podcast

Thank You, Night Attack Show!

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My friends over at the Night Attack Show gave Fiction Improbable a really fantastic shout-out on their second episode this past Tuesday night.

I knew it was coming; it was part of their Diamond Time ad segment, when they promote projects undertaken by their many fans. I didn't expect such glowing words of praise from both Brian and Justin though, so let me return the favor.

Night Attack is a brand new independent show, at the time of this writing having only two episodes produced to date. It is a direct continuation of a previous show though, the NSFW Show that Brian Brushwood and Justin R. Young produced on the TWiT network over a number of years. The new show ties in with a series of Billboard chart-topping comedy albums they made under the Night Attack name. Night Attack (both the show and the albums) is REALLY funny, but do be warned; there's a reason it was spawned from the ashes of a show named NSFW. The humor can be very unsafe for work. Do check them out, if that warning isn't enough to put you off! Episode 2 with my shout-out is below; you'll hear it right towards the end of the episode.

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My Abstract Life on Frogpants Studio's CurrentGeek

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Well, it's official. I am one of those guys. You know those actors who say they can't watch themselves, or radio people who can't listen to themselves? I can't listen to myself. At least, not when I'm listening to myself on a giant huge amazingly popular podcast like Current Geek out of the Frogpants Network.

In case you're not aware, Current Geek is a new (sort of) show starring Scott Johnson and Tom Merritt talking all things techy and geeky with a couple of guests. They record it live every Friday and shortly after that it's available on itunes or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. My science fiction short story My Abstract Life is featured at the very end of yesterday's episode, which is episode #2. (Yes, it really is a giant huge amazingly popular podcast despite having only two episodes so far. Frogpants is BIG, people.)

I have posted an audio book version of this story before, but the one on Current Geek is an all new recording I created thanks to a new and MUCH better microphone that I got over the holiday season. I'm pretty proud of how good it sounds, and I'm much more proud that Scott liked it enough to include it in his show.

A few weeks before they launched Current Geek, Scott and Tom got together on a Google Hangout to discuss ideas for the show, and this came out of that. They'd discussed the possibility of including other people's audio podcasts in the show as a way of getting more content for them and more exposure for the contributors. I don't know if they'll be interested in having more of my stuff go up there, but I'd be thrilled to record more; I plan to whether they want to use it or not. Maybe if they get enough good feedback, they'll be kind enough to give me another try!

Thank you Scott and Tom; even though I apparently can't stand to listen to myself on Current Geek, the rest of the show is amazing!

An Audio Experiment

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Tonight I've got a bit of a preview and an experiment to share. It's very brief, but it's step 1 in the process of bringing the long-promised, never-delivered audiobook project to fruition.

Take a listen to this very brief audio clip and let me know what you think of it; the quality, the listening experience, anything you think is appropriate.

For those curious and/or interested, I recorded it with PureAudio Live for the iPad, transferred it to my PC, and then used Audacity to clean it up a bit, make it more presentable.

Step 2 in the plan is to record one of my short stories. I'm leaning towards My Abstract Life right now.

A Weird Night

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​A little while back I bought an advertisement on the Weird Things Podcast hosted by Andrew Mayne, Justin R. Young and Brian Brushwood. I've been listening to the show for some time now, it's fantastic if you're fascinated by the... er, well, the weird things in our world. The things that sound like fiction, but aren't.

Anyway, I expected a regular ad read; I supplied the copy, and generally they just read it and thank the sponsor and off they go. ​Tonight I listened to the episode in which my ad appeared, and I got more than I bargained for. They did the ad read perfectly (aside from a name issue, which they corrected on their own,) but then in a really nice twist, they got into a really good discussion about the state of indie ebook publishing today and how open the field is.

This was definitely more than I bargained for and more than I paid for, and I'm incredibly grateful to them for talking about my site so extensively in the episode. It happened because Andrew Mayne is also an indie author who has done incredibly​well for himself at it over the last year or so; he's published a good 5 or 6 books in the last year (yikes!) and one of them, Angel Killer, is currently the #15 book in all of the UK Amazon Kindle store.

Both Andrew and Brian have done a lot to inspire my choice to seriously write over the last year so it meant a lot to me to be the focus of a cool conversation like that. I don't want to oversell it--it's not like they devoted the episode to it or anything--but I strongly urge you to check both of them out over at Amazon, as well as on the Weird Things podcast itself.

Justin doesn't have an author page, but he and Brian released a best-selling comedy album, Night Attack, which you should definitely check out if you're into weird comedy. I don't know how else to describe it. Be warned that it does contain explicit content.

I know you're all at Dragon*Con having a blast, but thank you for making my night.​

Also, Brian, we will have words over your outing me and my connection to the secret serpent clan of the McLeods, sir! ;)​ 

Save the Sci-Fi!

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I learned of an admirable Kickstarter project the other day thanks to Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont of the Sword and Laser podcast, and I thought those who follow my blog might be interested in knowing about it. It’s the Singularity & Co. Save the Sci-Fi project.

What they aim to do is save as many old, out of print sci-fi books as possible. Each month they pick a great classic or obscure or otherwise awesome sci-fi book that’s not in print and not online. They track down the author or whoever holds the copyright. They acquire the copyright or get permission from the rightsholder, and turn the book into an ebook for online publication. The resulting ebooks are either free or very cheap.

The Kickstarter for the project helps to fund these efforts to track down and acquire copyrights for the books they save, as well as fund development of the website and open source book scanner they make use of.

There are far too many books out there that are at serious risk of being lost if the paper degrades and nothing is done to preserve them, so this is a fantastic project well worth backing, or at the very least learning about.

There’s several bits of good news about it. The first is that they’re fully funded up to their goal of $15,000. The second is that as of this writing, they have 11 days to go, so you can still contribute and drive them even further past their goal—they sit right now at $24,059. With 11 days left, it doesn’t seem impossible that they’ll double what they were looking for.

Check them out at the Singularity & Co. Save the Sci-Fi Kickstarter! And be sure to let me know in the comments if you decided to back them.