Brother Osric's Scriptorium

The world of Internet-based audio has seen many firsts: the first podcast novel (Tee Morris’s MOREVI: the Chronicles of Rafe and Askana), the first podcast-only novel (Scott Sigler, EarthCore), the first audio drama (Children of the Gods was the first I heard of, but doubtless there were others), and the first podcast author to get a book deal with a major publisher (Scott Sigler, Infected). The field continues to evolve — and now we’ve reached a new step.

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Sometimes the calendar makes strange demands on us. In this case, it requires that we present the following press release “out of order,” as it were; but then, we’re dealing not only with two good books and two fine authors, but also with two hemispheres and two time zones — so the time is out of joint in any case. Thus we bring you, first, the announcement; second, the free previews!

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Clerk’s Log, MJDate 54611.9: The following is my pitch to the Parsec nominating committee on behalf of Chris Lester’s story “Huntress,” part of his Metamor City Podcast. Continue Reading »

You can imagine many uses for podcasts if you try: company during commutes (my own favorite), occupation of the mind during chiefly physical tasks such as washing dishes, even (apologies to many authors) insomnia treatments.

Here’s one I hadn’t considered.

Martyn Casserly is a freelance journalist, musician, and new-media observer living in London; I’m also following him on Twitter. Here‘s how he discovered a benefit of podcast fiction in dealing with a medical problem.

For those of you who wondered how soon I’d make it into print again…
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You remember how, when Israel crossed over the dried-up Jordan, Joshua had the Israelites take twelve large rocks from the center of the riverbed to build a monument to the event at their first encampment (Joshua 4:1-9). Have you remembered to celebrate its later equivalent?

Today’s reading is from the Book of Linus, chapter 12, verses 34–41:

• 34 And it shall come to pass, in the day when thou comest unto thy new homeland, where the snow falleth upon the ground as the manna once appeared in the wilderness,
• 35 That thou shalt prepare from the newly fallen snow three large boulders, according to the measure of the split rocks that thou didst find in the mountains. Of three different sizes shalt thou prepare them, all of the same material and of the same roundness.

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…can get you into so much trouble with the fairer sex. “My eyes are up here, buddy.” “Yes indeed, but the unusual words/drawings are down there.“

If you’re here because you heard Jason Rennie’s interview with me in “Sci Phi Show Outcast #59,”¹ (thank you, Jason) or my “7th Son Episode 17: The Story So Far” reading (thanks, Hutch!), you might still be wondering what’s going on here. Here it is, in a nutshell:

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NOTES

1. Two errata in that interview, if I may:

   (a) Evidently I had a Star Wars flashback moment when I identified Mal Reynolds of Firefly with the “Rebel Alliance” (still can’t believe I did that). We’re Browncoats and durned proud of it.

   (b) The story by Elisabeth Waters and me had “An Army Marches” as its working title, but it’s now published as “Crosswort Puzzle.” It’s in Sword and Sorceress XXII, not XX. [return]

It wasn’t to be, alas. As I noted earlier, the quality of the other nominees is superb, and I’m not surprised to have been blown out of the water by such excellent pieces as Matt Wallace’s thoughtful “No World for Warriors,” Jason McDowell’s audio tour de force “Sacrifice” (check them both out at Variant Frequencies, a superbly produced collection), and Paul Berger’s “The Watching People” (Escape Pod).

You can find the complete list of finalists at http://www.parsecawards.com/2007Finalists. Give ’em a listen; there’s good stuff here.

It’s time for the second annual Parsec Awards for excellence in podcasting, which will be given out at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia (31 August–3 September 2007). Two of my short pieces have been nominated and will be considered by the Parsec steering committee as they choose ten semifinalists and five finalists in each category. Five outside judges, who are not involved with podcasting but are involved with related areas such as literature, science, and communications, will then choose the winners.

My two entries:

• For “Best Speculative Fiction Story (Short Form)”: “Distinctive,” from Round 1B of the first Pickle Tales competition.
  The PT judges were rather hard on it (although if they had to trash it, at least they did so gently). I heard from several listeners, however, who were surprised by that and told me they liked the piece. We’ll see what different judges think.
   
• For “Best Audio Drama (Short Form including Independents)”: “Monster Story: Scott Sigler’s Infection from the Triangles’ Point of View.”
  When Scott podcast his novel Infection (to be published in hardcover next April, thoroughly revised and improved, as Infected — mark your calendar!), he introduced a segment of phoned-in comments with a bit of audio. Episodes 9, 10, and 13–“post-mortem” featured this trilogy of monologues. I figure this one has already succeeded, in that it caught Scott unawares — the kind of achievement normally reserved for his monsters.

Scheduling conflicts will likely keep me from Atlanta and the awards ceremony, alas. But given the excellence of the other nominees, it’s gratifying to be welcomed onto the playing field.