“Brave Men Run” Web-a-Thon Tomorrow

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sovereign Summer Sunday, July 13, 2008

Tomorrow, Sunday July 13th, Matthew Wayne Selznick’s Novel Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era is being released in a all new paperback from Swarm Press, and he’s asking everyone who can to buy the book this Sunday from Amazon.com. To promote the occasion Matthew will be streaming live video throughout the day tracking the books progress on the Amazon.com charts.

A Teen Movie / Comic Book Mash-up

Brave Men Run is the story of Nate Charters. Born different, unsure of his origins, he’s an outcast at Abbeque Valley High School, a self-proclaimed “boy freak” with few friends and low self-esteem. When the Sovereign Era dramatically dawns, Nate finds himself in a quest to discover the truth: is he more than he seems, a misfit in a miraculous and powerful new minority… or something else entirely?

All New, All Free Sovereign Era Content

Every hour on the hour from 10am Eastern until 5pm Eastern Matthew will be reading brand new short stories set in the universe of Brave Men Run by J.C. Hutchins, Mur Lafferty, Nathan Lowell, Matt Wallace, J.R. Blackwell, P.G. Holyfield, and Jared Axelrod.

You can find more information about the the web-a-thon and what Matthew hopes to achieve here. I will be there! Will you?

Links of Interest (January 9th 2008 Through January 25th 2008)

Friday, January 25th, 2008
Playing for Keeps Characters - Set 1
Three of the character cards Natalie Metzger produced for Mur Lafferty’s “Playing for Keeps”. Shown side by side with the black and wite ink versions.
Fresh Pics of Mulder & Scully
Slice of Sci Fi has three photos of Mulder & Scully from the new X-Files movie. There nothing super special, but seeing these I’m a lot more excited about seeing this when it comes out.
Scott Brick Presents
One of my all time favorite audiobook narrators, Scott Brick, has launched a blog. If you’ve never heard one of his productions I recommend you seek one out and give it a listen.
New PDF reading software for Sony Reader: Reflowing and resizing will help cope with small-screen issues
Apparently Sony Reader is going to have a way to reflow and resize PDFs for reading. My opinion is the PDF is the single worst e-book distribution method, but this would at least make them usable. Hopefully other devices follow suit.

Links of Interest (January 8th 2008)

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008
An Interface of One’s Own
Virginia Heffernan covers alternatives to Microsoft Word for writers including Scrivener (my personal favorite), Ulysses, WriteRoom, and Nisus Writer.
Future of Ajax.NET Professional
With the release of VS2008 and .NET 3.5 Michael Schwarz is ending development on Ajax.NET Professional (an alternate Ajax toolkit for ASP.NET that predates Microsoft’s own).
The Secret Lair
An all new podcast hosted by Chris Miller and Kris Johnson.
The transformation of a writer with Mur Lafferty
Wayne Sutton interviews Mur Lafferty about social media (video).
IE7.js version 2.0 (beta)
Dean Edwards IE7.js has been updated after a long period of inactivity. The new version is split in two files IE7.js brings IE5+ into the same level of compliance as IE7, while IE8.js contains further standards compliance fixes beyond what IE7 currently

Go Listen: Stories of the Third Wave, Episode 6

Monday, January 7th, 2008

The latest episode of Stories of the Third Wave, the companion podcast to Mur Lafferty’s Playing for Keeps features a segment written by yours truly (performed by my lovely wife and I). It also features another great song from always entertaining Ookla the Mok.

Go Listen: Lafferty, Sigler, and a Barrel of Monkeys

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Mur Lafferty’s Playing for Keeps

Playing for Keeps [...] tells the story of Keepsie Branson, a bar owner in the shining metropolis of Seventh City: birthplace of super powers. Keepsie and her friends live among egotistical heroes and manipulative villains, and manage to fall directly in the middle as people with powers, but who just aren’t strong enough to make a difference. Or that’s what they’ve been told. As the city begins to melt down, it’s hard to tell who are the good guys and who are the bad.

Mur Lafferty’s latest podiobook officially launches tomorrow (although you can hear the first chapter right now). If you’ve ever listened to I Should be Writing you’ve probably heard of it (although perhaps under the title Keppsie’s Bar). It looks like Mur is trying out some new things with the Playing for Keeps Experience feed which will feature a host of additional content, including PDFs of the chapters and Stories of the Third Wave, a supplemental podcast.

Listen to the Promo and subscribe.

Scott Sigler’s Nocturnal

Something lives deep beneath the streets of San Francsico. Something that has been there for centuries, something that comes out at night … to feed on the dregs of society. A sub-culture, with its own myths, its own legends of leader named The King that will lead them out of bondage, and their own demon, a hunting shadow known only as Savior.

But the legends of Savior’s brutality have faded, the fear passed into stories told to frighten the young ones. When The King finally appears, just as foretold, the Nocturnals know their time has time — the time to come out from under the streets and hunt humanity in the open.

Scott Sigler’s newest podiobook thriller launches tonight at midnight EST. As usual it sounds like quite the ride. If you’ve heard Scott’s stuff you already know what to expect, if you haven’t you can head on over to Podiobooks.com and grab Earthcore and Ancestor at any time.

The print version of Nocturnal is currently scheduled for 2010, but the podcast launches tonight, so why not listen to the promo and subscribe.

The NanoMonkeys

NanoMonkeys Coverart
Hosted by PG Holyfield, Chris Miller, and Kris Johnson, the NanoMonkeys aim to help get you through the madness that is NaNoWriMo.

For those of you, like me, that are participating in NaNoWriMo, and thinking “Gah! Who has time for new podcast novels?”, I’ve got just the thing for you. The NanoMonkeys is a daily podcast (approximately five minutes per episode) that runs throughout November offering writing advice and encouragement. This year the line up features a number of guest authors (including me on November 3rd). I made listening to this part of my daily routine last year, and I recommend you do the same.

This year’s welcome episode is available now. What are you waiting for, subscribe?

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.

Links of Interest (June 21st 2007 Through June 29th 2007)

Friday, June 29th, 2007
Pirate keyboard
CORSAIR Ergonomic Keyboard For Pirates
David Allen Company Podcast
David Allen Company podcast
Writer Stalking
Vlog-paparazzia stalk author/podcaster Mathew Wayne Selznick at Balticon.
Locus Online: New Books, mid-June 2007
Locus online’s listing of new SF/F/H books for mid-June 2007
The Dawn of Dilbert
The original batch of Dilbert strips that were submitted to the cartoon syndicates (with reactions).

Links of Interest (April 27th 2007 Through April 28th 2007)

Sunday, April 29th, 2007
The Dragon Page » Contest: Crystal Rain Giveaway
In honor of the May 2007 paperback release of Crystal Rain, author Tobias Buckell has graciously consigned us 3 signed hardcover copies to give away to Dragon Page listeners
Ninjawords - a really fast dictionary
Finally a dictionary where you don’t have to know how to spell the word before looking up how to spell the word. Pulls from Wiktionary and Princeton WordNet. I especially like that you can lookup multiple words at once (use commas to separate). Oh and
MythShow 07
Interview with Mur Lafferty
Transcription of the Panel at Lunacon 2007
A transcription of the ‘Ask The Editors’ panel at the 2007 Lunacon, recorded by John Joseph Adams, and featuring Douglas Cohen, Marvin Kaye, Hildy Silverman, and Wendy S. Delmater. Contains link to mp3.
User-Generated Content Is Top Threat to Media and Entertainment Industry, Accenture Survey Finds
Media and entertainment executives see the growing ability and eagerness of individuals to create their own content as one of the biggest threats to their business, according to results of a survey released today by Accenture.
First look: Downey forges a bond with ‘Iron Man’ role - USATODAY.com
Look like this could be good (please let it be good).

Mentioned on ‘I Should Be Writing’

Tuesday, July 4th, 2006

I thought I had posted this at the time, but apparently I didn’t.

My One Pass Revision effort was mentioned on Mur Lafferty’s I Should Be Writing (show #41, June 17, 2006). Thanks to Mur for keeping me honest in front of a larger audience.

If you haven’t heard it before, you really ought to check it out.

Podcasts-a-Plenty

Thursday, March 9th, 2006

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).