I've read perlembed, perlguts, etc., but I can't embed perl in my C program, what am I doing wrong?

Download the ExtUtils::Embed kit from CPAN and run `make test'. If the tests pass, read the pods again and again and again. If they fail, see the perlbug manpage and send a bugreport with the output of make test TEST_VERBOSE=1 along with perl -V.