Waiting for Athena

John Scalzi has a holiday gift for you. I'll let him tell you what it is.

The holidays are about giving (well, actually, they’re not, but giving is what we do during the holidays, so close enough), and in that spirit, I and Subterranean Press have a gift for you. It’s a pdf version of Waiting for Athena, the printed chapbook that came as an extra with the signed, limited edition of Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. It collects up several Whatever entries I wrote at the end of Krissy’s pregnancy with Athena, and is filled with observations from an about-to-dad, as well at the letter I wrote to Athena on the day she was born. For newer Whatever readers, it’s a glimpse at what I was like 11 years ago (yikes!), while for older readers it’s a chance to relive some stuff that hasn’t been on the site in years. And for everyone, it’s amusing to see me panic in my delightfully overthinky way about the fact I would soon be a dad. Fun for everyone!

Now, I wasn't a reader of Scalzi in 1998 and the odds of my going back and reading eleven year old blog posts on the site was pretty small, but I did read You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi On Writing, and that was also a collection of Whatever entries from the past, and I quite enjoyed that. So, the chance to read a limited amount of entries that were collected for theme was worth jumping on.

The PDF of Waiting for Athena was only 44 pages and even that included a handful of blanks and title pages, so it's a fairly short read.

It was interesting to step into Scalzi's mind from eleven years ago and see how he was publicly reacting to his pending fatherhood. It's a good read, especially his entry about a bedridden Krissy torturing telemarketers. Waiting for Athena ends a day after his daughter was born, with a letter John wrote to Athena.

It's a sweet little chapbook.

Thanks for putting it up, John.