Some of you may recall I recently signed a contract which called for a portion of my compensation to be in bacon. Here is the first installment of that compensation. And it looks delicious, if I may say so.

Hey, did you know my life is kinda weird. I know! Who would have guessed.

The other day I promised a thread for gift suggestions for everything else not covered in the book suggestion thread. Here it is. In this one, you’re free to tell readers here (up to 45,000 of them each day!) about the really cool things you are making and selling (or giving away) that would be perfect for holiday gift giving.

That said, to keep things orderly, here are rules and notes:

1. Creators only. To promote your work, it needs to be your work. I may run a more general pimp thread later for anyone to participate in, but this thread is for creators. Any creative product can be promoted: Books (not already promoted in the previous thread), music, art, crafty things and so on. If you made it and want to sell it or give it away, it’s fair to post it here.

2. It needs to be for sale (or being given away). The idea here is stuff people can give as gifts, so what you’re linking too needs to be something people are able to take with them and give to others. Downloads count with this, although there should be a clear download method (i.e., a button for the purpose, etc).

3. One post per creator. In that post, you can list whatever creations of yours you like (as long as it meets the criteria in point 2), but allow me to suggest you focus on your most recent work. Note also that the majority of Whatever’s readership is in the US/Canada, so I suggest focusing on works available in North America.

4. Keep your description of your creation brief (there will be a lot of posts, I’m guessing) and entertaining. Imagine the person is in front of you as you tell them about your book and is interested but easily distracted.

5. You may include a link to what you’re selling/giving away if you like by using standard HTML link scripting. Be warned that if you include too many links (typically three or more) your post may get sent to the moderating queue. If this happens, don’t panic: I’ll be going in through the day to release moderated posts. Note that posts will occasionally go into the moderation queue semi-randomly; Don’t panic about that either.

6. Comment posts that are not from creators promoting their works as specified above will be deleted, in order to keep the comment thread useful for people looking to find interesting stuff.

In other words, just like the book promotion thread, just with, you know, other stuff.

I’ll start this one off by promoting something which I partially had a hand in: Cory Doctorow is self-publishing a collection of stories called With a Little Help, which he’s offering in a variety of formats ranging from free (for the electronic version) to a $275 limited hardcover with some extra special bits:

Each book has original paper ephemera (see Flickr set) donated by various writer friends to the project, and comes with a SD card bearing the full text of the book as well as the full audiobook.

I’m happy to say I’m one of those various writer friends, and what I contributed to the project was a hand-written version of the first chapter of The Sagan Diary (you can see what it looks like starting with this picture and scrolling through the next several pictures). I’m not planning to do that again, so this is very likely to be a one of kind thing from me. I was delighted to give it to Cory for this special edition of his work.

But whatever edition you get, you’ll get great stories from Cory. Perfect for gift giving! See? See how it all comes together?

Your turn. Tell us about your creative work that people can give as gifts this holiday season.

I’m deeply delighted to announce that Agent to the Stars and The Android’s Dream are now both available worldwide in audiobook form from Audible.com.

I’m even more delighted to announce that both books are read by none other than Wil Wheaton, the serving United States Secretary for Geek Affairs and a close personal friend.

And I’m even more delighted than that to announce that the job Wil did in reading both books is spectacular. I’m a pretty tough customer when it comes to audiobooks, especially ones made from my own works, and I’m here to tell you that Wil has nailed these to the wall. His narration has the right mix of sarcasm, wry observation and (when necessary) seriousness that tells these stories the way I would tell these stories — that is, if I had a voice for performance as good as Wil’s. Which I don’t. But that’s fine, because you have the actual Wil here for these things. See? Everyone wins.

But you don’t just have to take my word for it that Wil’s done a spectacular job, because embedded below is seven minutes of Wil’s narration of The Android’s Dream — specifically, the first part of Chapter Four, in which our hero Harry Creek does a little bit of computer hacking, has a conversation with an old friend, and has a couple of deep thoughts about his own past. In short, a good bit to give you a taste of how right Wil is as narrator. Enjoy.

And case you need them again, the links to these two books on Audible:

The Android’s Dream

Agent to the Stars

And here’s a link to the other audiobooks of mine available through Audible.

Oh, and, The God Engines? Coming out in audio form next week from Brilliance Audio. Don’t worry, I’ll remind you then.