Archive for the ‘Podcast’ Category

“Captain Blood’s B00ty” on Starship Sofa

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

There’s a new, excellently-​​read pod­cast of my short story “Captain Blood’s B00ty” story over on Starship Sofa today. Give it a lis­ten and let me know what you think.

This story pre­vi­ously appeared in the Shimmer pirate issue, edited by John Joseph Adams.

I’m sorry things have been so quiet around here lately. I just don’t have much to say right now.  Soon though.

My Fiction and Talk Show Podcast Appearances This Week

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Did you know that I some­times appear on pod­casts?  Check me out, I’m on the internets!

This week’s Sofanauts fea­tures Tony C. Smith (the Sherlock to my Moriarty),  Matthew Sanborn Smith (the hairy mango to my kumquat), and myself (the toad to my wet sprocket).   We wish Joe Haldeman well, dis­cuss the ridicu­lous­ness that was the Highlander fran­chise, learn that Tony doesn’t know who Ralph Nader is, and I tem­porar­ily put Ray Bradbury in the same cat­e­gory as Shakespeare.

Then we have some of my fic­tion over at the fan­tas­ti­cally weird Drabblecast.  Norm has pro­duced one of my ear­li­est sto­ries,  “Storm Comes A’Callin,” and turned out a piece with music and singing that only he could do in the genre pod­cast­ing world. If you like the blues or thun­der­storms, this is the pod­cast for you.  Or if you just like absolutely amaz­ing pod­cast pro­duc­tion.  Seriously, you have got to lis­ten to this.

In other news, the job in Vermont didn’t work out, so I con­tinue my quest to be the most badass genre-​​related web designer I can. By night, writ­ing up a storm of short sto­ries, and feel­ing like I’m really start­ing to get it.  I’m also tak­ing seri­ous steps towards get­ting involved in writ­ing for video games, after sev­eral years of think­ing about it and never both­er­ing to learn a thing about how the field works.

Finally, fall is hit­ting, which means the elk rut is upon us.  I’m think­ing a 4 AM drive to Estes Park on Monday is called for, cam­era gear at the ready.  I haven’t put my new cam­era bag to a field test yet.  Bull elk beat­ing the crap out of one another should do nicely.  If all goes well, expect to see some fan­tas­tic pho­tos next week.

A Return Home, and A New Starship Sofa

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The guests this week are  Jeff VanderMeer, Amy H. Sturgis, and of course the sofa is piloted by Captain Tony C. Smith.  Oh, and this guy writ­ing this post.  This week, we talk about the con­fer­ence in Austin, cover art, and I lose my shit entirely about the new “Hitchhiker’s Guide” book (those are scare quotes).  If you enjoy me rant­ing like a rabid dog, this is an episode for you.

I hope to write up a post about the amaz­ing time I had at the Austin Game Writers Summit when I have had a bet­ter chance to digest the expe­ri­ence.  I’m dip­ping down into that post-​​con  low today.  It’s hard to go from being super-​​social and hang­ing out with amaz­ing peo­ple to being back at your com­puter alone with nobody but your cats for com­pany (Sarah’s putting on a show, which I get to go see tomorrow).

I’ll be turn­ing around and fly­ing out to Vermont on Monday to meet the fine folks at Chelsea Green, a pub­lish­ing com­pany that spe­cial­izes in books on sus­tain­abil­ity and green liv­ing.  It’ll be a whirl­wind trip of meet­ings and dri­ving in a place where I have never been.   I’m less anx­ious about the job inter­view than I am about the dri­ving in Boston.

So what did I miss this week?  Anything cool hap­pen with you folks?

Another Appearance on Drabblecast

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Fresh off my appear­ance from last week, I have another appear­ance on Drabbelcast. It’s another story from the Daily Cabal, a short tale of cre­ta­ceous ocean ghosts. I keep return­ing to that well, just like I keep return­ing to gigan­tap­ithi­cus. Some things loom large in my ima­gia­tion I guess.

I just glanced through the com­ments on last week. It’s the usual mix of com­pli­men­tary and less than com­pli­men­tary. One par­tic­u­lar bit that would nor­mally upset me but has only left me amused is “dull.” It finally sinks in for once that it’s just one (or maybe a cou­ple) people’s opin­ions. The edi­tor didn’t think it was dull, and that’s pretty much all I care now! Financial neces­sity really hard­ens you to pub­lic opinion.

The tri­fecta also includes two other good stories:

Aqua Vita by Stephanie Campisi
Jake and the Carpet Sharks by Michelle Howarth

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.

Some Reprint Sales

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve sold a pod­cast reprint of “Storm Comes A’Callin’” to Drabblecast, fol­low­ing up on the 3-​​flash piece sales over there, and I’ve also sold a reprint of “Arties Aren’t Stupid”  to Hub Magazine.

I sup­pose it’s about time I get some new work out there, eh?

Questions about Podcasts, Some Escape Pod News

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I need to under­stand more about how peo­ple inter­act with pod­casts, now that I’m edit­ing for one.  I have some ques­tions that I’d like to ask you all.

  • Do you lis­ten to pod­casts? If so, which ones?  (If no, please do say so, and you can ignore the rest of the questions.)
  • How do you lis­ten to them?  At your com­puter, in the car, while jog­ging, etc?
  • Do you just sub­scribe in iTunes or another pod­catcher and for­get, or do you read the web­sites asso­ci­ated with them too?
  • What kinds of prod­ucts adver­tised in a pod­cast via spon­sor­ships would you actu­ally find interesting?
  • What are the traits of a good pod­cast episode in your opinion?

I’m just try­ing to under­stand how peo­ple inte­act with pod­casts a lit­tle more.  I have my own pre-​​formed the­o­ries, but they’re not based on anyone’s real­ity except my own.  Ostensibly, answers to these ques­tions will help me make Escape Pod an even bet­ter pod­cast than it already is.

By they way, let me just say, we’re a pay­ing mar­ket, but we can’t pay with­out the sup­port of our lis­ten­ers.  If you reg­u­larly lis­ten to Escape Pod and enjoy its con­tent, please con­sider mak­ing a dona­tion via PayPal.  Much like NPR, we’re funded by the listeners.

And of course, if you’re a writer, I want to see your sto­ries.  Read our sub­mis­sion guide­lines and send your work along!

This week, I pur­chased sto­ries by:  Kameron Hurley, Merrie Fuller, Ian Creasey, David Rivera, Ian McHugh, Tina Connolly, and more.  As an edi­tor, I don’t have any agenda other than to find sto­ries that I think are good that will also make good audio pro­duc­tions.   I think we have some great sto­ries com­ing up for the lis­ten­ers.  I hope they and you will agree.

The Sofanauts » The Sofanauts No 3 (Listen to me be a fool)

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Once again this week, I appear on Sofanauts, Tony Smith’s SF dis­cus­sion pod­cast.  This week, the guests were Gord Sellar, awe­some writer and future John W. Campbell Award win­ner, and Ray Sizemore, a fan­tas­tic nar­ra­tor of podcasts.

I don’t know what it is about being on pod­casts that turns me into a rav­ing lunatic, but this week, I spend time explain­ing why WALL-​​E is darker than the Dark Knight, why I think the Singularity as a futur­is­tic con­cept is laugh­able, and to stick a fork in my career once and for all, I dis­re­spect the sci­ence fic­tion saint Robert Heinlein.

So, if you enjoy lis­ten­ing to me make an utter fool of myself in a rel­a­tively enter­tain­ing fash­ion, go take a listen.

The Sofanauts » The Sofanauts No 3.

My 5 Minute Review of The Watchmen

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

It’s weird, but my non-​​fiction pod­cast debut  is over on Starship Sofa this week (rather than Escape Pod where I now work).  Tony asked me to throw together a review of the film, and I wanted to play with my record­ing equip­ment again, so I did so.  You can check out the episode and hear my thoughts on The Watchmen film on the Starship Sofa pod­cast web­site. There’s also fic­tion in this episode by Kim Newman.