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Journal CleverNickName's Journal: More O'Reilly Goodness 20

Journal by CleverNickName

O'Reilly put out a press release to announce my deal with them!

This is pretty damn cool:

Any honest computer geek will admit that his obsessive coding is, at heart, a futile attempt to create a world as cool as those depicted in science fiction. New evidence of the symbiotic relationship between Sci Fi and geekdom surfaced today, as O'Reilly & Associates, the geek publisher-of-record, announced plans to publish three books by Wil Wheaton, blogger, geek, and the actor who portrayed Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

"This is a very exciting relationship for me, for several reasons," said Wheaton. "First, I am a huge geek, and without O'Reilly, I wouldn't know HTML from LMNOP. I never would have been able to get Linux running, and Perl would be one of the not-quite-as-good-as-Mrs.-Garrett replacements on Diff'rent Strokes. Now, I'll be able to get my books into more stores than I ever was with my own Monolith Press. I can't wait to see how Dancing Barefoot does when it's got a major publisher behind it."

Wheaton's first two books, Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek, are almost unbearably honest tales of life, love, and the rigors of being an ensign on the Starship Enterprise. First self-published by Wheaton in May 2003 and available only on the Internet and in select independent bookstores, "Dancing Barefoot" quickly sold out its initial run of 3000. The O'Reilly edition will be available in all major bookstores in early 2004.

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More O'Reilly Goodness

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  • So, do you have an idea of what animal or object you want on your covers? :)
    • Oooh! How about the ceature that Wesley's girlfriend morphs into?

      Shut up Wesley... I mean Ryan.
    • If they make it a Tribble, I swear I'll drive to O'Reilly myself and flog someone.
    • Well, the Dancing Barefoot cover won't change (other than the barcode) but I thought it would be cool to use an O'Reilly-style woodcut of me for the cover of Just A Geek, maybe with some Perl code in the background (that will execute something silly if compiled). For the website book, I'm going to beg them to do a woodcut of a monkey at a typewriter.

      Randal Schwartz told me that rookie ORA authors (like me) don't get to choose animals, though, so it will be a mystery to me, too.
  • but what's lmnop?
    • but what's lmnop?

      The 12th through 16th letters of the english alphabet.
      • Is that all? ROFL!
        You know your a geek, when everything is an acronym.

        I was talking to my wife earlier, and referenced how our 15m/o son destroys everything is his path, and in my head I picured

        rm -rf `echo $PATH`

        *sigh*

        • I was at Old Country Buffet with my wife last night and she complained about the chicken noodle soup being all thick and mushy like it had been sitting out all day. About 15 minutes later, I got up to get more food and noticed that they had brought more soup out from the kitchen and apparently gotten rid of the old stuff. I came back to the table with bowl of soup in hand and said without even realizing it, "Looks like they upgraded the soup."

          Needless to say, the wife got laugh at that.
  • Wil,

    Although the deal with O'Reilly is fantastic, how does Monolith Press feel about this? I can imagine them kind of being unenthused about the "wow, now I'm in the big leagues!" reaction (kind of a "hey, what were we, chopped liver?" thing) ... I'm just curious, not flaming.

    Mike
    • how does Monolith Press feel about this

      I'm pretty sure the Wil founded and runs Monolith Press. In that case they seem to be pretty happy about the deal (even though it puts them out of business).

    • Monolith Press is me . . . so I can assure you that they are very, very happy to see this happen to such a hard working guy. :)

      I always intended to use MP to bring unknown or overlooked authors into the fringes of the outskirts of the limelight. Now that I can spend the next six months or so being a full-time writer, and not a businessman, I'll be able to expand the MP catalogue next year, or in 2005.
      • Well, that's pretty darn good, then. :-)

        Now I can give you my unequivocal congratulations, without any 'dancing on the grave' feeling. :-)

        Mike
      • I just have to say, awesome. For a while there it seemed like you were struggling with finding a niche . I really hated to see that, being a geek and trekkie^H^H^Her^H^H^Hwhatever. You've done great stuff so far, and it seemed like no one was giving you the props you deserve. After all, Stand by Me will remain a classic forever. Heck, my wife spent her youth crushing on you, and had a poster of you in her room! (Yep, both terminal geeks now. Our kids are doomed...) Anyway, I'm glad for you. And you have the
  • Wil,

    It's been great watching you grow as a writer since those first few months (how long ago now?). Your newest stuff has a good feel to it; personal, paced well, believable voice.

    Best of luck with all your writing! I'll be picking up the second edition of DB, as well as JAG, as soon as they're available.

    Thanks for sharing these things with us!
    -metropolitan

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