Archive for the ‘SF Podcasting’ Category

This Week’s Editoral Advice: Do Not Reply to Rejection Letters

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is still hap­pen­ing from time to time with my work for Escape Pod. I had kind of thought by now that argu­ing with an edi­tor over their com­ments in a rejec­tion let­ter was com­monly con­sid­ered a bad idea to be avoided at all costs, but I’m still get­ting these at Escape Pod. Let me put it to you all straight.

Nothing makes me more dis­in­clined to pur­chase your work than you argu­ing with me about me not buy­ing a story.

There are a lot of minor mis­takes you can make as a slush writer. I over­look most of them. For instance, we get sent things as attach­ments when our guide­lines call for them to be in the body of an email. I might men­tion it briefly to the sub­mit­ter, but I don’t hold it against them much. There are so many dif­fer­ing e-​​submissions sys­tems that I can under­stand why this hap­pens. No big deal.

But when you decide to quib­ble with an edi­tor over the points of his or her rejec­tion let­ter, you’re cross­ing a pro­fes­sional line. You are enti­tled to your opin­ion. It’s a good thing if you have enough faith in your story that you will con­tinue to send it out, because one editor’s opin­ion doesn’t amount to much, which is why I say my edi­to­r­ial com­ments are not intended as writ­ing advice.

The main thing it will lead to is an edi­tor not pro­vid­ing you any detailed feed­back at all. We will sim­ply write form rejec­tions for your work from then on out. Because noth­ing is more annoy­ing to me, at least, than some­one decid­ing to bicker over a rejec­tion. It’s not going to change our minds. It’s only going to make you look worse. So we’ll stop giv­ing you points to quib­ble with. This is not good for you. We don’t want to do this.

It is a no-​​win sit­u­a­tion for the writer.

So just don’t do it. Stick to cre­at­ing your edi­tor voodoo dolls and slag­ging us off to your cats. Take out your frus­tra­tions another way, even if the edi­tor is dead wrong. It doesn’t matter.

And another thing– I would rather not see replies, even short thank yous, at all. It clut­ters up my inbox, which I work very hard to keep orga­nized, and your con­tin­u­ing sub­mis­sions with us is thanks enough. Tack what you want to say on to the cover let­ter of your next sub­mis­sion. I would pre­fer that.

Also, Machine Gun Submissions

Oh, and finally, one last thing– it does you no good to send me story after story after story when I’m read­ing them quickly, when you get rejected every time. You should cool it and wait a bit between sub­mis­sions. Probably want to wait and let me for­get about how I rejected 3 sto­ries in an hour. Because I do notice, and I know other edi­tors do too, espe­cially with e-​​submissions at ‘zines with rel­a­tively fast turn­around times. Nick Mamatas even had a sub­mis­sions limit. I’m con­sid­er­ing imple­ment­ing one if this keeps up. At the very least, you’ll stop get­ting such rapid replies.

What Is a Podcastable Story?

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Greg Van Eekhout asks:

Thoughts on what kinds of sto­ries trans­late well to pod­casts and what kinds don’t?

First of all, full dis­claimer. I am the man­ag­ing edi­tor at Escape Pod, the sci­ence fic­tion audio pod­cast. I’ve been doing this job for about 3 or 4 months now, and I am by no means an expert on to topic. I can only com­ment as to my per­sonal tastes here. I reserve the right to change my opin­ion as I learn more about my job and what seems to work.

I can talk much more eas­ily about what does not work well in pod­casts. Here are a few things:

  • Typographic weird­ness, of the sort you would see in The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
  • Fiction that plays with for­mat­ting in some way–fake news report, branch­ing dia­logue, and so on. This would be great if we pro­duced audio dra­mas, but Escape Pod approaches pro­duc­tion in a very straigh­for­ward nar­ra­tive fash­ion. I’d love to do more radio-​​drama style read­ings, and we have one com­ing up that was recorded live by Steve Eley at a con­ven­tion. But the pro­duc­tion that goes into a reg­u­lar episode is dif­fi­cult enough.
  • Stories that have a lot of very short scenes and lots of jump­ing around in time.

The last one is the one I’m least cer­tain about, but I find that sto­ries that go back and forth in time can be a bit more con­fus­ing in audio for­mat. On the page, it seems eas­ier to orga­nize the events into a chrono­log­i­cal order, but when lis­ten­ing to a story, it is harder to do this. I’m not say­ing it’s impos­si­ble, but it’s def­i­nitely some­thing I pay atten­tion to.

Okay, so what works par­tic­u­larly well? Here are some gen­eral ideas:

  • A strong, unique per­spec­tive or voice. It’s my expe­ri­ence that some of the most pop­u­lar EP episodes have been from a very unique char­ac­ter, such as a bomb dog or the AI that resides in a soldier’s hel­met. These sto­ries are often in first per­son per­spec­tive. That’s not to say that I find first per­son bet­ter than third per­son. First per­son cou­pled with a really unique and orginal voice stands out very well. Like it does in reg­u­lar fiction.
  • All the other, usual things that make a story good.

Other than the few things I think don’t work that are spe­cific to the audio for­mat, I use basi­cally the same cri­te­ria for select­ing a story in audio that I would for select­ing in print. I have some restric­tions unique to Escape Pod, such as length. I can’t tell you how many times I remem­ber what I think would be a great story fo rthe pod­cast, only to look it up and find out that it was a novella. It’s some­thing I’d like to see us do more of in the future, but I’d want to pay more for them and pos­si­bly seri­al­ize them over the course of two or more episodes. It’s some­thing I think about a lit­tle when I have time.

If you lis­ten to pod­cast fic­tion, what do you think? What kinds of sto­ries really work well for you in audio? Try to focus on the things you think work par­tic­u­larly well, and cite spe­cific exam­ples if you like. This will make up for my rather under­de­vel­oped list. If you have some­thing crit­i­cal to say about a par­tic­u­lar pod­cast story, share it on the forums over at the ‘cast or send it to our feed­back email, as a favor to me, please.

Michael Bishop and Starship Sofa

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Tony has put together a really spe­cial episode of Starship Sofa this week, with a read­ing of Michael Bishop’s story, writ­ten in mem­ory of his son who was one of the vic­tims of the Virginia Tech shooting.

From Tony over at Starship Sofa:

StarShipSofa nar­rates Vinegar Peace, a SF story wrote by Michael Bishop for his son Jamie Bishop who died two years ago at the Virginia Tech shooting.

Michael Bishop says:

I wrote “Vinegar Peace” — in August of 2007 — because I had to. Our 35-​​year-​​old son, Jamie, died on the morn­ing of April 16, 2007, as one of thirty-​​two vic­tims of a dis­turbed shooter on the cam­pus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Jamie, an accom­plished dig­i­tal artist who did lovely cov­ers for four or five of my books, was hold­ing forth in Room 2007 of Norris Hall in his German class more than two hours after his even­tual mur­derer had slain two stu­dents in a dor­mi­tory on another part of cam­pus. The admin­is­tra­tion failed to issue a warn­ing — a warn­ing that might well have saved many lives — in a timely fash­ion. However, some of its mem­bers secured their own offices and noti­fied their own fam­ily mem­bers of this ini­tial event; and so the worst school shoot­ing in the his­tory of the United States claimed our son, four other fac­ulty mem­bers (includ­ing a man, Dr Librescu, who had sur­vived the Holocaust and who held a table against his class­room door until all own stu­dents could escape), four of Jamie’s stu­dents, and twenty-​​one other young peo­ple in Norris Hall, not to men­tion the first two vic­tims in West Ambler-​​Johnston dorm. Another twenty-​​eight stu­dents were wounded by bul­lets or injured leap­ing from upper-​​story win­dows. Some of these young peo­ple will live with their injuries the rest of their lives

All of the admin­is­tra­tors, with the excep­tion of a woman who later died of a stroke or a heart attack (a death that my wife and I can’t help but attribute par­tially to the stress of liv­ing with the mis­takes of the President and the other Policy Group mem­bers), remain in their posi­tions. So much for account­abil­ity, and so much for justice.

In any case, “Vinegar Peace” grew from this dis­as­ter and from a grief that I can’t imag­ine ever lay­ing totally aside. Jeri and I mourn Jamie’s loss every day in some pri­vate way, and we think con­tin­u­ally of all the other par­ents and loved ones of the slain and injured who will carry a sim­i­lar bur­den with them until they die. We think, too, of the par­ents and loved ones of the dead and wounded from the United States’s optional war in Iraq, who long for their dead and who pray for their injured with an inten­sity not a whit dif­fer­ent from our own. How ironic that our son died on American soil. How sad the wasted poten­tial and dis­fig­ured lives result­ing from vio­lence every­where. And for­give me the inad­e­quacy of these remarks. Clearly, I wrote a story because I could not address either my out­rage or my grief in any other way.

Mike Bishop

StarShipSofa is very hon­oured and hum­bled to be allowed to bring this story to a wider audi­ence. I know I speak for the SF com­mu­nity when I say our hearts and prayers go out to Mike and Jeri and all the fam­i­lies who have to live with this grief every day.

StarShipSofa Show No 82: Vinegar Peace, or, The Wrong-​​Way Used-​​Adult Orphanage

As Ever,
Tony

Meet the New Managing Editor of Escape Pod

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Big news of the year so far– recently, Steve Eley of Escape Pod asked me if I would like to come on board as man­ag­ing edi­tor of Escape Pod. I would han­dle story selec­tion for the most part (with his input), and the behind the scenes pro­duc­tion pipeline. He would still host the show and do read­ings and be the aweome guy that he is.

So I jumped at the chance. I con­sider Escape Pod to be the most impor­tant thing hap­pen­ing in SF short fic­tion today. It reaches audi­ences that the print mag­a­zines never reach. I am sad to lose a reprint mar­ket for my own work, but I feel I can make a big impact with Escape Pod on the genre as a whole.

I ask your patience as I sort out the slush pile. It’s fairly deep and back­logged, and I will be tack­ling it as quickly as I can.  If you’re think­ing about sub­mit­ting some­thing, wait 2 weeks, and then fire away.

The pro­duc­tion pipeline is also very short. I am going to be grab­bing and pro­duc­ing a cou­ple of sto­ries within the next sev­eral days. If you are inter­ested in nar­rat­ing and can help with a super-​​rapid turn­around time while I get ramped up, and have done this before before or even if you just want to get started, drop me a line in the com­ments. Cat Rambo, I’m look­ing  (with plead­ing eyes) at you.… ;)

New Podcast: The Girl With the Sun In Her Head

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My story from Polyphony 4,  and one of my ear­li­est suc­cess­ful attempts at the short story (although your def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess may vary from mine in this case), is now live as a pod­cast on PodCastle.  You can give it a lis­ten over on the PodCastle site, but if you’re into fan­tasy, you should sub­scribe to their feed.  The team over there does good work.  With this pub­li­ca­tion, I have one story left to appear on a podcast–I believe my story “Captain Bl00d’s B00ty” is sup­posed to appear on Starship Sofa at some point, although I haven’t heard any­thing about when.

Special thanks to Jay Lake and Deborah Layne for pur­chas­ing the story orig­i­nally, and again, thank you to the PodCastle staff, Anne, Rachel, et al for pick­ing it for the ‘cast.  I am grateful.

The story, by the way is inspired by the Orbital song of the same name.  I was bang­ing my head against the wall try­ing to come up with a story to write when the song came up in Winamp.  I saw the title and thought, hey, I could write a story about that Girl.    I don’t the story reads like the song, sadly.  I would be awe­some if I could make sto­ries read like songs.

I wrote a series of sto­ries with titles iden­ti­cal to songs.  Another one was Louis Jordan’s “A Chicken Ain’t Nothing But a Bird” about a south­ern family’s rooster named Scratch that was actu­ally a cock­a­trice.  Never went any­where with that one. I’m a huge fan of Lois Jordan’s music.  “Beans and Cornbread” is a clas­sic.  Never wrote a story with that title although I am tempted should I find the time.  I even have an idea of what it’s about.  Coincidentally, corn­bread is one of my favorite foods.  Nothing like some fried cat­fish and corn­bread hush pup­pies on a sum­mer night. Remind me to tell you how I feel about fish frys.  As in, ever­body get­ting together and fry­ing up a buck­et­load of fish, not some new Burger King perversity.

New Podcast: Arties Aren’t Stupid

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My story from the excel­lent anthol­ogy Seeds of Change (edited by the Anthology God, for­merly known here as the Slush God, John Joseph Adams)  has gone live over at Escape Pod.  This is a story that was pub­lished to mixed reviews.  But I am astounded by the job that Philippa Ballantine did here.  Her read­ing was spec­tac­u­lar, and adding a New Zealander accent to the patois of the Arties made the whole thing feel more fami­lar and more exotic at once.  I fell in love with my own story, which is not easy for me.  Thank you, Philippa.  And thanks to John for buy­ing the story.

I believe that my next pod­cast appear­ance will be on Starship Sofa with “Captain Bl00d’s Booty,” a story also edited by JJA.  It’s either that or one of my ear­li­est (and most loved) sto­ries, “The Girl with the Sun in Her Head” which is with Podcastle, but I don’t know when it is sched­uled to go up.  Both should be a hoot to hear. Writing all these Roundbottom pod­casts has me think­ing a lot more about how some­thing could sound when deliv­ered by a tal­ented voice actor.  I think it’s only going to improve my writ­ing in the long run.

New Roundbottom Podcast: Boggarts Prepare for War!

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The lat­est con­tent update on Clockpunk​.com is live and this week, the Doctor and Miss Watkins con­tinue their inves­ti­ga­tions into the intel­li­gence of the bog­garts as the bog­garts pre­pare to go to war!  Can the Doctor dis­cover the source of the con­flict in time to stop the war from rav­aging the Park and habi­tat that he loves? You can help!  Read the last post, lis­ten to the pod­cast, and pro­vide your the­o­ries to the doctor.

Feedback on the work is always greatly appre­ci­ated.  I learned a lot about what I need to do bet­ter when writ­ing audio sto­ries from this episode.  My audio man Nate Periat kicked ass as usual.  I think it should still be pretty great, but future episodes are going to be even bet­ter than this.

If noth­ing else, I just want the pod­cast episodes to make you laugh :) Hopefully it suc­ceeds in that. Enjoy!

The New Dr. Roundbottom Podcast is Live

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Hi Folks.  After a ton of work on the part of myself, Sarah, and my sound engi­neer and good friend Nate Periat, we’ve fin­ished and posted our first Dr. Roundbottom Field Sounds pod­cast.  It’s only 5 min­utes long, so don’t hes­i­tate to just go to the site and hit play.  Please let me know what you think.  We’re very pleased with the results for our first try, and we can’t wait to do more.  I spent today get­ting ahead on next week’s entry as well.  Tomrorow, after some site updates I need to get done, I will start writ­ing the next pod­cast episode.

Let me know what you think!

From the Escape Pod Metacast #3

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Based on com­par­ing lis­ten­ers and sub­scriber num­bers, Escape Pod is the sec­ond largest mar­ket for short sci­ence fic­tion, with 20,000 down­loads after a month for each episode. I don’t have any­thing to say about that. I just want to men­tion it, and see what you all think of that. I’ve talked about this before, but I think their lis­tener count has grown since then.

(And yes, the prospect of my lat­est sale to them being heard by 20,000 peo­ple is some­what terrifying.)