Podcasts-a-plenty

Work’s still a bit crazy, but I’m trying to keep it at bay. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel (if it would only stay still and wait for me to catch up).

I’ve been listening to some more Podcasts lately (if you don’t know what podcasting is, look it up, or ask a ninja). It started with Dragon Page Cover-to-Cover, a podcast about Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels featuring interviews with authors. Talk about a show for me.

In the past few weeks I’ve discovered some great podcasts about writing: Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing and Tee Morris’ The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy. I’ve been listening to these while eating breakfast. There’s a lot of good stuff in there, and it has the added benefit of making me feel guilty for not writing. The other day Denise asked if Holly Lisle had a podcast. She didn’t at the time, but she does today. I listened to Holly Lisle On Writing at lunch today. There’s another one to add to the list.

I’ve always had an attraction to the audio format. I used to devour the children’s audiobooks at the local library. I even have some that my grandfather copied to tape for me somewhere between the ages of 2 and 5. I discovered Old Time Radio at some point during elementary school, and ever since I’ve been fascinated with audio drama. I’ve written a number of radioplays over the years, and with podcasting, maybe it would be worth dusting them off (not right now though, I have enough on my plate).

Read to me

I found this article from the New York Times (hint: bugmenot.com) over at Neil Gaiman’s blog. It was a pretty good read, consisting of the differing opinions on audiobooks vs. reading.

I found some of the quotes irksome enough to comment on.

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Quiet around here…

You may have noticed that I got really quiet after posting almost every day. Well, I was participating in the “March Madness” writing marathon over at Forward Motion. If you’ve been keeping an eye on my progress bar at the top of the site, you may have noticed it moving quite a bit. My goal was to write 1000 words a day for 7 days, and I pulled it off! That means I pretty much doubled my daily output, and didn’t miss a single day for seven days. That’s including working about 50 hours this week, and spending 2+ hours a day cleaning the house. Phew! I hope to keep it up, but I’m giving myself a lower goal for this weekend as it’s a bit crazy.

I hope to have more detailed reviews, but in case I don’t get to it I finished a few books since my last post. First, I finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time . Wow. It was an amazing book filled with surprises of various kinds.

More recently I finished listening to Ender’s Game: Special 20th Anniversary Edition by Orson Scott Card. I’ve always wanted to read this, and my friend Matt had recommended it. When I realized that Audible had the majority of the series available unabridged I decided to give it a try. I really enjoyed it. I’ve read some of Card’s books on writing, but this is the first novel of his that I’ve read. It’s the story of a young boy being schooled in the art of warfare to fight a war against an alien race he has only seen on propaganda films. Ender’s story is filled with interesting and fully realized characters. I thought I saw the ending coming, and while the events I suspected did happen, it was not the ending at all. Great stuff!

Half way through Ender’s Game I knew I’d want more, so I already had Speaker for the Dead on my iPod and started it after taking some time to digest the ending of Game.

More soon, unless I’m busy, then more later.

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

The Dark Tower VII : The Dark Tower

I first heard Stephen King read these words, the opening paragraph from The Gunslinger, ten years ago on a Sunday night, driving back to college. Tonight, driving back from my first Kung-Fu class in a month, I finished the final installment, The Dark Tower

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