Links of Interest (April 10th 2008 through April 22nd 2008)

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
Matthew Wayne Selznick Signs Book Deal
Author and Podcaster Matthew Wayne Selznick signed a deal with Swarm Press to re-issue his novel “Brave Men Run” in paperback. Congratulations Matt!
Take notes during phone calls with friends and family
One of those “that should have been obvious” suggestions. I’ve conditioned my brain to filter out most things that aren’t useful to me right now. This doesn’t mean I’m not interested in people’s anecdotes, and schedules, it just means I’m unlikely to remember them without some reminder.
Ajaxian Featured Tutorial: Hacking transparent PNG support into IE6 with IE PNG Fix, CSS and jQuery
Ah, IE6. I’m pretty good at getting it to do what I want, but it’s very existence makes most of the things I have to do harder than they should be. This tutorial deals with one of the harder issues, PNG transparency in positioned background images.
YouTube - Sigler Book Tour (Seattle Q&A) Part2
In the second part of the video Scott covers such diverse topics as Sci-Fi Channel’s lack of foresight and how when it appears he has made a mistake it is actually sabotage by J.C. Hutchins.
Sigler Book Tour (Seattle Q&A) Part1
I’m not lucky enough to live near any of the book stores Scott Sigler was signing at, but luckily Natalie Metzger captured this video of one of the Q & A sessions.

Download Scott Sigler’s “Infected”

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

Your first hit is free

On April 1 Scott Sigler’s thriller novel Infected will be released in hardcover to bookstores. But why wait? Thanks to a special arrangement with Scott and his publisher you can download the entire novel in PDF right now, but only until March 31.

Click here to download the PDF
Infected is the first major print release from Internet phenom Scott Sigler, whose podcast-only audiobooks have drawn an immense cult following, with more than three million individual episodes downloaded. Now Sigler storms the bookstore shelves with this cinematic, relentlessly paced novel that mixes and matches genres, combining horror, technothriller, and suspense in a heady mix that is equal parts Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Crichton, and Stephen King.

Does that sound at all interesting? Go on, give it a try. Just this one time. Download it already, and tell your friends to do the same. There’s no risk here, unless you’re afraid you’ll like it so much you’ll feel compelled to purchase the book. Go on, risk it.

But wait there’s more

Want to learn more about Scott Sigler? You’re in luck. J.C. Hutchins just released the latest episode of his UltraCreatives interview series with Scott as his guest. Yeah, that’s free too. Old One-eye Jack knows how to treat you.

J.C. Hutchins’ “7th Son” Goes to Print

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

It’s been a big day for J.C. Hutchins. Earlier today he finished recording the last episode of 7th Son: Destruction, the final book in his 7th Son trilogy. More recently he posted a press release stating that the first book, 7th Son: Descent (previously reviewed) will be available in print from Saint Martin’s Press in 2009.

Congratulations, Hutch!

Go Listen: SOLIDARITY! explained

Friday, September 14th, 2007

If you’ve been following me on Twitter or via my Lifefeed you may have seen some recent references to SOLIDARITY! Check out I Should Be Writing #76 in which Mur Lafferty interviews JC Hutchins about the phenomenon. You’ll also hear a rather rushed sounding voicemail from Yours Truly.

Go Listen: 7th Son: Book Three - Destruction

Saturday, July 7th, 2007

The final book of J.C. Hutchins 7th Son novel trilogy starts today! Available (sometime today) for free at jchutchins.net or podiobooks.com.

Update: It’s available now!

Go Listen: Michael A. Stackpole Interview

Monday, June 18th, 2007

Another great author interview. This time J.C. Hutchins interviews Michael A. Stackpole. It covers writing, podcasting, Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, and more.

Podiobooks and Free e-books Harmful?

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

Flametoad seems to thinks so (found via TeleRead). He suggests that authors like Cory Doctorow, JC Hutchins and Scott Sigler are devaluing the audiobook and e-book formats, and buying the p-book is “paying for the paper because the content has no value”

I don’t see it. Perhaps these authors value readers. After all, what value does you work have if no one has read it? Cory Doctorow’s books keep showing up in the bookstore. In fact IDW recently bought the rights to do a series of comics based on his works even though the license for those works allows anyone to create such comics non-commercially. Scott Sigler recently managed to sell quite a few copies of his new print book recently. Heck, I bought two (one as a gift).

I have both an audible.com and a podiobooks.com account. Do I value one over the other? Not really. I don’t think most people equate free with no value. Not anymore, if they ever did.

Assassination, Explosions, and Clones! Oh my!

Wednesday, December 20th, 2006

I recently finished listening to this podiobook, and I wanted to share my thoughts. But before I jump in, let’s get the “What is a podiobook?” thing out of the way. Podiobooks are audiobooks made available via a podcast feed. More simply, podiobooks are audiobooks available for download online, usually free of charge. They’re the audiobook equivalent to print on demand, in a way.

The book opens with the assassination of the President of the United States by a four year old boy. It’s a powerful scene. The story then shifts to tell the story of seven men, who are all abducted out of their lives by armed men. It’s not until they are all together in one place that it becomes clear that they are, in fact, clones. They’ve been collected together to help track down the person they were cloned from (referred to as John Alpha). Alpha is in some way behind the assassination of the President.

The seven men are the results of an experiment, not only in cloning human bodies, but in memory cloning as well. The scientists at 7th Son have developed a way to take a snapshot of a persons memories, and upload them into another persons mind, wiping it clean. This explains why the seven clones all have the same memories up to a certain point in their lives. As the book progresses we learn of further variations of this technology in use.

I really enjoyed listening to this. The story held my interest, and the author did a good job reading it. He’s obviously not a pro audiobook reader, but I never found his reading distracted from the story in any way. As someone who listens to audiobooks regularly I’m not the hugest fan of the serialized podcast audiobook, but thanks to Podiobooks.com I was able to subscribe to the book from the beginning and wait until it was complete before starting listening.

My only complaint is that although it’s obvious from the Book 1 in the title that the story is not complete, I expected a bit more of a solid ending to this “book”. But the first 19 chapters Book 2 are already available, and I’m excited to start listening to it soon. If any of this sounds even vaguely interesting, I recommend you give it a try. It’s free, so what do you have to loose? Still on the fence? Give this promo a listen.