I'll never leave the station.

I was talking to my friend Ed today, and unexpectedly remembered an idea I had months ago for a story that I think is pretty damn cool, that will be a lot of fun to write and tell. A year ago, I would have been paralyzed with fear about even attempting it, but something happened between then and now, and I'm not afraid any more. I don't feel like a fraud when I make something up and write it down, and I don't hear Carrie's mother holling "They're all going to laugh at you!" when I think, "You know, this would be a fun story to tell."

That bitch yelled at me for years, and it feels pretty good to nail her to the wall with a bunch of shit that I shot right out of my mind.

Making stuff up and writing it down is a lot of fun, but having the courage (or audacity) to show it to other people... well, the risk is worth taking.

I'm selling some autographed books next week

Anne and I unloaded a lot of stuff from storage last week, and I discovered that I have a lot of books that probably want to find a new home.

So this is just a heads up: next week, I'm going to offer signed copies of the Games Matter chapbook I made for PAX this year (I have about 40 copies) and 50 copies of the sold out Subterranean Press edition of The Happiest Days of Our Lives. They'll be available on a first come, first served basis. I'll give about 24 hours advance notice so you'll know when I plan to push the Big Red Button.

I'm also working on putting both of those books into the Kindle store, as well as getting all of my eBooks into the Nook store. (BARNES & NOBLE Y U NO MAKE IT AS EASY TO PUBLISH IN NOOK STORE AS AMAZON DOES IN KINDLE STORE?)

I found out last week that Lulu took all audiobooks out of my store (they're only doing books, now, sadly), so at the moment, there's no (legal, support-my-work) way to get them. I'm working on fixing that, too, and hopefully next week will find them available once again.

Yesterday, I turned in the first draft of [AWESOME PROJECT I LOVE AND CAN'T WAIT TO TALK ABOUT], and now I'm going to reward myself by brewing a batch of Stone Pale Ale using the recipe in the Craft of Stone Brewing Co book.