Enjoy!

Promo for The Leviathan Chronicles finale follows the reading.

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Balticon 44 was simply… glorious.

Thursday:

Drove to Hunt Valley, MD, a little northwest of Baltimore. The trip up can be best summed up in two parts. Part 1 was the 6 hours it took me to drive from Charlotte to I-66 around 30 miles to the west of DC. Part 2 was the 3 hours it took me to drive the last 85 miles. These two parts were broken up nicely by a young bear, probably four or five months old, trying to cross the interstate. I avoided the bear and I believe he made it back to the woods. I could just imagine the other young bears saying “Do it. Do it. You wuss. What are you, a fawn?”

But arrive I did, and after relaxing for a bit in the hotel room, the greatest roomies in the world, Chooch and Viv, arrived. If you listened to the interview I did with them on Into the Blender, you know how much I love these guys. And our friendship only grew stronger through the weekend, even though I snored loud enough for Viv to yell at me to roll over (from the other bed, of course). And since Patrick McLean didn’t arrive until Saturday night, I had a bed to myself for the first two nights (always a bonus).

Friday:

Friday I spent my first hour at a dealer table, trying to sell Murder at Avedon Hill (and other wonderful Dragon Moon Press titles). I would have stayed longer, but I had my reading at 5 pm (I’ll be releasing the audio from the reading soon). I figured five people would be there at most, considering Mur Lafferty and Jonathan Maberry had readings at the same time.

But to my wondrous surprise, the room was pretty full–so everything after that was, again, bonus. I was a little worried because I only had my iPad, and all I had was my novel on it (available on the Kindle for $2.39 people! ); I was afraid people might be a little tired of me reading from that, but Tee Morris was in the audience so I pulled him up to the front and read 40 minutes from a chapter that featured Father Jorrus (the vampire hunt). He voiced Father Jorrus and everyone seemed to enjoy the reading.

When I was done I went to the end of Mur’s reading, two rooms down from mine, and she had a full room as well! Podcast Novelists for the win!

Later that evening I was on two “live show” panels. The first was for Geek Radio Daily. Billy Flynn and The Flynstress were there of course, with me and Podcasting’s Rich Sigfrit. We talked about the convention, did segments on gaming, new media, and focused on Murder at Avedon Hill, which again, was a bonus. They played the NSFW promo I did for the book release with Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff, which got a lot of laughs. Hell, I was happy just sitting between the Flynstress and Rich, listening to his impressions… actually, I was just happy sitting beside the Flynstress. I just noticed that they haven’t released the audio from the Live Show. Hope it wasn’t lost like the live show at Dragon*Con last year…

The last event for Saturday was a Live Into the Blender, which is Chooch and Viv’s show. Christiana Ellis and Command Line (Thomas Gideon) were also on the panel. We talked about movies, the ongoing trend of remakes/reboots, and gaming as well. I got to share my story of Patrick McLean trying out Red Dead Redemption at my house, which included him shooting my horse multiple times just for fun.

Saturday:

…was a busy day. I was on an expanded panel that Paulette Jaxton and I did last year called “Herding Cats,” which was about producing a multi-voiced podcast novel/audio drama. As expected, I had the most voice actors of any podcast represented on the panel.

Later that evening was Book Launch party for Murder at Avedon Hill. I was proud to share the evening with Nathan Lowell and Patrick McLean. The party room was full, and instead of simply schmoozing with everyone (which was our plan), someone suggested that we read from each other’s books. Nathan and I read from Patrick’s book, Patrick read from Quarter Share, and then Nathan Lowell read the prologue from Murder at Avedon Hill. Hearing one of the great voices of podcast fiction reading my prose was a highlight not only of Balticon but of my short history as a writer. It was a wonderful event, and more than one attendee came up to me on Sunday saying that they thought we should “take our act on the road.” Too bad Nate lives in Colorado, or I’d like to.

My only regret from the launch party? We had a room full of podcasters, and no one recorded the event.

After the launch party we had the New Media costume party, hosted by my roomies Chooch and Viv. It was a lot of fun, and for the first time I spent money and wore a killer costume.

Sunday:

Sunday turned out to be a great day as well. I had the pleasure of interviewing Artist Guest of Honor Howard Tayler, which I released earlier this month. Later that afternoon I was on a panel that turned out to be the most fun of any panel during the convention. It was a music panel called “From Story to Song.” It featured readings from five authors, and songs sung by various filk singers, songs about the author or inspired by fiction from those authors. I got to do a five minute reading in front of around sixty people that had never heard of MaAH:

And then Kim Fortuner sang the “Damn You Holyfield” song:

To say she rocked it doesn’t do her justice. And on top of that the last reader was Convention Guest of Honor Tanya Huff, which made the panel even more special.

Later Sunday night came what has become a yearly event, the live Evo at 11 podcast.

I got to sit in with Evo and his wife Shelia, along with Patrick McLean and Ms. Information, the lovely Donna Mugavero. I got to add some snark to the podcast, and everyone had a great time.

The evening (and the con) ended with a party at our hotel room.

We had a good room for a party, with access to a deck outside our back door. I got to spend time with too many people to mention by name, and as always, there was not enough time to spend as much time as I would have liked with anyone.

So, as always, Balticon was a great experience, but with Murder at Avedon Hill just coming out in print made Balticon 44 the best convention I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending.

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Oh yeah, I also got to sit at the Dragon Moon Press dealer table, sell some books, and spend time with Philippa Ballantine, Tee Morris, Christiana Ellis, and Valerie Griswold Ford. Ah, good times.

So, what’s coming up on the podcast? First of all, I’ll be releasing the audio from the Balticon reading this week. Then we’ll have the next episode of Tales of the Children, which is a story by Philippa Ballantine called Love and Fire.

As always, thanks for reading/listening. See you soon.

_____

Some more photos from Balticon 44:

Gail Carriger, author of Soulless, et. al.

And for even more photos from Balticon 44, please check out the photo “pool” over at Flickr.com

Some of the photos in this blog post were taken by two wonderful photographers I know, Bruce Press and Sheila Unwin

We talked about storytelling within the medium of ‘sequential art,’ Writing Excuses, pacing within different mediums, and a little about the talk Howard gave at Balticon on education and on becoming a better creator, no matter the medium.

Thanks to Howard for being patient with someone that obviously had less than a good grasp of web-comic terminology (I referred to panels as boxes throughout the interview ).

Promo at the end of the episode is for Prisoners of the Alliance.

Friday, May 28th

Reading – 5 pm – Pimlico Room
Into the Blender Live Show, 11 pm – Chesapeake Suite

Saturday, May 29th

Nanowrimo for Noobs – 3 pm – Chesapeake Suite
Herding Cats – 4 pm – Chesapeake Suite
New Media Author Book Launch event – 8 pm – Chesapeake Suite

Sunday, May 30th

Evo@11 – 10 pm – Chesapeake Suite

In addition to this, I’ll be in the Dealer Room at the Dragon Moon Press table at various times during the weekend.

Into the Blender is a podcast about blended families, geek culture, and it is a wonderful listen month in and month out. Go check it out!

Murder at Avedon Hill Casting Page at Storycasting.com

The site is addicting (if you are a book/film buff), so WATCH out!

I edited it down to 5-6K, I believe. It was definitely the longest story in the web-a-thon (Matt read seven stories I believe during his live show). I was very happy with the response I received from people about the story.

Flash forward to Friday, April 10th. The text that follows if from Matt’s website:

I’m very pleased to announce the release of “The Sovereign Era: Year One,” an anthology of seven tales written by authors who are pretty well known in certain circles — folks like J. C. Hutchins, Mur Lafferty, P. G. Holyfield, Nathan Lowell, Matt Wallace, J. R. Blackwell and Jared Axelrod!

This collection has its origin in the all-day web-a-thon I produced on the occasion of the Swarm Press release of “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era.” On that day, I read each of these stories live on streaming video… but they’ve never been seen in print until now.

As of right now, the collection is available on this site in a bundle of eight DRM-free e-book formats and from Amazon.com for the Kindle. Soon enough, it will also be available in paperback in every online bookstore you’d care to patronize. To be honest, if you like e-books, I encourage you to purchase it in that format, since the authors involved stand to earn more of a percentage from each e-book sale.

In “Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights,” we’re seeing a little of what happened in the months before the Sovereign Era began. The Sovereign Era’s beginnings are depicted in “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era.” I hope you’ll purchase “The Sovereign Era: Year One” and take in seven different glimpses into how things went in the months that followed. On behalf of the authors and cover artist Jeffrey Himmelman, I thank you very much!

For those of you that haven’t read Brave Men Run, it feels like a teen movie mixed with a superhero novel… The Breakfast Club and X-Men all rolled into one. Please go check out the anthology, and listen to or read Brave Men Run.

As for The Sovereign Era: Year One – electronic versions are already available for the book, and the print version should be out in a few days!

My good friend Patrick McLean over at The Seanachai (How to Succeed in Evil, Flinchy and the Mexican Show Truck) is doing his last episode of his podcast live on Stickam (link to the show will be posted as soon as I get it). The live show will be on Wednesday, March 24, at 9:00 pm Eastern time.

As a good Irishman (at least a 1/4 of me, anyways), I’ll be helping him bring The Seanachai to a fitting end. He’ll be sharing a true story of gun play, injury, and I’m sure he will deliver it with the humor and style that has made The Seanachai one of the best fiction/essay podcasts ever produced.

Join us for the fun.

• a signed copy of Murder at Avedon Hill (when it is released in May)
• a custom t-shirt with one of the Children of Az on the front, and whatever text you’d like (approved by me, of course ) on the back.
• a one of a kind DVD with two of the live episodes of Tales of the Children, pop up video and text, audio commentary, and a special video message just for the buyer.

Please visit The Boom Effect for more information on this ‘lot.’ ( http://www.theboomeffect.org/?p=251 )

If you cannot attend the live show, you can make a proxy bid.

And if you are not blown away by this package (I am), then look over the other awesome contributions that will be auctioned off during the show.

Tomorrow I’ll be doing the 7th Live Show on Stickam.

Thanks to everyone that has attended shows so far. The live show has been such a pleasant surprise! We’ll have another wonderful story from a Podiobooks author, “Feverfew” by H.E. Roulo. Heather is the author of Fractured Horizons, and she is also one of the driving forces behind Podioracket.com. Heather has written a dark, gritty story that I think everyone will love. If you would like a short preview, check out the excerpt on her site.

Come join the fun. We’ll be doing Round 3 of the Damn You Holyfield Drinking Game, so we’ve got that going for us…

Work on the website has gone well so far (slow, but well), and I hope to have new feeds soon.

Last but not least, I have a seekrit project for 2010. Stay tuned…

• On Wednesday evening I did a live reading of Tabitha Grace Smith’s Tales of the Children story, Love’s Sacrificial Song, on Stickam.com
  • It was my most popular live show so far, with over 200 people attending at least some part of the two hour show.
  • We had a live interview with Tabz after the reading.
  • We rolled out a brand new element to the Stickam Live Show… the DYH Drinking Game!

• Later that night, Angel Between the Lines released my story, Exit Strategy, as a nearly hour-long full-cast audio drama.
  • From the description on the ABTL website: From Ocean’s 11 to the Italian Job there’s no lack of criminals in fiction, but Johannes Cordner needs the best. The puzzling twists and turns aren’t just keeping the audience confused. Can the criminals break into Wolfram & Hart’s law offices without getting caught? And what exactly are they stealing?
  • As always, Tabz has delivered a great production. And since this is my first fiction to hit the podosphere since May, I hope you’ll give it a listen.
• On Thursday, ABTL and Murder at Avedon Hill fan Dan Shaurette wrote a great feature story on me and Murder at Avedon Hill. It must have taken Dan HOURS to write that up, and I’m honored.
• On Friday, ABTL released the .pdf of Exit Strategy.

What a great week (other than my laptop dying, which is another story altogether)!

Thanks again to Tabz and ABtL for such a great time. And for those that missed the live show, the audio version of Love’s Sacrificial Song will be released before the end of the year.

I wrote a long short story called “Exit Strategy,” which will be released in audio format over at http://angelbetweenthelines.com – possibly today!

Exit Strategy is a heist story set in the Angel Between the Lines television show universe. While it is fan fiction to a certain extent (one minor character appears from the Angel universe), it is a story that requires no knowledge of the Buffy or Angel television shows. I really enjoyed writing the story, and as soon as the podcast episode is released I’ll post here to let you know.

Stickam Live Show: Tonight, 9:30 pm Eastern

The live shows just keep getting better and better! Last week we had Philippa Ballantine’s wonderful story, “Love and Fire.” The turnout wasn’t as high as previous shows (post-Halloween blues, maybe?), but we had a great guest appearance at the end of the show: Pip called down from her castle (a library) in New Zealand, waving and yelling “Hullo over there!”

This week I expect a larger audience, as we have a story from Tabitha Grace Smith, one of the forces of nature behind Buffy Between the Lines, Angel Between the Lines, Gilligan’s Island Between the Lines… okay, maybe not that last one. But with fans like hers, I expect Stickam to ROCK tonight! Tabz wrote a long story as well, called Love’s Sacrificial Song.

If there are any questions from the chat I’ll be taking them once again, so come on out and join in the fun.

The first video has some news, a quick Dragon*Con report, and a song from Kim Fortuner and Patrick McLean, recorded at D*C, with Tim Dodge on guitar.

This second video is the reading of “Swimming Lessons,” by Gabrielle Harbowy, followed by a Q&A led by Chooch.

If you attended, continue being part of the live show by calling the Caern Line. (704) 315-5884. I’ll be playing questions and comments on the next live show.

It’s a live interview, with a chat area for people to ask questions, and a call in number if you want to be on the show.

Come on out and hear me chat about Tales of the Children, about the Parsec Award nomination, about the upcoming book release, etc.

Rhonda Carpenter does a great job interviewing her guests. It should be a lot of fun!

This is the second and last episode I’ll be posting in my feed. Ep. 78 is a discussion of point of view in fiction. Please visit the The Dead Robots’ Society website for more info (and to get the .pdf I created for the discussion) on this episode and to subscribe!

This is the first episode where I appear as a regular host. Ep. 77 is an interview with Nathan Nowell, author of the Share Series. We focus on podcasting your fiction, contrasting our styles and explaining the decision process one should take before podcasting their novel.

Later this week I’ll drop ep. 78 of the DRS podcast in this feed. If you want to listen to more of the DRS podcast and/or subscribe (to get future episodes), please visit The Dead Robots’ Society website!

Last week I co-hosted/was a guest on DRS and we chatted about something I know a little about… self-publishing. I also talked a little about signing with Dragon Moon Press, so if you are interested, the episode can be found here.

Right now, Brave Men Run is at #65 overall on Amazon.com, and while we were listening it rose to #3 in Action and Adventure! Holy crap!!

The stories by the podcast authors were all wonderful. For those that missed it, there is a rumor that these stories will make an appearance in some form… soon.

And then, as a surprise, Matthew read the first chapter of his next novel, Pilgrimage.

I was very proud of the event, how my story was received, and how gracious Matthew is as human being. Thanks to everyone that attended, and that showed support for independent fiction!

Now, go buy Brave Men Run and let’s take BMR to #1!

Link to you tube video describing what a podcast is:

Onthepodcast: Special Episode – Raleigh Write 2 Publish Panel

NC State professor & author Stacey Cochran moderated the Raleigh Write 2 Publish – Panel Discussion:
Podcasting, Blogs, and Self-Publishing: New Ways to Reach Audiences With Your Book with authors P.G. Holyfield, Mur Lafferty, and Elisa Lorello. This panel took place at Quail Ridge Books on Saturday, May 17, 6:30 PM

Stacey Cochran:
http://www.staceycochran.com/

Mur Lafferty
http://www.murverse.com

Elisa Lorello
http://kairoscalling.blogspot.com/

Matthew’s description of his podcast:

“Every life is a mosaic of moments… the stories, confessions, and formative times that make us who we are. On Five Minute Memoir, listeners share vignettes from their own experience… and so reveal the common threads connecting us all.”

Episode 3 is my recollection of a formative day during my young life, where I learned that ‘larger than life’ has more than one meaning… and that politicians never stop being politicians… ever.

If I had given this a name, it would have been called “No Virginia, there isn’t a Santa Claus” (even though I know there is a Santa Claus… no, really, there is).

Head on over to J.C. Hutchins 7th Son website to listen to the short version of the skit, which he dropped into his podcast feed on Friday. The long version of it is there as well, in the Download Center area of his site. Again I’ll be playing a version of it in next week’s podcast, and will talk more about the great podcasters that contributed their time and energy during the Christmas holiday on this silly little creation.

I sent the soft copy to a couple of podcasters and received positive feedback… and J.C. Hutchins liked it enough to agree to ”play” Scott Sigler in the podcast version of the story. I sent the audio version of the story to Scott in November… and today he dropped it in his feed!!

The name of the story is Death, Taxes, and Scott Sigler. I’ll be playing a version of it in my own feed probably next week, but if you can’t wait, please download it from Scott’s site and give it a listen (and if you like it, please comment about it on Scott’s site).

Ah, a good day…

Along with Christiana, I joined Steve Eley (Escape Pod, Podholes) and Neil (the Borderline podcast) to watch one of my favorite all-time movies, The Princess Bride.

So if you have a copy of The Princess Bride and want to play along, download the podcast from Christiana’s site. It was a lot of fun for me and I hope to do this again real soon.