Oh, wait, I think that is supposed to be “What I’m doing at Balticon 46!”

No, on second thought, I think I may have gotten it right the first time.

Bit by bit, my schedule for Balticon 46 has come together, and now I am finally ready to share it in all of its titanic glory! And this year really is titanic. Somehow, when I said that I was willing to do up to 3 panels a day, it got interpreted as 3 panels for each day. Yes, I’m doing twelve panels this year! Plus a reading! The worst part? When I looked over the panels to see what I could back out of… I couldn’t find anything. All of my panels are either things I’d already agreed to do, cool subjects, or a chance to branch out into new areas and break out of the “comfort zone”.  So, if you want to see where I’ll be at this year’s Balticon, just click the link and get ready to make some notes. There’s a LOT!

We start the weekend off with two panels, and a meet and greet on Friday night:

Steam-powered: – Rage of the New Victorians

Friday at 5:00 pm in Parlor 1041

From werewolves of property to anti-zombie airship pilots, the Empire has struck back. Meet the writers of this Brave Old World.

Moderator: Georgiana Lee

Speakers: Tee Morris; Doc Coleman; Philippa “Pip” Ballantine,

A Touch of Slash – Rule 34 and the Podosphere – If it exists, there is porn of it.

Friday at 10:00 pm in Chesapeake

If it exists, there is porn of it. Let’s break down this year’s releases in the new media world, and see which of them are in desperate need of dirty fanfic.

Moderator: Paulette Jaxton

Speakers: Doc Coleman; Veronica R. Giguere; Jhada R. Addams

Late Night New Media Meet and Greet

Friday at 11:00 pm in Chesapeake

Glomp and squee over all your favorite New Media personalities as we judiciously round them up into one location with a tiny bottle neck cutting off all hope of their escape.

Moderator: Grig (Punkie) Larson

Speakers: Trish Wilson (Elizabeth Black); Doc Coleman; Paul Elard Cooley

Then the fun begins again with two more panels Saturday Afternoon:

Just Dandy: The Importance of Accessories in Steampunk

Saturday at 1:00 pm in Salon D

Finding the perfect accessories is vital to having the perfect steampunk costume: Find out the best places to get these accessories and tips and tricks to making your own.

Moderator: Elektra Hammond

Speakers: Janine K. Spendlove; Jared Axelrod; Doc Coleman; Rebecca K. Davis

The Shrinking Man Project – Live!

Saturday at 3:00 pm in Chesapeake

Live A live podcast discussing the ins and outs of weight loss hosted by the Shrinking Man himself. “Inspiration. Finding it, and being it.” Where do you find inspiration to make change in your life? How does that inspiration motivate you to get out and do, to write, to exercise, to improve your life? How can you be that inspiration for yourself, and for those around you? Join our discussion and share your thoughts on inspiration and its place in your work and your life.

Moderator: Doc Coleman

Speakers: Justin R. Macumber; Starla Huchton; Veronica R. Giguere; Tee Morris

Then a little late-night naughtiness at Midnight:

SF and Fantasy with a Twist

Sunday at 12:00 midnight in Salon B

Panelists discuss SF and Fantasy with a twist (or is that a kink) from authors like Laurel K. Hamilton, Cecilia Tan and others.

Moderator: Doc Coleman

Speakers: Veronica R. Giguere; Stephanie M. Burke

And then after some rest for the wicked, the it is a madly packed Sunday of panels, voice acting, and podcasts!

Galley Table Podcast – Live

Sunday at 2:00 pm in Chesapeake

Listen as the Flying Island Press pirates plan their next mutiny and perpetrate their upcoming literary larcenies.

Moderator: Scott Roche

Speakers: Laura Nicole Spencer; Doc Coleman

WordPress 101

Sunday at 3:00 pm in Derby

Learning to go from novice to hero using the WordPress content management system.

Moderator: Terri (Flynnstress) Vernon

Speakers: Chooch Schubert; Doc Coleman; Gary L. Lester

Home Brewing – How to get started and excel at making your own craft beer, wine, etc.

Sunday at 7:00 pm in Chesapeake

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” – Benjamin Franklin Our panel of novice and master home brewers take you through the basics of making your own craft brews at home. They will also explore the DIY philosophy that got them involved in home brewing, podcasting, open source software, etc.

Moderator: John Taylor Williams

Speakers: Doc Coleman; Thomas Gideon; Scott Roche

Stargazers Audio Drama

Sunday at 9:00 pm in Derby

The script can be found at GypsyAudio.org

Moderator: Laura Nicole Spencer

Speakers: Starla Huchton; Keith R. A. DeCandido; Tim Dodge; P.G. Holyfield; Paulette Jaxton; Scott Roche; Doc Coleman; Val Griswold-Ford; Kim, Comic Book Goddess

Dirty Mad Libs

Sunday at 10:00 pm in Chesapeake

Audience participation time! We’re going to take pieces of classic erotica, cut out the author’s carefully chosen words, and ask you to replace them with your own.

Moderator: Patrick Scaffido

Speakers: Starla Huchton; Doc Coleman

And on Monday we finish up with one last panel, and a reading:

 Readings: Doc Coleman, Yoji Kondo and Gary Lester

Today we have another trip on the Wayback Machine! We’re going back just a little over a year from now, to April 20th, 2011. This was right when I first hit the plateau that I’m still struggling with. It also happens to be right before I discovered that I had a blood clot in my right arm. I’m surprised that it took until now for me to begin to wonder if the two are related. I shall have to do some research.

For now, enjoy the show, and a glimpse into the past.

Show Notes:

• Welcome!
• Off to the scales…
• Promo – Scott Sigler’s The Starter
• Weigh in
• Week in review
  • Computer stuff.
  • Exercises done!
  • Medical issues.
  • Another week on plan.
  • Love my Audio Editor!
  • Lessons learned. Sometimes you can do everything right… and still not get the results you expect.
  • Moving forward. Getting back to basics.
• Feedback!
• Sign off
  • Leave comments on the blog at http://theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • E-mail at Doc@theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • Voice mail at (240) 745-5022
  • Join the Fans of the Shrinking Man Project on Facebook
  • If you have a podcast, send me your promos!
  • Leave a review on iTunes or Podcast Alley.
  • Tell your friends about the podcast.
  • Have a good week! Keep losing that weight.
• End credits

Mentioned on the show:

• Podiobooks.com
• Scott Sigler
• The Rookie, The Starter, The All-Pro
• Fans of The Shrinking Man Project

Once again the Wayback Machine has sputtered to life, taking us on a trip into podcasting past. Today’s adventure down memory lane takes us to April 16, 2011, where we will bear witness to the release of Episode 32 of Galley Table! In this episode we’re talking with Paulette Jaxton about her book The Empress Sword, and the place that various fantasy tropes take in the book.

Some special moments from the episode:

And, in what seems like a blink of an eye, another week is gone.

But it has been productive. Northern Mist went through editing in what seems like a blink of an eye. I must admit that the editing process was vaguely disappointing. I was expecting more feedback. For once I’m experiencing the desire to continue hammering at a story to polish it further. It has been a new experience. That nagging feeling that says, “I can do better.”

But production schedules will not wait for me. So I have to move forward.

And move forward I have. I recorded the audio version of Mist and Kee is now editing it, although events have conspired to limit progress on that front. The plan is to turn in the audio within the week. Hopefully we can keep to the plan. Of course, once the audio is turned over, Tee and Pip will be doing their magic on it before it is scheduled for the podcast. In some ways, it is good that I’m not nailed to a particular schedule, as it gives me the chance to adjust to unanticipated events. There always seem to be unanticipated events. On the other hand, without a concrete schedule, there is a temptation to let things slide. A temptation to resist.

Unfortunately, it seems like everything else has slid by the wayside. It has been weeks since I’ve been able to fire up the Wayback Machine and try to get the Master Feed caught up. I’ve still been able to participate on the Galley Table, as that is only an hour a week, but I haven’t been able to turn out a new episode of The Shrinking Man Project. I got a book review posted here and over at the Nifty Tech Blog, but I still have two more reviews I need to write for books I’ve finished recently. I want to do the reviews justice, so I keep ending up putting them off until I know I can do a good job.

Not to mention being up to my epaulets in reading. I’ve got another overdue book review for James Crawford’s Blood Soaked and Contagious. I’ve had trouble getting into the book, as horror isn’t my usual genre. It doesn’t help that I only have the book in digital format and most of my reading is done at lunch at work where I can’t bring in any kind of e-reader. On top of that, I’ve also started reading the much-anticipated ARC (Advance Release Copy) for the new Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novel, “The Janus Affair”. And then, of course, trying to keep up with “A Clash of Kings” while watching it on HBO.

One of these days I’ll learn to not take on too many projects. Probably not any time soon, though. Wish me luck, folks.

Before I get into the review, I have a confession to make. This review is way, way, WAY over due. Last summer I had written a few reviews of books that I had read and enjoyed immensely. This led to my being approached by several people and asked to do reviews on their books. I quickly went from having no reviews to do to having several to do. At the same time, my voice work exploded. I quickly became overloaded. At the time, I decided that the best way for me to clear the backlog was to focus on one thing, batter at that, and keep at it until it was done. Well, some things went easier than others. And then Life happened. The result is that this review is finally being written some four plus months after it was originally intended to be written.

Free Will (and other compulsions) is the second book in J. Daniel Sawyer’s Antithesis Progression series, which manages to combine science fiction and noir elements into a fascinating future setting. The first book in the series is Predestination (and other games of chance). If you’ve read Predestination and enjoyed it, you’re sure to want to pick up Free Will, and no doubt look forward to the next time J. Daniel Sawyer publishes a book with a short title (and a long and contradictory subtitle). At the time of this writing, Free Will is only available in electronic formats, but is available for Kindle, Nook, and a variety of other formats via Smashwords.

In Predestination, we met Joss Kyle, a one-time National Security Advisor who is now on the run. After being branded as a traitor, Joss has fled the Earth for Space Station Sidon in order to build a new life for himself, and to figure out who was the real traitor who set him up to take the fall. But Joss hasn’t gotten away clean. He’s still pursued by those who would like to use his knowledge, or silence him forever.

Now, in Free Will, events have continued apace. The Lunar Colonies are agitating for open rebellion, despite the power plays and back-biting that are threatening to tear the movement apart. The Persians have become increasingly confrontational, and now have mobilized their fleet and are threatening to take over the outer colonies. The American military is starting to mobilize in answer, and it is becoming harder and harder to see a path that doesn’t lead to open warfare. Senator Bill Shelley, the very man who branded Joss as a traitor, is moving closer to taking over the White House. As much as Joss would like to lay low, a new series of terrorist bombings on Luna and the space stations have been laid at his feet. Now Joss finds that he has one last chance to try to clear his name, and possibly avert an interplanetary war. In the midst of all this chaos, it is time for Joss Kyle to take a stand. All he has to do is manage to go home without being caught.

This is a novel of dirty deals, secret meetings, conspiracy, betrayal, and intrigue. If these kinds of stories don’t appeal to you, you’re not going to like Free Will. Of course, if you do like this kind of story, you’re in for a good read.

And a long one. This is a big book, full of twists and turns, betrayals, reversals, confessions, reveals, and desperate struggles for survival. Sawyer paints events on a big stage, but manages to convey the human details without bogging the story down in endless descriptions. His characters are complex, confused, and real. While some of the lifestyles portrayed in Free Will aren’t exactly mainstream by today’s standards, the characters are human and their choices and reactions ring true. The story is intricate and carefully plotted and draws the reader along to find out how anyone can avoid the disaster looming, and if any of the characters can survive.

While it took me a long time to get through Free Will, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. While this is not the end of the Antithesis Progression, Free Will stands alone as a story, and doesn’t suffer from the weak endings that tend to characterize middle books in a trilogy. The book feels like it comes to a proper ending, and it is only afterwards that one realizes that there are still loose threads to be dealt with. I’m looking forward to the next installment of the Antithesis Progression and seeing what new developments Sawyer can come up with. This is an excellent book for fans of criminal underworlds and high stakes politics.

For those of you, yes, both of you, who have wondered about the mysterious project code-named “Northern Mist” that I’ve been working on, I can now reveal a little more about it. I’ve kept quiet pending word from the author who invited me to write in his world that I can begin talking about the story. Well, I haven’t officially gotten that word, but my author has talked about things on his own site, and I don’t see any reason I can’t echo what he has said.

For now, the story will remain behind the code name “Northern Mist”, but if you read this post over at TeeMorris.com, then you already know that I will be contributing a short story to Season 2 (or Volume II) of Tales from the Archives, a Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Anthology. So my “author” in this case are actually co-authors Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris.

I am very honored and excited to be part of this. I dearly love the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences and I hope everyone will enjoy my small contribution to the world. It has made it very difficult to keep quiet about his project and all the steampunky goodness. Unfortunately, I can’t say too much more about our progress right now. We are in the editing phase now. Once the story is finalized and approved, I’ll be recording it, then Tee will work his production magic on the finished recording. After that will come the agonized waiting until the episode finally drops into the feed.

The good news is that the first episode of Season 2 of Tales from the Archives is scheduled to drop on April 10th, and then a new episode will drop each fortnight until the season is complete (or life gets uncomfortably in the way). So there will be plenty of new MoPO content coming your way. As soon as I know, and can let it be known, I’ll post more about “Northern Mist”.

Squeee!

I can’t believe I’ve let a whole week go by without posting anything here. The odd thing is that it has been an eventful week, but now looking back on it, it is a bit difficult to point back at what actually got done. I’m sure everyone has weeks like that. But there are a few things I can definitely point to as accomplishments…

“Northern Mist” is finished now. It has a proper title, I’ve done a first round of edits and cleaned a few things up, and submitted it for consideration. No word back yet about how the story was received, so I’m proceeding under the impression that it hasn’t been read yet. After all, it is an anthology and other people are submitting stories. There is plenty to keep the editor occupied. So, until I get the official word that the story has been accepted and can be talked about, I’m going to have to keep the story’s title and setting a secret. I’m expecting some back and forth editing of the story, but that process hasn’t really begun.

The surprising thing about wrapping up “Mist” is how short my last writing session was. Last Friday I sat down to add 250 words to the story so that I could say I wrote something, and by the time I got done with that, I realized that I was done. The writing session prior to that I had stopped because I was so very tired, and it hadn’t registered how close to the end I was. I did a first editing pass over the weekend and caught a few mistakes and polished up a few rough edges. Rather than batter at it to make it “perfect” I went ahead and submitted it. If I’m going to make changes, I’d rather they be changes that get the story accepted. The first draft is around 7000 words, so it is a healthy sized short story. We will see if it stays that long, or if I have to cut it back down towards 5000 words.

In the wake of finishing “Mist” I’ve found it hard to get back to writing. Part of me seems to want to wait for word to come back on “Mist”. The reality is that I need to get back to working on Perils and get that finished off. If I’m going to podcast Perils this fall, I have to get it edited and line up voice talent. Just a ton of work there.

Last week also saw the release of a new Shrinking Man Project episode. That was an interesting episode, in that I recorded it while I took a 2-mile walk around my block. I’ve got some positive feedback from it, in the form of people who like the honesty of hearing me exercise while I’m talking about exercise. I’ve had at least one request to do more shows like that one. And it got Nathan Lowell to subscribe to the podcast!

I think I’ve also had it with grocery delivery services. I placed an order with Giant’s Peapod delivery service for delivery last Tuesday. Peapod only gives a limited selection of what is available in the stores, but the lure of it is that they pull the groceries and deliver them to your door at a specified time. Right. My delivery was supposed to arrive between 5 and 7 PM on Tuesday evening. A little after 4 PM, they called to say that they were going to be late, but they’d deliver between 7:15 and 7:45 PM. Irritating, but not horrific.

When 8 PM rolled around, I called Peapod customer service to ask if they were planning to make the delivery at all, since they were now 3 hours past the original delivery window. The truck finally showed up at 8:20. And then it turned out that they forgot two of the items I ordered, and they crushed my loaf of bread.

Obviously, this did NOT make me a happy camper.

The whole point of services like this is that they’ll save you time. But my experience is that having the groceries delivered TOOK me more time. In the time I spent waiting for the truck to show up, I could have gone to the grocery, shopped, brought my groceries home, put them away, AND cooked dinner. This would have required me to carry my own groceries, but I wouldn’t have had a limited selection of foods, and I’d have all the things on my list.

I believe I’ve had it with Peapod. It just isn’t worth the aggravation.

An interesting thing happened yesterday.

Last week, I got together with the Galley Table crew and we recorded an episode of the Galley Table talking about PayPal’s latest shenanigans in trying to censor online content by threatening to withdraw their services to online booksellers like Smashwords. PayPal’s take on things was that a) they didn’t want their service to be associated with morally questionable content, and b) they were being pressured into it by the credit card companies that they do business with. We called bullshit. The products that PayPal wanted to censor (and worse!) are sold every day in brick and mortar stores using those credit cards. Nobody bats an eye. For that matter, much worse things are sold on e-Bay, PayPal’s parent company, and paid for via PayPal. If PayPal wants to censor content, why not start with e-Bay?

So last week we recorded, and Episode 61 of Galley Table went live yesterday. And do you know what happened?

PayPal recanted.

They are no longer going to threaten the livelihood of legal booksellers doing legal business, even if some of that business is in the erotica market. They are reducing the objectionable content from broad classes of literature to specific books. This is interesting because it shifts the burden of proof from the bookseller, trying to prove that a class of work is legal and should be allowed, over to PayPal, who now needs to prove that a specific work is objectionable and violates the law.

I know there are some out there who will laud PayPal’s actions as an attempt to stand up for morality. I certainly cannot fault anyone for clearly stating the morals that they believe in and choosing to absent themselves from activity that they deem to be morally ambiguous. But I cannot abide the hypocrisy of interfering with legal commerce between two other parties, while continuing to participate in the same questionable type of business deals yourself. In the end, that hypocrisy is what made this a freedom of speech issue, instead of a moral argument.

There will always be some content in the world that someone will find morally objectionable. We can’t help that. Personally, I’d rather that people explore such themes in fiction, and not in real life.

It is past time I put out some kind of writing update. Well past time, in fact, since I’ve done a fair amount of writing since the last update, although I haven’t gotten much written lately. The last time I had checked in here about my writing progress, was back on February 26th, over two weeks ago, and at that time I’d written about 1000 words on “Mist”, bringing it up to about 1800 or so words. I followed this up by stealing some time on the ride in to work by writing during the carpool into work for about 300 words a pop. This got “Mist” up to about 2500 words. Not really great progress.

Then on March 4th, I sat down to do some serious writing, and managed to plow through the vast majority of the story, adding another 3500 words and bringing “Mist” up to 6000 words. I’d added a seventh scene in the middle of the story, I really needed the transition, and had everything written but the last scene. Nice progress for a day of writing.

I spent the rest of last week trying to get some other priority items off my table. This included something for my day job, scheduling items for Balticon 46, and another episode of my podcast so I can release a promo before the 16th. But after clearing those things out, I still needed to finish up “Mist”.

Last Friday night I tried to get back to it and finish off the story. I started the last scene, but after about 800 words I gave up. It was too late, and I was just too exhausted. It also proved to be the pre-cursor to me getting sick. The darned weather changes in the DC area have gotten to me again. Freezing temperatures in the morning and 60+ degrees in the afternoon have thrown my system out of whack and given me a very unpleasant sinus infection. I’ve spent the last two days sick in bed and feeling rather puny.

Today, I am back to work, but I expect that my production is going to take a downturn for a bit, until I can fight my way back to health. Unfortunately, I’ve got too many deadlines to day to take much time off this week. Gotta get things done.

Starting the week of right this week with another trip via the Wayback Machine! Today we’re visiting April 13, 2011 and a return of Philosophy to The Shrinking Man Project. This episode discusses the way most people set unrealistic deadlines for themselves. This sabotages your progress, and can lead to permanent damage. Even if you heard this one the first time around, you’ll probably want to give it another listen.

This episode also marks the beginning of my blood clot issues. Hasn’t been diagnosed yet, but I do talk about the issues I encountered because of the clot.

Enjoy the show.

Show Notes:

• Welcome!

• Philosophy

• Off to the scales…

• Promo – Geek Out! with Mainframe

• Weigh in

• Week in review
  • Computer nightmares.
  • Exercises done!
  • Medical issues.
  • Another week on plan.
  • Love my Audio Editor!
  • Lessons learned. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
  • Moving forward. Keep an eye on your health.
• Feedback!

• Sign off
  • Leave comments on the blog at http://theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • E-mail at Doc@theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • Voice mail at (240) 745-5022
  • Join the Fans of the Shrinking Man Project on Facebook
  • If you have a podcast, send me your promos!
  • Leave a review on iTunes or Podcast Alley.
  • Tell your friends about the podcast.
  • Have a good week! Keep losing that weight.
• End credits

Mentioned on the show:

• Geek Out! with Mainframe
• Crash Plan – Nifty Tech Blog Review of Crash Plan
• Balticon 45
• Team Wench
• MS Fantasy Ball
• Fans of The Shrinking Man Project

Time once again to fire up the Wayback Machine and visit a podcast from the past. Today we are setting the clock back to April 10th, 2011, and listening in on an episode of the Galley Table. Since there were no ladies present on the podcast, we discussed comics with our guest Blake M. Petit, podcast novelist. We looked at comic books as an art form, and how they have moved into other forms of art, such as novels and movies.

Some highlights from the episode:

• “Wait, I wasn’t ready!” “Tough.”
• “The geek rage must flow!”
• “There are officially 52 earths, and that’s it.”
• “Scott, have you ever noticed how wrestlers go into acting?” “I don’t think you can call what wrestlers do acting.”
• “In a page, an artist can tell you more about a whole world than a writer can say in an entire issue.”
• “How do super heroes prepare for the zombie apocalypse?”
• “Topher Grace’s voice coming out of the Venom mask isn’t going to scare anyone.”
• “Geek fight.”
• “Here’s where I’m going to lose some geek cred with somebody…”
• “If they’re too successful, they have to become the villains.”
• “If you’re going to reboot something, you should at least wait until the corpse is cold.”
• “Cue geek rage! Geek rage smash!”
• “There was a New Mutants’s TV series?” “There was.” “I don’t remember it.” “That is probably to your benefit.”
• “Some would say we’re well beyond…”
• “About fifteen years and several thousand dollars later…”
• “I think that Archie was the only thing I ever got into.”
• “It was a comic book! Nobody dies in comics!”
• “Spider-man was my first love.”
• “I find it amusing that the Batman fans are always convinced that Batman will always win.”
• “I’m all about the vengeance place.”
• “Soonish.”

Mentioned:

• CXPulp.com
• BackIssueBin.blogspot.com
• Evertime Realms
• Get Jeff a new mic stand.
• Incubator Press
• Playing For Keeps
• Union Dues
• Brave Men Run
• Balticon
• Geek Out With Mainframe
• Wiener Blut

This past has been a busy week. I’ve been driven to exhaustion a couple of times, and had my day taken up by errands.With production down so much on this week, I had pinned a lot of hopes on this weekend. In the end, I didn’t get as much done this weekend as I had hoped, but I did manage to get a bit of work done.

Friday night, I managed to do some voice work. I broke out the mic and recorded my lines for Veronica Giguere’s new full cast podcast project. I only had around twenty-five lines for that project, so I was able to get them all recorded. I’m not sure how much I can say about this project until I can get the go-ahead to start pimping it. And I’m sure that Veronica isn’t sure how long she’ll be splicing audio from her cast together.

Saturday was pretty much completely taken up by the 11th Annual Privateer’s Feast. This is a yearly fund-raiser benefiting breast cancer research held by Team Wench, which is an offshoot of the Maryland local chapter of The International Wenches Guild. My wife is a member of Team Wench and is the Acquisitions Chair for this year. This puts her in charge of items donated to be raffled off at the fundraising events. Even though most donations are gathered in the fall, there are always some people who show up at an event with things to donate. This meant that we had to show up early with the crew that was setting up and get her set up and prepared to handle any donations that came in.

The Feast itself was a good event. Saw a lot of old friends, and met some new ones. I even managed to win a  prize in the raffle. For the most part it was a chance to put pirate garb on and hang out with a bunch of friends. Just what I needed this winter.

Sunday, I slept in late. Saturday night was a late night, and my muscles were sore. After getting out for a walk, and getting cleaned up, I set to work. I wrote the script for a new episode of The Shrinking Man Project, which I plan to record tomorrow. After that, I turned to writing “Mists”. I wrote over 1000 words on the second scene, and discovered the need to insert a new scene into the narrative. I suspect that will not be the last time that happens. I’m pretty happy with this progress, but I’m afraid it is too late for me to get any work done on Perils. I managed to steal some time on the car pool this past week and add another 500 or so words to Perils. I think that I’m probably going to have to do the same this week.

Still, progress is progress.

Some trouble getting the Wayback Machine working this week, but I finally got it to kick over. Today’s trip into the past takes us to April 7th, 2011 and an episode of The Shrinking Man Project. This episode’s featured promo is Katarina Maimer’s Wiener Blut. This episode comes from the beginning of the plateau that I spent most of last year struggling with. This is also the first episode where my wife has taken over the editing duties from me.

Enjoy the show.

Show Notes:

• Welcome!

• Off to the scales…

• Promo – Wiener Blut

• Weigh in

• Week in review
  • Computer stuff.
  • Trouble Sleeping.
  • Four exercises done!
  • Another week on plan.
  • Getting a little help .
  • Balticon news!
  • Lessons learned. A good night’s sleep can have a big effect on everything you do.
  • Moving forward. I gotta get more rest.
• Feedback!

• Sign off
  • Comments on the blog at http://theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • E-mail at Doc@theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • Voice mail at (240) 745-5022
  • Join the Fans of the Shrinking Man Project on Facebook
  • If you have a podcast, send me your promos!
  • Leave a review on iTunes or Podcast Alley.
  • Tell your friends about the podcast.
  • Have a good week!
• End credits

Mentioned on the show:

• Every Photo Tells…
• Wiener Blut
• Balticon 45
• Fans of The Shrinking Man Project

About ten days ago, I posted about being invited to write in another author’s universe. At the time, I was ecstatic just for being offered the chance to contribute to another author’s universe. Of course, the easy part is getting the invitation. Then you have to come up with an actual idea for the story, get it approved, and then write the sucker.

This weekend, I took a big step forward. I came up with an idea, wrote it up, and sent it in. And the author loved it! OK, there were a few changes, but other than that, loved it!

Now the hard work begins: actually writing the story. I took some time today to get what notes I had organized in Scrivener, and plotted out a loose structure of my story. In the past, I’ve just started writing because the story has only been in my head. That changed with NaNoWriMo. When I started on Perils, I needed to plot out how the events were going to proceed in the story before I could get started. So I made up a loose list of chapter names. Not even an outline, just chapter names to remind me what needed to happen in that chapter. And it worked. So I’m trying it again. I’ve broken the pitch I sent in down into a number of specific scenes and built the structure for those scenes in Scrivener.

The code name for this new WIP is “Northern Mist”. Until it gets released, or until I get permission to talk more openly about it, that is how I’ll be referring to this project. In addition to laying out the structure, I also started writing on “Mist”. I wrote up the first scene for the story tonight, cranking out about 660 words for the scene.

I have noticed that in my writing process I tend to need to start off with a scene that sets the stage for the rest of the story, but doesn’t directly involve any of the main characters. Given that this is a short story, I rather suspect that this first scene will get cut in editing. But even if it does get cut, I feel that this is a scene that I need to write in order to get the atmosphere for the rest of the story right. It sets the stage in my mind, and that helps the rest of the story flow.

Of course, I had said that I wasn’t going to start anything new until I had finished Perils. That isn’t going to be strictly possible right now, but I at least need to make sure that progress on Perils continues. So, I put in some time tonight working on Perils. I only managed to get about 450 words written, but I did manage to finish the chapter that I was working on. Unfortunately, I also realized that I’m going to need at least one more chapter in addition to the ones I had planned, so I still have three chapters left to go in the book.

So I’ve managed to get about 1100 words written today, and kept things moving forward. Tomorrow I’m back to work on podcasting. Hopefully I’ll get in some time for writing as well.

This week has gotten me off track with my planned production. I started off well with a Wayback Machine post, and a new review up on the Nifty Tech Blog, but then Wednesday and Thursday I was so exhausted I just couldn’t get anything done. I just slept. Today wasn’t exactly brilliant either. I didn’t get any writing done, but I did get out the mic and catch up on some overdue voice work.

I finished up the lines I owed Scott Roche for Ginnie Dare. Unless he finds more lines in the book for me, or he wants me to re-do some of the lines, I am done with that project now. Illness and bad scheduling have really stretched out this project much longer than it should have taken.

I also recorded another chapter for Treasure Island. I am still well ahead of the production schedule for the podcast, but there is still a long way to go. I’ve got another 22 chapters of Treasure Island to record, so it is going to take some time. I’ve tried to do at least two chapters at a pop, but it hasn’t always been possible.

I’ve also got a new voice work gig as part of Veronica Giguere’s cast for her first full cast production. I’ve also got a bit part in a live production taken from Laura Nicole’s Stargazers that she will be running at Balticon 46. And that is still not counting the major role in PC Haring’s upcoming podcast production. Some really great voice work opportunities have fallen at my feet lately, but now I am swamped. Got to get some of these projects wrapped up and off of my plate.

Oh, and I need to get back into writing again. Still need to finish the first draft of Perils. Perhaps tomorrow will be for writing.

Time for another trip with The Wayback Machine, folks! Today’s trip takes us back to April 1st, 2011 for an episode of The Shrinking Man Project. This is a check in episode, but it includes the excellent promo for Brand Gamblin’s podcast novel, The Hidden Institute. This is an excellent steampunk tale in a more modern version of a steampunk universe. If you haven’t given it  a listen, or a read, I recommend checking it out.

Show notes included below.

Show Notes:

• Welcome!
• Off to the scales…
• Promo – The Hidden Institute
• Weigh in
• Week in review
  • Backup issues finally solved!
  • All exercises done!
  • The schedule, rewritten.
  • Another week on plan.
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream debuts on Pirates Cove!
  • Lessons learned. Adjust priorities.
  • Moving forward. Make time for what is important.
• Feedback!
• Sign off
  • Comments on the blog at http://theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • E-mail at Doc@theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • Voice mail at (240) 745-5022
  • Join the Fans of the Shrinking Man Project on Facebook
  • If you have a podcast, send me your promos!
  • Leave a review on iTunes or Podcast Alley.
  • Tell your friends about the podcast.
  • Have a good week!
• End credits

Mentioned on the show:

• The Hidden Institute
• The Nifty Tech Blog
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Balticon 45
• Fans of The Shrinking Man Project

If you’re also a listener to The Shrinking Man Project, you’ll know that I have one final surgical procedure coming up in the beginning of February. If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, you’ll know that this procedure is today. So, while I’m off getting operated on, and recuperating, I thought I’d bring you another treat from the Wayback Machine. Today’s offering comes from March 26, 2011, and it is another Galley Table episode. In this one, we’re talking about strategies for e-book pricing. Our guest for this show is the lovely and talented Veronica Giguerre.  As ever, notes, and the episode after the jump.

Quotes from the episode:

• “If you’re going to go, Doc, go all the way.”
• “Throw the hand grenade at your baby.”
• “How much is information worth?”
• “Put it out there where people can get it for free, and if they like it enough, they’ll come back and buy physical books.”
• “The price that you’re putting out has to reflect the value of the book.”
• “Is textbook pricing an artifact of the past?”
• “Textbook prices are analogous to the prices of  snacks at major sporting events.”
• “The publisher is setting the price.”
• “There is the perception of a 99 cent book being a throw-away, or lesser quality.”
• “The podcast becomes the loss leader to get you interested in the printed versions.”
• “You may have other reasons for building your audience, but tangled in there you want to get this paid for somewhere.”
• “I may be a liberal, but I am also a capitalist.”
• “When they dropped it to 99 cents, the sales went down.”
• “Every book has its own sweet spot.”
• “Don’t worry, we can edit out the silence.”
• “We are professional podcasters here.”
• “I keep track of how much time I spend on each chapter.”
• “Since Doc is running around…”
• “We asked the question and waited for about two minutes before we realized you were no longer on the call.”
• “There is no mute on the cat, sorry.”
• “I’ll go ahead and start up the pimping.”
• “I think I have a pimp hat somewhere here I can put on.”
• “Prussian blimp dragons? Excellent!”

Mentioned:

• Zach vs Nate discussion in SVAllie’s blog
• The Secret World Chronicle
• Baen Free Library
• E-book Pricing vs. Revenue
• MegaCon
• The Keepers
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Ginnie Dare!

Yesterday was a day for great news to come my way. Not all of the good news happened yesterday, but it was the day that word reached me on a number of things. If any of this is news to you, I’m happy to be the bearer of glad tidings.

The first piece of great news was that Mur Lafferty has a new book contract with Orbit Books and will be releasing her book The Shambling Guide to New York City sometime next year. Mur has been working at the writing game for a while now, and is well known for her podcast I Should be Writing where she offers advice and encouragement to would be writers to do the work necessary to improve their writing and build a career. Despite all her hard work, Mur has had some difficulty getting her work picked up by traditional publishing markets. Hopefully this contract is a sign that publishers are starting to appreciate Mur’s writing. Go Mur!

The second piece of good news is more personal. I have been invited to write in an anthology for another author. This will be a commissioned work set in that author’s world and using characters that are peripheral to the author’s established characters. I am thrilled to be given this opportunity, and pleasantly surprised that this author was willing to have me play in their world. I hope I can measure up to their expectations. Unfortunately, that is about all I can say on this opportunity at this time. But rest assured, I will let you know when I can share more.

The last bit of good news that came my way yesterday is that J.R. Blackwell and her husband Jared Axelrod are expecting a new addition to their family. J.R. is pregnant, and they are expecting the baby in August. They are a wonderful and talented couple, and I am sure the world will tremble when their child enters this realm. A new generation of brilliance makes the world a better place.

All this good news got me working on Perils again last night. I added over 1200 words, bringing the total word count up over 60 thousand. Things aren’t look nearly so bright for my characters. They are in a sticky situation and will have to use both cleverness and brute force to get themselves out of it. My revised target for Perils is 75 thousand words. Right now, I feel like I’m going to come pretty close to that target. I already know that in the first round of editing I’m going to have to adjust the number and length of my chapters. Some of them are huge, while others are very short. I’ve learned a heck of a lot in the process and had a lot of fun along the way. I really want to get to the end so I can move on to editing.

I guess that is it for now. Have a great day, folks!

For Monday of this week, we’re going to fire up the Wayback Machine again and point it back to March 25th of 2011 and another episode of The Shrinking Man Project! This episode marked a return to Philosophy after a long hiatus. It also marked a return to me doing episodes on the fly without writing a script out ahead of time, so the episode is a bit on the long side, and does kind of ramble a bit.

This episode has a particularly useful bit of Philosophy, talking about how we create conditioned responses and find ourselves reacting instead of reasoning, and what we can do to regain control and keep from being hijacked. If you can gain some control over that part of your mind that is commonly called the “lizard brain”, you gain much more control of your life and how you present yourself. It is a simple idea, but it can help improve your life in untold ways.

Show notes included below.

Show Notes:

• Welcome!
• Philosophy
• Off to the scales…
• Promo – Nutty Bites!
• Weigh in
• Week in review
  • My food has been pretty good. I did splurge a bit in the latter part of the week. Might affect the weigh in. Still on plan!
  • All exercises done! And got four runs toward my goal of being consistently under 16.5 minutes per mile.
  • Not getting enough sleep due to adjusting to a new schedule.
  • Seem to be working all the time. Need more relaxation in my schedule.
  • Getting ready for Balticon, Galley Table Live, and an unofficial Shrinking Man Project Live.
  • Let me know if you will be at Balticon 45 and are interested in being part of The Shrinking Man Project Live.
  • Taxes filed.
  • Money is tight and we are struggling.
  • Not going to make the Steampunk World’s Fair this year.
  • The Shrinking Man Project Zazzle Store
  • Lessons learned. Change always leads to uncertain results. Things don’t go smooth. Usually seems worse than it is.
  • Moving forward. Revising the schedule and making more relaxation time. May need to revise schedule for The Nifty Tech Blog. Getting by with a little help from my friends.
• Feedback!
• Sign off
  • Comments on the blog at http://theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • E-mail at Doc@theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • Voice mail at (240) 745-5022
  • Join the Fans of the Shrinking Man Project on Facebook
  • If you have a podcast, send me your promos!
  • Leave a review on iTunes or Podcast Alley.
  • Tell your friends about the podcast.
  • Stop by The Shrinking Man Project Zazzle Store
  • Have a good week!
• End credits

Mentioned on the show:

• Nutty Bites!
• Flying Island Press’ Galley Table.
• Balticon 45
• The Steampunk World’s Faire
• The Shrinking Man Project Zazzle Store
• Fans of The Shrinking Man Project

For those with no interest in the Super Bowl, such as myself, I thought I’d provide a little update on how things have been going in the studios lately. As usual, things have been busy. But in comparison to recent weeks, I feel as if I’ve gotten a lot more accomplished in the past week than I have in the weeks that preceded it.

Last Sunday I started working on Perils again and had a good writing session, racking up over 1500 words towards the last three chapters. Our heroes have penetrated deep into the villain’s lair and discovered his doomsday device, but can they disable it before it is too late? And what has happened to the Professor? I got back to writing again on Thursday, but only managed to put in a little more than 600 words before my energy ran out for the evening. This time our heroes believe they have managed to shut off the device, but they are still looking for signs of their missing comrade.

Monday I wrote up a new episode of The Shrinking Man Project, including a new Philosophy segment. I recorded that on Tuesday, but it is still being edited. Hopefully we’ll be able to release it soon.

I was also able to record a new Galley Table episode on Tuesday, though we have such a back log of recorded episodes now I have no idea when it will be released. It is possible that if Kee starts doing some editing for Flying Island Press that some of those “lost” episodes might come out and catch us up. This was another episode with the lovely and talented Veronica Giguere as a guest. It is always fun working with Veronica, although it is more fun when she can’t mute her mic and we can he giggling ar her at our antics.

Wednesday and Friday I was able to release two Wayback Machine episodes. I’ve also been playing around with a new syndication tool. My hope is that when I can get the Wayback Machine episodes caught up to the present, I might be able to just use the syndication tool for the Shrinking Man Project episodes. However, I am not sure that it is fully compatible with PowerPress, the plug-in I use for podcasting. We shall see when we get there.

Friday I managed to record a new chapter of Treasure Island. I had hoped to get in two, but time did not work out to my favor. At the very least, I’m not falling behind.

I am hoping to work this into a fairly regular production schedule so I can keep all of my projects moving forward. We shall have to see how that works in the weeks ahead.

I did get some more good news from Balticon 46: The Shrinking Man Project Live! and Galley Table Live! will be on the schedule again this year. They are confirmed, although it is way too early to know when the panels will be scheduled.

I guess that is all the news for now. Talk to you soon.

Today the Wayback Machine is set for March 15th, 2011 and another episode of The Shrinking Man Project. This is another check in episode, and it features me figuring out how to manage my life after dealing with my wife’s illness and my work moving to a new site farther away from my home. This episode might be particularly helpful for folks wanting to deal with the surprises that life throws at you.

Show notes included below.

Show Notes:

• Welcome!
• Off to the scales…
• Promo – The View from Valhalla
• Weigh in
• Week in review
  • Feeling healthy again.
  • Got some exercise.
  • Food is on track.
  • Had to take a cat to the Vet.
  • Got a short story out to my beta readers.
  • Back on the CPAP machine.
  • Lessons learned. Take advantage of the opportunities that come up.
  • Moving forward. Really trying to work ahead.
• Feedback!
• Sign off
  • Comments on the blog at http://theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • E-mail at Doc@theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • Voice mail at (240) 745-5022
  • Join the Fans of the Shrinking Man Project on Facebook
  • If you have a podcast, send me your promos!
  • Leave a review on iTunes or Podcast Alley.
  • Tell your friends about the podcast.
  • Have a good week!
• End credits

Mentioned on the show:

• Nathan Lowell
• The View from Valhalla
• Every Photo Tells…
• Smashwords
• Scott Sigler
• Fans of The Shrinking Man Project

This time we’ve set the Wayback Machine to March 14th, 2011, when the Galley Table crew got together for episode twenty-six and a talk about writers groups, genre fiction, and entertaining the audience. We discuss what you can expect from writing groups, and how to get the most out of your writing group experience.

And, naturally, I’ve picked out some entertaining quotes from the episode.

• “Hands above the desk, Mr. Hite.”
• “Wow, we went from smut to that and already the clean tag is gone.”
• “You’ve got to have somebody who’s not you reading this fiction.”
• “The first thing you’ve got to do in any kind of storytelling is to connect to your audience.”
• “Literature just means written.”
• “Sparkly vampires?”
• “Walk the plank. Walk the plank now.”
• “We put a bunch of genres in a blender, put it on puree, and this is what came out!”
• “Implying that genre fiction isn’t serious is just too high brow for me.”
• “The primary motive for most genre fiction is just entertaining.”
• “The primary purpose of any fiction should be to entertain.”
• “Boy, I’m just controversial tonight!”
• “You have to call that other stuff something. What else would you call it?” ”Fiction.”
• “These stories were not literary fiction. They were popular fiction when they were written. The only reason they’re literary fiction now is because they’ve withstood the test of time while their contemporaries faded.”
• “The minute you throw a werewolf or a space ship into the picture, it’s no longer literary fiction.”
• “That sounds like science fiction.” “You live on a space ship, dear.”
• “Is the concept of genres becoming less meaningful?”
• “We are your mental blender.”
• “It’s only Tuesday.”
• “The concept of a single genre becomes archaic.”
• “I’m going to avoid these definitions…”
• “The good was good, and the bad was bad.”
• “You knew who to cheer for, you knew who to boo at…”
• “The clean tag will definitely be disrupted by this…”
• “You’re in love with Drew Barrymore?”
• “I get to steal your answer because I get thrown under the bus first.”
• “Laura, I hope you were never a boy.”
• “We will see you next week.” “Now walk the plank.”

Mentioned on the podcast:

• View From Valhalla
• Critters Workshop

This was a surprisingly serious and insightful conversation that managed to wander very far afield without losing any of its quality. Not so much of our usual madcap humor, but an excellent look at the way the literary and genre communities view each other. I think you’ll enjoy it!

Well, it is official. I will be returning to Balticon as a participant again this year. I am looking forward to being a part of the program, as Balticon has always been an excellent experience for me. Even last year when I got sick at the con. The schedule is still being worked out by the con organizers, but there area few things that I know will be on my schedule for this year.This year Jared Axelrod and I will be doing a panel for the Costuming Track entitled “Just Dandy! The Importance of Accessories in Steampunk”. At least, that is the title that I turned in. I think that when I saw it on the tentative list of panels it had gotten mangled a bit. We shall see if I can get it corrected. The presentation focuses on men’s fashion, after all, we are talking about dandies here. The idea comes from a conversation we had last year that after the basics of an outfit are covered, what separates the dandies from the crowd is the ability to accessorize. We’ll be evolving the presentation as we get closer to the con. Or we’ll leave it to the last minute and make it up on the spot. We’re good like that.

Two other panels that are planned to return for this year are the live recordings for The Shrinking Man Project and Galley Table. This year’s Shrinking Man Project Live! topic is “Inspiration: finding it, and being it”. We will be looking at how to build enthusiasm for your projects, be it your new novel, or losing the next 20 pounds. I hope to get Val Griswold-Ford and Tee Morris back on the panel this year to talk about their progress, and with luck we will also be joined by Veronica Giguere. Galley Table Live! will also return, and we may even have a guest and a topic.

I’ve recently agreed to do voice work on P.C. Haring‘s new podcast project. In fact, this news is so new, I don’t really have all the details yet. I do know that it is going to be a major role, and that based on what P.C. did with Cybrosis, I look forward to being a part of the project.

I may also be doing some voice work for a new project by Laura Nicole for this year’s Balticon. We shall have to see how that project develops.

Work on Perils continues, although things have been going slowly of late. I think I’m going to have to go back to stealing time on the way into work for writing. I have offered to do a reading of my work for Balticon this year, and I’d like to have Perils far enough through the editing process to read exerpts from the manuscript. Of course, this means I’ve got to get moving now.

With a new year comes a new promo. So it is only fair to let the Wayback Machine bring us last year’s promo one last time. Back on March 12th of 2011, I released this prompt that I put together with the help of my friend Laura Nicole from the Scrivener’s Circle. Now, over 10 months later, I’m still discovering new podcasts that used this promo. So here it is, one last time before I release a new promo.

Enjoy!

The Wayback Machine is warmed up again, and ready to take us back to March 9th of 2011. After being put through the wringer at the hospital the week prior, I’m now ready to start over and get back on track. The problem is, things have changed now with my office moving to a new site, and I can’t just slide back into the old routine. So it is time to figure things out all over again.

Show Notes:

• Welcome!
• Off to the scales…
• Promo – Tales from the Archives, a Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Podcast.
• Weigh in
• Week in review
  • Out of the Hospital!
  • One exercise done.
  • 10th Annual Privateer’s Feast.
  • Eating has been on target.
  • Lessons learned. Reboot. Regroup. Get back to basics.
  • Moving forward. Settle in and figure things out.
• Feedback!
• Sign off
  • Comments on the blog at http://theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • E-mail at Doc@theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • Voice mail at (240) 745-5022
  • Join the Fans of the Shrinking Man Project on Facebook
  • If you have a podcast, send me your promos!
  • Leave a review on iTunes or Podcast Alley.
  • Tell your friends about the podcast!
  • Tell them about Tales from the Archives, and the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences.
  • Have a good week!
• End credits

Mentioned on the show:

• Tales from the Archives: a Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences podcast
• 10th Annual Privateer’s Feast
• Team Wench
• International Wenches Guild
• Fans of The Shrinking Man Project

Despite a couple months of disuse, I’ve managed to get the Wayback Machine fired up here, and we’ve set the verniers to March 4th, 2011 for another episode of The Galley Table! Specifically, we’re talking about Galley Table number twenty-five, where we discuss the joys and pitfalls of organizing audio dramas and other large projects over long distances with guest Ayoub Khote. We also end up talking about some of our favorite projects we’ve listened to over the past year.

Some notable quotes from the episode:

• “Oh, I love the way it keeps growing!”
• “That’s what she said.”
• “And that’s the clean tag…”
• “We can fix this in post. Except we won’t.”
• “Good heavens, man, when do you sleep?”
• “I’m very nocturnal.”
• “We had this whiny person that wanted it…”
• “My ego is bigger than Laura’s.”
• “So, you’re using Second Life as your soundstage and your theme park?”
• “What is your release schedule like?”
• “Avedon Hill.”
• “You’re ending each episode properly on a cliffhanger, right?”
• “They’re not zombies, they eat anything.”
• “I haven’t threatened anyone yet.”
• “That was ‘I was alive’?”
• “I should have shot you in the head instead of in the knee.”
• “I did a version of the song from the end of Portal, ‘Still Alive’.”
• “Fetidus is amazing!”
• “He’s gonna kill me.”
• “Yes, I am Satan.”
• “This is the year that you’re going to not suck.”
• “Suck the suck right out of it!”
• “Do it now!”
• “He responds easily to threats.”
• “I actually got to play with your voice just recently.”
• “It’s that kind of show.”
• “The best audio book I listened to in 2010 has got to be The Gearheart.”
• “In order to prevent Zack from singing…”
• “I’m going to stall while my browser opens…”
• “Noir Zombie Ninja Pirates!”
• “It was a romance novel and it was hot!”
• “Poor me, sackcloth and ashes!”
• “Twelfth Legion of Gaul, I Choose You!”
• “Shinto religion and professional wrestling…”
• “… a column that I wrote in Issue Four of Flagship! Just released!”
• “We can’t say Issue Four often enough…”

Mentioned on the show:

Nathan Lowell
The Shrinking Man Project
HG World
Reaper
View From Valhalla
Central Desktop
Absolution
SpecFicMedia
The Gearheart
The Rookie
FETIDUS
Just After Sunset
Outlander
Stories I Told Myself
Weather Child
A Fall of Moondust
Captain’s Share
Assam and Darjeeing
His Dark Materials
Codex Alera

Promos:
Nutty Bites
Explorer’s Anthology

The whole point of having this blog was so I could keep you, the reader updated on the status of my latests projects. And, because I knew that you were looking for updates, I’d update my projects, and then post status. Which would bring you, the reader, back around to read.

And a whole vicious cycle ensues.

Except I haven’t been doing too well on all of that lately…

I do give myself some slack from the fact that I am on the mend from surgery just before New Year’s. It has been two weeks since my operation, and while I’m back to work again, my energy levels are still pretty low. I’ve been very grateful for my car pool of late, as I haven’t had to deal with rush hour traffic after a full day of work yet. But I know that day is coming.

I had intended to get the Wayback Machine fired up last week, but I just couldn’t find the energy. But I’m not here to apologize for that.

Last Sunday, despite the fact that I was worn out from an outing the day before to Brunswick, Maryland for the annual games day, I sat down to write a few words on Perils. By the time I got up, I’d written just shy of 900 words, the most words I’ve done in a stretch since my surgery. And a bit of writing in which I’d gotten my characters out of a literal cliffhanger.

What I didn’t do was post about it here and let you know that I’d managed to make some progress. D’oh!

So I’m making up for it now, and offering my apologies for the delay. It’s the least I can do.

Now, it’s time for me to get back to work.

Got up early today. Not had a lot of umph, but I did manage to get some writing in. I’ve been pretty alert most of the day, just not had a lot of energy to put into my writing. Still plenty of ideas, just not a lot of power to work on.

I did add another 555 words to Perils moving it farther towards the inevitable ending. I’m at a tough part in my narrative and I really do need to push it along bit by bit. I know what needs to happen, but not how it should happen, and the how is slowing things down a bit.

Health wise, I am hanging in there. There may be a bit of medical TMI here, so if that bothers you, just skip to the next paragraph. This morning one of my scabs seems to have opened up and started oozing some dark black blood. I think this is actually good, because this is getting this gunk out of my system and letting some of the swelling go down. Not sure how long it will take, but it beats having the swelling continue and fester.

Tomorrow I am heading out on my own once again. Will be driving for the first time since the operation heading out to Games Day in Brunswick, MD for the afternoon. Monday I will be back to work. Gotta make sure I am ready for that.

For the rest of tonight, though, I’m going to take my brain of the hook for a bit and play some Portal 2. Relaxation is good.

I have managed to survive last week’s surgery to correct my Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. The surgeon went in and removed an inch and a half to two inch strip off of one of my ribs so that my vein has more room and the blood flows freely from my extremities back to my heart. They tell me that the procedure worked well, although I developed a hematoma and they went back in to drain it. I know that I am still here, and while I am rather swollen, I’m not in a lot of pain.

It has put me off of my writing stride a bit, though. I have discovered that writing requires a combination of ideas, which are cheap, clarity of thought, and the oomph to do the actual work. Since my surgery, the last two have been in short supply. Having them both at the same time has been rarer still. But today I managed to pull my act together long enough to write the first draft of a new review for the Nifty Tech Blog. If I can keep my head clear, I hope to have it refined and ready to publish in the next two weeks.

Of course, right now, these are just ballpark figures, not guarantees.

But the fact that I have gotten something written at all is good. Even better that I’m taking the time to follow it up with this blog post. I’m trying to get myself organized so that I can produce some consistent content again, without being burned out or overwhelmed. Not the easiest thing right now, but necessary.

I’m going to try to get the WayBack Machine started up, too. But it may take a while before I can get it back to three days a week. I want to put half my time into finishing Perils, but there is a part of my brain that says that I want to make sure I can do a decent job of writing when I work on it. Is it an excuse? I’m not sure. These last few chapters are tough, and I don’t want to take too many shortcuts getting through them. It won’t avoid the work, just delay it and make it that much harder.

Anywho. More writing tomorrow, right?

Progress continues on Perils. Last night I sat down and managed to pound out another 2200 words while listening to Christmas music. What started out as my NaNoWriMo project for this year has now grown to over 55,000 words. Right now I’m thinking that it will probably run up around 75 thousand words for the first draft. I’ve slacked off on the writing since the end of November, but other projects are waiting for me to finish this draft, so I’ve set myself a new deadline of New Year’s Eve to get my butt in motion again.

I’m also working on getting the blog machine working again. That means new reviews for The Nifty Tech Blog, new episodes of the Shrinking Man Project, and making time to crank up the Wayback Machine over here. So I’m not exactly lacking for writing projects. I’m more concerned with managing these products so that they keep me refreshed and engaged, not confused and tangled up as I have been in the past. I want to give some kind of writing update each week, both to keep me moving forward and to keep folks interested and informed on what I’ve got coming down the pike.

One of the projects that has been waiting for the first draft of Perils to complete is the e-book version of my short story Welcome to Paradox. This shouldn’t take long, as it should just be a matter of  doing the page layout for the Smashwords and Kindle versions. I have considered going ahead and working on it, but I don’t want to delay finishing the first draft of Perils and risk getting it sidetracked (again) and not finishing it. I had planned on doing a read-through and first level of editing on Perils before getting to the Paradox e-book, but at this point I need to get things moving again.

Hope everyone has a great Christmas, Channukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Wintereen-mas, or whatever it is that you celebrate at this time of the year. Talk to you next time.

I recently got a hold of the cover art for my next short story release. At first I thought I’d hold onto it until the actual release, but now I’m thinking that I’d like to share it with folks. The story is my short story Welcome to Paradox, which I wrote for the Every Photo Tells… podcast and which first aired back in October of 2010. I’ve been polishing up the text a bit and hope to have the e-book ready to go in the next few months, but before I can do that, I still need to wrap up the writing for Perils. But until the official release, here is a quick peek at the great cover created for me by Starla Hutchton.

Hold onto your hats, folks.

Welcome to Paradox will be another 99-cent short story release. Keep an eye out for updates to the Writing page over on www.DocColeman.com, and watch out here for more info on the release.

So… I’m done,right? Well, not quite. I may have won NaNoWriMo, but I’m not done writing my story. So after taking yesterday off, I’m back to writing today. I added in another 1552 words today, bringing my grand total up to 51,785 words according to Scrivener. If you’re thinking that the math doesn’t add up with last Sunday’s post, well, you’re right. Last Sundays numbers were according to the official validation by NaNoWriMo, which shorted me 33 words for some reason. If you’ve enjoyed reading my account of my NaNoWriMo journey, please consider sponsoring my novel. There is only one day left to donate to the folks that make NaNoWriMo possible. If you’d like to help out, please check out my donations page.

51785 / 50000 (103.57%)

Today’s writing was the big conflict with the villain. Of course, it didn’t turn out quite the way the heroes planned. And now there’s another death trap to diffuse. Fun, fun, fun!

More to add another night. Later, folk.

Ok. I know this is doing things sort of backwards. Very much so like trying to get sponsors AFTER one has won the race instead of before. But I’m hoping that this will actually work. Here’s why.

If you’ve been reading this blog at all this month, you know that I’ve been engaged in National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo. While this has proven to be an excellent exercise for me in managing my time and keeping my writing production up, it could mean more still. NaNoWriMo is put on every year by NaNoWriMo’s parent 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Office of Letters and Light, to raise funds to pay for the Young Writers Program and adult main programs throughout the rest of the year. A lot of the money raised comes from donations from the NaNoWriMo participants, but some of us have had better years than others. This past year has been a tight one for me, so I am asking folks to help me out by sponsoring my novel. If you’d like to sponsor me, just visit my sponsorship page and make a donation. If you’re not sure yet, read on…Your donations to the Office of Letters and Light help them bring free creative writing programs for kids and adults in over 500 cities and towns, 3,000 classrooms, and 200 libraries every year.

In the NaNoWriMo main program, your donation gives aspiring writers…

• Membership to a community-based website, including an individual writer profile where participants can track their writerly progress (and that of their friends!), post novel excerpts, and exchange NaNoMail messages with other writers.
• Access to the NaNoWriMo forums, where participants can swap advice and guidance about genre, plot, character, technology, rewriting, and reaching the 50K goal-line.
• An invitation to join one of the more than 500 Municipal Liaison-led NaNoWriMo writing chapters at kick-off events, write-ins, and end-of-month parties. At these events, participants receive free stickers and other motivational novel-writing goodies sent from NaNoWriMo headquarters.
• A place to write! Look for “Come Write In!” stickers at your local library. Using resources created with your donations, libraries around the world are transforming their spaces into November noveling zones.
• Weekly pep talks and other encouragement from staff, Municipal Liaisons, and beloved authors.
• Winner certificates and web badges for triumphant victors.
• Post-event advice on revision, and other ideas on taking a manuscript to the next level.

The same donation also gives participants in the Young Writers Program…

• Free profile/membership to an award-winning and community-based website specifically designed to appeal to and inspire young writers and educators: http://ywp.nanowrimo.org
• Access to site forums and NaNoMail, which enable students to communicate about books, writing, and reading with other young authors worldwide.
• Pep talks from staff and Young Adult authors that excite and inspire participants.
• Writing incentives such as participant badges for posting on Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, and—at the end of each challenge—winner badges and certificates for every child and teen who meets their word-count goal.
• Free and exciting writerly tools, including three tracks of workbooks designed specifically for elementary school, middle school, and high school students. These workbooks teach all elements of novel-writing in a fun but effective manner and have become so popular that many adults use them too!
• Post-event advice for young authors with revision overviews and information about youth writing contests, creative writing centers, and other online creative writing events.

Finally, your donation gives teachers and educators who are leading NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program classrooms…

• Eight weeks of exciting creative writing curriculum that has been mapped to Common Core Language Arts standards.
• A Virtual Classroom on the YWP website, where teachers can more easily inspire students and track their writerly progress.
• Access to special educator-only forums where teachers can exchange encouragement, advice, and lesson plans before, during, and after each event.
• Helpful “how-to’s” on hosting a successful month-long, deadline-driven writing event in a classroom from beginning to end. This advice has been complied from educators who have facilitated our events in their own classrooms and not only lived to tell about it, but keep coming back for more!
• NaNoWriMo kits for their students that include posters and progress charts with buttons and stickers. More than 3,000 of these kits will be mailed out in 2011.
• An opportunity to participate in our AlphaSmart NEO Loaner Program. For each event, we lend up to 100 NEOS to participating classrooms in need of word processors. This is done completely free of charge, including shipping.
• Teacher-only lesson plans that expand upon concepts taught to students in the Young Writer workbooks.

But you’ll also be doing something else that is special and very personal. By sponsoring my novel, you’ll be telling one writer, me, that you believe in my work and that you want to see me continue with my writing and storytelling, and someday aspire to be a published author. Please give your support.

Thank you.

And today… the finish line is crossed! Just one little problem. I’m not done. Yes, I’ve written over 50,000 words in my story, but I’ve barely started scratching the surface of act three. I’ve got at least four chapters to go, and I have the feeling that when I do the first revision of this story quite a lot of my chapters are going to split into multiple lesser chapters. But I did manage to write 2765 words today, and that was good enough to put me over the edge of the NaNoWriMo 50,000 word finish line!

50200 / 50000 (100.4%)

And, of course, there is character torture. Lost in the darkness, battle, wandering in the heart of the enemy stronghold, and the shocking discover that your enemy is… well… that would be telling. ;D

Hang in there, fans. There is still more to this story. But not tonight. Later!

Another good day of dedicated writing. Slept in today, so I got started late after getting in a good, brisk walk and a filling lunch. So… a late start to my writing, but a good day at the keyboard. I got in 2000 words before I decided to break for dinner, then came back afterwards and racked up another 2000 words. Total word count for today is 4,355. Not quite as good as yesterday’s run, but a good chunk of writing towards my big finish! I am now two days ahead of schedule and have less than 1000 words to being three days ahead. This story will definitely take more than 50,000 words, but I hope to cross that finish line tomorrow. For today, my total number of words written in this, my first NaNoWriMo, is 47,435! That is over 94% completed! Woot!

47435 / 50000 (94.87%)

Character torture continues today. Wandering in tunnels in the bowels of the earth, deafening machines of destruction, shattering blades, electrocution, pits into the deep darkness, and risking life and limb only to be captured by the villains! Another good day for screwing characters over.

I can’t believe I’ve been up so late writing tonight, but some things just won’t let go until they’re done. Good night, folks. See you tomorrow.

While some folks ventured out today and fought the crowds at Black Friday sales about the country, I stayed home today, thus avoiding shootings, pepper spray, and smelly crowds. Not necessarily in that order. Oh, I ventured out of the house. Took a good walk around the block to get in my exercise for the day. Also to help get the old creative juices flowing. A good, brisk walk, a shower, and a healthy lunch, and I was all ready to begin writing. I managed to crank out 3,419 words before taking a break for dinner. It might have been the boost to the creative side from the exercise, or the fact that I was writing action scenes, but the words seemed to pour out of me this afternoon. I went from being behind in my word count to being slightly ahead. After dinner I decided to resume writing for a bit more and managed to produce another 1000 words, ending the day with 4,440 words written, bringing my total word count for my novel up to 43,080!

43080 / 50000 (86.16%)

Today the character tortures resumed. Not wanting to spoil things for future readers, I’ll just say that death is defied several times, and its icy grip is felt before the chapter is done! Death calls in the cold and the dark, but do the characters surrender to it? You’ll have to read the story to find out!

If I can write like this for the next two days, I’ll hit my goal before the end of the weekend! Woot!

But now, I’m heading off to bed. Need to be rested for another day of writing!

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving holiday. And those of you who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you’ve at least had something that made you feel grateful for the day. We got together with a bunch of friends for a pot luck dinner and game night. We had a real good time, and that is part of the reason that this is being posted so late. I was busy for most of the day, but I did manage to squeeze in a little writing, adding 622 words to bring the total up to 38,640 words. The rest of this weekend will be dedicated to the push to reach that 50,000 word finish line!

38640 / 50000 (77.28%)

Today’s character torture? The joy of dropping out of an airship and into a hole in the ground at night from about 1000 feet over the rooftops. Whoosh!

Yeah, not much torture, but hey, only 600 some words. What do you expect?

More writing tomorrow. Good night, all!

Another busy day today, but somehow between 6 and 7 PM this evening, I managed to get in a great writing sprint. I wasn’t expecting it, but the words flowed so easily. Figures that it was a bit of scene that wasn’t plot important, but was important for establishing character and motivation. It was emotionally important, so it was easy to write. That little sprint netted me 1183 words for today. Still about 300 some words short of where I should be, but I should be able to catch up with that. I am now over 75% done, having written over 38,000 words in this novel. I expect that I won’t be writing tomorrow, due to the Thanksgiving holiday, but I’ll be dedicating Friday, Saturday and Sunday to trying to reach that 50,000 finish line!

38018 / 50000 (76.04%)

Character torture was fun today. He got smacked around by a bunch of toughs, although he managed to show up one of them in the end. And now he’s getting ready to go off into the unknown, unprepared and ill informed. What could go wrong? (insert evil laughter here)

Ok. I’m done. I go sleep now.

Another day at work, today. Then home through horrid traffic, and then going out to exercise in the rain. After getting cleaned up and grabbing dinner, I barely had an hour to work on writing before it became time to record today’s Galley Table. But I managed to get some words written during the show and afterwards. It wasn’t much, but another 1254 words will keep me ahead of the curve to finish on time. Now I’m over 70% to the 50,000 word goal with 36,835 words written. And I think I’m finally through the tough middle section of the book. Now things should get interesting!

Oh, and I’ve come up with a new working title. The Adventures of Crackle & Bang had always pretty much referred to the entire series, but now I’ve finally come up with a working title that I like. So, until I come up with something better, my novel will be known as The Perils of Prauge: A Crackle & Bang Adventure.

36835 / 50000 (73.67%)

Today’s character torture involved the reveal of the name of the big villain of the series. No personal danger yet, but setting the stage for dangers to come. Oh, and another fateful decision to continue on with the plot. You give these characters all these chances to play it safe and they just won’t take them!

Right. Off to bed. More tomorrow.

Back to work today. And after a long day at work, I ended up taking a few hours off to nap. When I did get up and get moving, I managed to get in 1533 words before having to call it a night. So now I am over 71% done with 35,581 words on the clock.

35581 / 50000 (71.16%)

Today’s character torture involved … well, today I had to throw the characters a bone and let them make some progress so they can have more doors shut in their faces later. You can’t torture them every day…

Right. Off to bed. More writing tomorrow.

This morning started with another attempt to get my motorcycle ready for storage. While the new battery proved to be adequate to the task of getting the bike to turn over, the old gas had apparently been contaminated with condensation and would no longer start the engine. Now I’ll have to figure out how to drain and change the gasoline.

I did spend most of the day writing, although it was slow going for the most part. I managed to get in 2178 words, bringing my total word count up to 34048. So I am slowly inching ahead of par. It is so odd to struggle through a fairly important section in order to make a transition, then get to a relatively unimportant  part of the book and have the words just pour out of you.

34048 / 50000 (68.1%)

Today’s character torture involved fruitless hours building and testing a device that detects signals that apparently no one is using. (Darn!) This led to the realization that there was a much simpler explanation for how  the devices have been controlled, and the obvious conclusion that one of the main characters is the only viable suspect!

Right. Off to bed. More writing tomorrow.

Today’s mission was to get my motorcycle ready to put into storage for the winter. That means being able to ride it to the friend’s house who is going to be able to store it. I haven’t been able to ride for most of his year because of some medical problems I’ve had to deal with this year. I had been keeping my battery on a charger, but sometime during the year the charger seems to have died. This also meant that I’ve had to get a new battery because the old one doesn’t seem to be able to hold a charge. I’ve no idea if the battery is ruined or not. I’ll have to be able to charge it up first.

So this morning’s first order of business was to go get the new battery. At least it was until I got in my car and the electrical system died. I managed to jigger it into working long enough to head over to the dealership. Good news is that it is covered under warranty and I have a loaner car. Bad news is they won’t be able to diagnose the problem until Monday at the earliest.

But I did get my writing in today! I kept plugging at things and added 2615 words to my story, bringing the total word count up to 31,870 words, putting me slightly ahead of where I should be. My target from here on out is 2000 words a day so I can finish early. Or at least hit 50,000 early. This story seems like it going to run more than 50,000 words. I suspect I won’t finish the first draft until sometime in December.

31870 / 50000 (63.74%)

Today’s character torture involved exploding laboratories, accusations of treachery, and impending arrest. Of course, I had to let the characters off to have a chance to clear their names. All they have to do now is an impossible task or two. Oh, and did I mention that all the evidence they’ve managed to collect so far has been destroyed?

Right. Off to bed. More writing tomorrow.

This morning, I was so exhausted I called in sick and slept in until around noon. Maybe later. I knew I had a lot that I needed to get done, but I had a really difficult time getting myself started. Then this evening we had to finish getting the rental truck unloaded into our storage locker and they return the rental truck. It wasn’t until after dinner that I finally got to sit down to start writing, and by then it was after 11 PM. But I decided to get some words in anyway rather than taking another zero word day to catch up to. I managed to crank out another 841 words, bringing my total up to 29,255. I need to put in a full day’s writing tomorrow and Sunday. This is the first time I’ve fallen behind the target curve and I really want to put in the extra effort to catch up. I am not going to let NaNoWriMo beat me!

29255 / 50000 (58.51%)

Today’s character torture hasn’t been very spectacular. Today it has been all about having hopes dashed by presenting compelling evidence and having it ignored by small, simple minds. Tomorrow I shall have to decide what verdict and aftermath comes from this. Never fear, there will be an aftermath! Because that is what you get when you deal with the Killer Clockwork Budgies of Doom!

Right. Off to bed. See you tomorrow.

The last few days have been pretty busy. On the 15th, we spent the afternoon packing up furniture in Georgia. I tried writing, but I was so tired after the day’s exertions, I barely cleared 1000 words. On the 16th, we drove back to Maryland with our truck filled with my inheritance. I was able to write along the way and added 2018 words to my novel during the course of the 13 hour trip. Today, I went back to work. After working for a full day, my wife and I got started unpacking the truck. We got most of the furniture out, but still have some of the bigger pieces to unload. Tried to write tonight, but I am feeling drained again. I finally managed to clear 1023 words for today, but I’m pretty much done in. At least I’m ahead of the curve.

28414 / 50000 (56.83%)

Today’s character torture has been all about trying to figure out a mystery, and discovering what pieces you don’t have. Oh, and still under arrest, and not trusted. Also featured, a mention of the Killer Clockwork Budgies of Doom, and Mind Control Music!

Ok. I’m done. See you tomorrow.

Just got home after traveling all day. Too tired for a proper update. Today wrote 2018 words while traveling. Total word count is now up to 27,391. Details later.

27391 / 50000
(54.78%)

After saying farewell to all of our friends at the Carolina Renaissance Festival this morning, and picking up our rental car, my wife and I drove down to Georgia for the beginnings of our viking raid. The plan had been for me to write while she drove. She usually enjoys doing most of the driving. But less than an hour into the drive, her eyes started trying to close and she needed me to drive. I had written around 400 words, so I agreed to take a shift at driving. Once we switched places, she pretty much sacked out for the rest of the trip and I drove the rest of the way down to my brother’s house. Once we got the car unpacked, I was able to sit down and do some writing. I got the daily count up to 2088, bringing the overall total up to 24,300. Just shy of half way.

24300 / 50000 (48.6%)

Character torture for today? Well, let’s see… Finding out your host is WAY older than he looks, a bout of cowardice, and having to admit to your host that you think his daughter is deformed. Oh and the reminder of an ultimatum, yearning for the sweet, sweet release of death, but instead being promptly arrested! Ain’t we got fun?

Tomorrow the looting begins. Possibly some visiting with folks around the Atlanta area, and hopefully I can pass the mid-point mark.

Night, all!

Well. Let’s face it. This isn’t going to be a sparkling NaNoWriMo post. Two days and no words written. At all. Of course, the reason for that is a good one. We attended the Carolina Renaissance Festival to pay homage to some fallen friends that we lost in the past year. In the process, we celebrated their lives by having more fun, and by discovering new family and making new connections that would not have been possible without the friends that we had lost.

Writing will continue later today.

22212 / 50000 (44.42%)

Today’s adventure was the trip south to Charlotte, North Carolina and the Carolina Renaissance Festival. That meant loading everything up in the car and the first test run of  my mobile writing platform. My setup consists of my iPad 2 running Plain Text, and a bluetooth keyboard. Nice, sweet and simple. The biggest drawback is the lack of a way to mount the iPad so that it stays upright where I can easily see it during the drive. And no, I’m not the one driving. But other that that difficulty, it worked like a charm. Plain Text syncs via Dropbox to put the words I’ve written on the road back onto my laptop, and then Scrivener syncs them back into my master manuscript. The other drawback that the system has is that I can’t see how many words I’ve written until I sync the words back into Scrivener. I managed to write 1998 words while out on the road today, so when I did my sync up, I wrote a few more paragraphs to round things out at 2148 words for the day. Now my novel is 44% complete, with 22212 words written.

22212 / 50000 (44.42%)

I know some of my fellow NaNoWriMo’ers have put a real push on today to rack up big word counts. I think that is great! And some of those word counts are really impressive. But I find that I don’t have a lot of incentive to push to compete with their word counts. I think I could be really happy to be the guy who just cranks out two thousand words a day, every day. It’s not a Lowell, but being able to produce a fifthLowell with regularity is quite respectable. This is also important because it is entirely possible that I may not be able to write much over the next two days. Most of my day will be spent at faire, so any writing time I am likely to have is probably going to be late at night before bed. But I have been running ahead of the minimums so far. Looks like I can afford to miss a day or two.

Today’s character torture featured being cast out of an airship at an extremely high altitude! Hm… if they’d gone out the window I could have called it a defenestration… And this was followed up with the burn of frustration when our heroes are out searching for clues, only to have the building containing the clues suddenly swallowed up by the earth and forever put beyond their reach. Hee!

And now… a new excerpt! Here is the scene I ended yesterday with, and finished up today.

I had expected Miss Bang to lead me to the bridge of the airship, but when she lead me up another flight of stairs and down another long hallway, I was unprepared for her to lead me into a large laboratory. The room looked as if it had been lifted whole from a university. A number of work benches were scattered about the room, each apparently dedicated to a different scientific study. Along one wall was a table supporting a large and intricate assortment of glass pipets, flasks, and other doohickeys connected in a vast and confusing array. Burners were arrayed underneath several boiling flasks, and a brown liquid dripped into an equal number of insulated bottles on the opposite end of the table. Another table contained a microscope and a variety of weights and scales and tools for handling samples. At the far end of the room were several large pieces of equipment that bore the thick cables and massive switches that marked electrical experiments. Another bench resembled a machinist’s bench, with a number of belt driven devices for cutting, boring, and shaping metal. As we entered, we found Professor Crackle, still in his attire of the night before, working at a table littered with cogs and springs and all manner of small tools.

“Harmonious,” Miss Bang called as we entered. The Professor did not appear to take any notice of our approach. Indeed, he seemed to be very intently studying something through a jeweler’s loupe lodged in his right eye. He muttered something to himself as he did so, but I was unable to make out any of his words.

“Harmonious,” Miss Bang repeated as she laid a hand upon his shoulder, “we need to speak to you about a matter…”

“I know this hand! I know I do. I just can’t remember where I’ve seen it before,” the Professor interrupted, turning to Miss Bang with the loupe still firmly fixed to his eye. “But I know I’ve seen this work before! It is exquisite! How could I have seen someone who could produce work of this quality,” he gestured with what appeared to be the wing of the bird that had gotten trapped underneath my shoe, “and not remember who it was?”

“Harmonious, I need to ask you about our guest,” she said gesturing towards me where I stood near the door marveling at the perplexing array of equipment in the laboratory. “He says that…” she started, but now that his attention had been directed towards me he charged over to me and regarded me through the loupe.

“How could I forget seeing work of this quality? Look at it, look at it!” he said pushing the detached wing at me. “It is a masterwork! Each feather is individually modeled and attached. The articulation is perfect! The attention to detail…” I tried to look at the proffered wing, but the Professor kept gesturing with it and manipulating the wing as he talked.

“Professor!” Miss Bang came close to shouting, “about our guest!”

“Let him rest, let him rest. He’s had a trying evening. I’m sure he must be exhausted.” The Professor continued to fiddle with the detached wing.

“He’s right here, Professor!”

He whirled around in a circle. “He is? Where?”

“Right there, Professor,” she said pointing at me once again.

“Oh?” He looked at me again through the loupe. “Oh?” He opened this left eye and regarded me again. “Oh! My boy, are you feeling better now? I know I promised to return you promptly to your uncle, but you were so tired, I figured that it wouldn’t hurt any to let you get some rest. And I’ve made such amazing discoveries! It is a pity our only sample is so damaged, I would have loved to…”

“Professor, will you pay attention?!?” Miss Bang appeared to be on the verge of losing her temper.

“What is it now?” he asked. “Can’t you see I’m working?”

“Harmonious, do you know our guest’s name?”

He looked from Miss Bang to myself and back to Miss Bang. “What? Yes, yes, of course I know what his name is. Don’t be silly.”

Miss Bang carefully composed her expression before continuing. “Harmonious, would you please introduce me to our guest?”

He looked at her, clearly confused, and I had to do my level best to keep from laughing. “But you’ve met. He’s been with us all evening.”

Her tone was utterly calm, and she spoke with the measured precision that indicated that the listener had better satisfy her or he would be in an immense amount of trouble. “Harmonious, would you be so kind as to tell me our guest’s name?”

“Why certainly. His name is…” and he stopped suddenly, unable in a moment’s realization to speak the name my great-grandfather had bestowed upon me. His eyes opened wide in the realization of what he had been about to do, and the loupe tumbled from his face. I dove forward and was able to grab the loupe before it hit the floor.

I straightened and handed the loupe back to the Professor. “I did try to explain to Miss Bang that my name wasn’t exactly fit for polite society. I am afraid she didn’t quite believe me.”

“Ah. Well, I am afraid that, our young friend is… um. I am afraid that he is quite correct about the offensiveness of his given name. It would be… horribly improper for me to use such language…”

“You’re serious!”

He blinked at her. “Of course I’m serious. Such a joke would be in very bad taste!”

“I don’t believe that anyone ever accused my great-grandfather of having good taste.” I commented ruefully.

“He actually was quite a thoughtful fellow in his youth. I never did find out what it was that made him so bitter and anti-social. I’d often wondered… Wait! Wait, I was going to tell you something. Something I’d just discovered.” He looked down at the wing in his hand. “Yes! That was it! You remember the birds, the clockwork birds?”

I nodded. “Yes, Professor.  It was just earlier this morning.”

“Yes, they’re a perfect recreation of the living creature. Or at least as best as I can tell, given the damage the sample sustained. If only I had an intact specimen to examine.”

Miss Bang spoke up. “You’re drifting again, Harmonious.”

“No, no, no, no! This is important. Did you get a good look at the singers? The male and female leads?”

“At the opera?” I wasn’t quite sure where he was leading with this.

“Yes! Did you get a good look at them.”

“Well, I am afraid I wasn’t really concentrating on them for most of the performance. And then when things livened up at the end my attention was, well… elsewhere.”

“And you, Tit?”

“Other than the final song, they seemed quite capable, although somewhat uninspired performers.” She paused in thought for a moment. “I’m not sure how to describe that final performance.”

“Drat. I had hoped that one of you had taken a better look. Now we shall have to find what is left of them.” The Professor moved back to his workbench and put down the wing and his loupe.

“You want to go find their bodies, Professor? Isn’t that a task better left to the police?”

He turned. “Their remains, yes. But their bodies, I think not.” He lifted the wing again. “I think they were clockwork.”

“A clockwork man? How is that possible?” I looked to Miss Bang, but she seemed fascinated by the idea.

“But that kind of detail, Professor… and such a complex series of actions, to perform upon the stage. And they were actually singing. It wasn’t a phonograph recording. Even with the latest equipment, one can tell the difference.”

“Yes!” The Professor looked like a child who had been promised a new pony. “Exactly! Such perfect duplication of the living form! When I went down on the stage and examined the woman, she looked otherwise normal except for the side of her face. That had shifted down sharply. Like a plate had detached from the underlying support structure. I think the same person who made the birds made the opera singers as well. But I need more evidence. We need to find what is left of those performers.”

“So we’re going back to the opera house?” Miss Bang asked.

“Yes! No! We’re already there. I’m sorry about this little detour, my boy, but I’m certain that your uncle is going to want to see whatever evidence we can find.”

“And the police, Professor?”

“Yes, we must get there before they do! The last thing we need is for them to tromp all over everything and destroy the evidence we need.” He grabbed a pair of goggles off of a bench and headed towards the door. “Come along!”

I had to hurry to catch up to Miss Bang as she swept out of the room in the Professor’s wake.

All right. That’s it for me. See you tomorrow!

Chaotic day today. Spent most of the day packing and getting ready for our trip down to the Carolina Renaissance Festival and our Viking Raid on points south. Unfortunately for me, this also meant a trip back into my work because I’d neglected to turn in my time sheet the day before. Time sheets go in on Wednesday of next week, the day we’re driving back from Atlanta. So my choice was either don’t get paid or take a run back in. Getting into work while rush hour was busy taking everyone away from work should have been easy. It wasn’t. Traffic was horrendous, and for some reason my GPS kept trying to steer me back into the one stretch of road I knew was at a complete standstill. After much driving around in circles, and a fair bit of driving off into the darkness not knowing where I was going I managed to arrive. Something like three hours of driving, for a 10 minute errand. Yuck. After a late dinner, I finally got a chance to sit down and start writing. It wasn’t a very productive day, but I did get some words down. Not quite my target 2000 words, but I did get 1771 more words written, taking my accumulated total over 20,000 words!

20064 / 50000 (40.13%)

No real character torture today. Just a bit of unfortunate naming of names and a brief revisit of the Killer Clockwork Budgies (of DOOM!). Hopefully there will be more character torture tomorrow.

No excerpt today. Been a long day. Hopefully I can give everyone a sneak peak tomorrow.

All right. That’s it for me. I’m off to bed.

After grabbing a couple of hours of sleep, I was able to get up and get myself into work today, so a big chunk of my potential writing time was taken up with gainful employment (What Robert Heinlein used to refer to as “honest work”. Something to be avoided at all costs.). My time after work was somewhat fragmented. First my wife and I had to go inspect a potential storage space in which to store the loot from our upcoming “viking raid” of Atlanta. Then, after we finally located a suitable space that we can actually afford, we grabbed a quick dinner and made our way home. We ate dinner and started to pack for our raiding party… and I passed out. Clean knock out, down for the entire count. no words written at all. So for NaNoWriMo, the day was a washout.

18293 / 50000 (36.59%)

Hopefully I do better on the 10th!

I woke up sick this morning and ended up calling in to work. Then I slept in until something like 1 PM, soaked in sweat. Apparently I spiked a pretty high fever over night. It took me a while to get my brain in order to write, but you can’t exactly call in sick to NaNoWriMo. It just moves on without you! When I finally sat down to write, my progress was slow. It wasn’t until I got over my daily minimum that I started to get on a roll. By that time it was late enough that I wanted to find a place to stop, but each scene kept demanding to be finished. By the time I finally wound down, I had racked up another 2533 words, bringing my grand total up to 18293.

18293 / 50000 (36.59%)

Today’s character tortures have been much less physical and much more personal. Well, except for the moment when he almost pees his pants while getting a “lift” across town. Then there is a moment of peace, followed by four lovely social gaffes in a row! When this character puts his foot in it, he really puts his foot in it!

Unfortunately, no more Killer Clockwork Budgies today. Maybe tomorrow.

I have considered posting small excerpts with these daily diaries. Would you folks like to see some? I’d like to give you a taste of the action without being all “best parts of the movie in the trailer”.

NaNo, NaNo, folks. Or if you didn’t make your word count, Shazbot!

I’m off to bed.

Tough day of writing today. Did a full day of work, came home, exercised, showered, got very, very tired, then finally managed to begin writing. The going was slow, not because I didn’t know what happened next, but because I had no energy. I hope I am not catching my wife’s sore throat. I cannot really afford any more time off than necessary. But with my wife’s help making dinner and a bit of dogged determination, I persevered. Final word count for the day was 2025, bringing my total count for my novel up to 15,760! It still feels weird to say “my novel”.

015760 / 50000 (31.52%)

The character torturing continues. My PoV character has finally been released from police custody, but now finds himself alone in an unknown district of a foreign city. The odd strangers he got blown up with have also been released and have offered him a ride, only to have the entire group set upon by the Killer Clockwork Budgies of Doom! (Doom! Doom!). They manage to survive the encounter and are wisked up into an airship! And that is about all for today.

Except I really like saying Killer Clockwork Budgies of Doom!

Happy NaNo, folks. Time for bed for me.

All right. I admit it. I should have written this post earlier. My only excuse is the timing, seeing as this news came out just as I was getting into the swing of things for NaNoWriMo this year. It took this article from Tee Morris to remind me that I had been remiss in supporting my friends in their good fortune. So let me repair that now.

My friends Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris have had their first joint project, Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel, land on the official ballot of the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards in the Best Science Fiction category! And they are in among fierce competition, with names like Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Stephen King, John Scalzi, and China Mieville also in the running. Phoenix Rising also happens to be the only Steampunk work in this category. Tee and Pip are my friends, but they have also written a really spectacular book (as you can see from my review here). If you have a Goodreads account, you should vote! And if you choose to vote for Phoenix Rising, I’m sure that would make Tee and Pip happy.Right now we are in the opening round of voting, which lasts up until November 13th. During the Opening round, if you don’t see a title you feel like voting for, you can write in a candidate (like say, my short story The Gift in a category like, oh, Paranormal Fantasy, maybe?) and vote for that instead.

On November 14th, the Semi-finals begin and the top 5 write in votes get made official nominees and the voting begins again.

On November 21st, the Final round begins and the field narrows to the top 10 books in each category, and you have one last chance to cast your vote for a winner.

So if you’d like to be part of this process, now is the time to dust off your Goodreads account, or to create one if you haven’t yet discovered the wealth of books, authors, and book reviews on Goodreads.

Strange day of writing today. Didn’t really get any long periods of sitting down and just cranking out the words. Most of it seemed to be a few hundred words here and there while waiting between doing this errand and that errand. We got a lot done today, and somehow I manage to boost the word count. I didn’t quite get caught up to where I wanted to be after missing most of my writing hours yesterday, but I did make good progress.Although, when you get down to it, today actually had the biggest word count to date with 3217 words written, bringing the total word found up to 13,735. In those three thousand plus words, my point of view character has been arrested, insulted, struck, left most of the evening in manacles, apologized to, interrogated, released, and abandoned. And I’m leaving off with him being attacked by killer birds. That should make things interesting for tomorrow, right?

And I note that Nathan Lowell has managed to crank out 45,852 words in six days of NaNoWriMo. He will pass 50,000 words tomorrow, and he says he is about 60% done with his story. I hope to someday be able to write like Nathan when I grow up.

Anyone recommend a site for generating progress bars? Or a good progress bard plug in for WordPress? I think I could use one.

There is good news and bad news on today’s writing. I had to go out to Baltimore to work a booth at a flea market for a friend of mine. I had thought that I would just be there as a relief person and that I’d have time to write during the show. Somehow it didn’t work out that way. The space we had for the booth was a lot smaller than we expected, and I ended up running a lot more errands.

I did get some writing in. But I only racked up 200 some words for the day. Not the 2000 words that has been my daily target. That is the bad news. The good news is that my total word count so far is 10,518, which means that I have maintained an average word per day rate of 2103, which is better than my daily target. I didn’t even need to write at all!

Of course, tomorrow, I am going to see if I can rack up 4 to 5 thousand words to “catch up” and make up for today’s deficit. I have a trip and possible surgery later in the month, and I’d like to get ahead as much as possible while I can. For now, I should head to bed. After all, I have to get up and write later today.

In yesterday’s writing, I stopped in the middle of Chapter 4 so that my wife and I could go and get dinner. This turned out to be a good idea for my maternal bliss. And since yesterday’s word count was just shy of 3000 words, not to shabby from a writing perspective.

Today, I finished Chapter 4, then went off to get my own dinner. That was another 1949 words for today. This makes it the first day that I’ve written under 2000 words. Well, we can’t have that, can we?

So, on to Chapter 5! And another 600 some words before I decided to call it a night. Which it is, being just before midnight. So my grad total for today is 2562 words, bringing me up to 10297 words for my novel. So, in four days I’ve written 20% of my novel. Woot!

Of course, Nathan Lowell has already topped 25,000 words and is well on his way to hitting 50,000 words in the first week. Go Nathan! You bastard.

Today was another good writing day. I got in another 2930 words on my novel. So far, my PoV character has been given an ultimatum, been late to his last chance to make a good impression, been thrust into the company any of strangers, been bored by opera, had a building dropped on him, and next I’m going to blow him up.

I think I am getting the hang of this thing. What do you think?

More words tomorrow!

After a truly execrable morning, I managed to find some time this afternoon to sneak in a few words of writing. And I do mean sneak. The events of the morning had caused me to get to work quite late compared to my usual schedule, so I was still at work when my scheduled writing time came about. However, I had already completed about all the work I could reasonably do during the day, so barring someone getting back to me, I had already gotten in my daily production.

Once again it was difficult to get going on today’s chapter of writing. I knew the action of the scene, but I wasn’t quite sure how to work into it. Finally I just picked an approach and went with it. I can always change it later in editing, right?

About 500 words in I was beginning to wonder if I was going to hit my pace for the day. Things seemed to be dragging and it was hard to pull the sentence out. But then I got into the action of the scene. Once things started happening, my narrator’s voice really came out and I was rolling out words almost faster than I could type them.

I rounded out the day with 2107 new words. So two days in I’ve got 4805 words towards my novel and I have completed three chapters. I even added today’s writing to my novel info as the Excerpt. If you’d like to check it out, just go look at my NaNoWriMo Profile.

It is early yet, but I’m going to call it a day for now. Don’t want to burn out. Besides, I’ve got words to write tomorrow, too.

And so we begin my first day of NaNoWriMo. This has been a new experience for me. A lot of the other writers I know stayed up late last night so they could begin writing just after midnight. I couldn’t do that. I carpool to work, and my carpoolers like to go in early to avoid the traffic. So I had to get up at 3:30 AM in order to meet up with them on time. No midnight writing for me.

In my case, I came home to find that a lot of them had got the jump on me and written up thousands of words. They were well ahead of the game and I’d just gotten home from work and had chores to do before I could start writing.

But just after 4 PM I did sit down to write. And despite some stumbles in the beginning (don’t search for the perfect word, just put a correct word and make it perfect later!), once I got rolling the words just started to flow. I wrote for 2 1/2 hours, maybe a little more, and came out with 2698 words for my first day’s writing. This puts me over 1000 words ahead, even after a late start.

Of course, I don’t know how long this story is going to be. Right now I’m just shooting for the 50,000 words and a completed story. But the story could be longer before it is done. Still, it feels like a good start to things. I just have to keep up the momentum.

Still in the process of getting ready for NaNoWriMo next Tuesday. I know what I’m writing. I pretty much know my characters, at least the main ones. But it occurs to me that I’ve never actually written up a synopsis for my story. Sooooo… here is a first attempt at the synopsis. Let me know what you think.

The Adventures of Crackle & Bang, Book the first.

A young English Lordling is taking his Grande Tour to mark the completion of his education and the beginning of his adult life. A night at the Opera of Prague leads to a chance meeting with an eccentric professor and his lovely young assistant. But before the evening’s entertainment is over, a hidden assassin makes an attempt at a visiting member of the royal court, destroying the opera house and putting our trio on the track of a mad scientist bent on toppling the Imperial Court from power. Can they find him and stop him before he makes another attempt on the Crown Prince? Or will  they have front row seats for the first salvo in a war for control of the empire?

Yes, this is just the first book. And I’m pretty sure it will have its own title by the time I am done with it, and the series itself with be The Adventures of Crackle & Bang. Then again, considering that I’ve set this adventure in Prague, I may just end up calling it “The Canceled Czech.”

If you’d like to get a feel for the style of The Adventures of Crackle & Bang, a mini adventure in the form of a short story has just been published in the Steampunk Special Issue of Flagship Magazine. The issue is available now in text form and audio versions will soon be available as well. The text-only version is only $1.99 and includes short stories from Doug Souza, Mike Plested, Philip Carroll, Scott Roche, Bill Blume, and Ryan Underhill in addition to my own. And articles by Zack Ricks and Laura Nicole. Pretty good for just two bucks.

If you are doing NaNoWriMo this year and would like to be my writing buddy, just add me here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/participants/scaleslea. Or if you’d just like to keep track of how I’m doing, check back and watch my progress unfold.

Once more into the breach, dear friends! It was the best of times, and then things went to hell in a hand basket. Today’s trip into the past lands us on March 2nd, 2011, and the recounting of one of the toughest weeks of my life. I started off the week with everything going just the way I wanted it… and then it all fell apart due to my wife getting sick and going to the hospital. I think Murphy was working triple overtime this week.

We started with my wife being sick, and being in the hospital with her made me sick, too. Ugh.

Show notes included below.

Show Notes:

• The Week
  • Wife’s illness leads to…
  • Emergency Room visit.
  • Hospital stay.
  • And now I’m sick, too.
  • Coming back home.
• Weigh in
• Wrapping up
  • Lessons learned. Sickness trumps everything. Do what you need to get through
  • Moving forward. Pick up the pieces, rebuild, get back on track.
• Thanks for everyone’s support on Twitter and Facebook. Special thanks to Karen and Kermit who came and visited.
• Sign off
  • Comments on the blog at http://theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • E-mail at Doc@theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • Voice mail at (240) 745-5022
  • Join the Fans of the Shrinking Man Project on Facebook
  • If you have a podcast, send me your promos! Promos will be back next week.
  • Leave a review on iTunes or Podcast Alley.
  • Tell your friends about the podcast.
  • Have a good week!
• End credits

Mentioned on the show:

• Galley Table
• Fans of The Shrinking Man Project

I have mentioned in a few places that I will be doing NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, this year for the very first time. I’m stoked at the idea of doing this, just as much as I am daunted by the demands of the writing schedule I’m going to have to follow to “Win” the event. In the past I’ve been trying to write five days a week, with limited success. Between my blogs and my podcast, I can usually manage to write something significant on five days of the week, but I don’t always manage to get around to writing fiction. Or if I do, it might be just once or twice a week. For NaNoWriMo, I’m putting all the other projects aside and just focusing on my fiction.I’ve talked to a few folks about my project for this year, but I’ve never posted any real discussion of the project. This is actually something I’ve been working on for over a year, and characters that I’ve been playing with for several years. I had originally imagined this as a series of short stories in a steampunk setting, but whenever I tried to work on the stories, they just kept getting longer, and longer. I’d write until I got around ten thousand words with no end in sight, and then I’d switch over to something else in the attempt to get short stories out. Now my emphasis is changing. I’m throwing away the words I’ve already written, but keeping the action and the plot. On November 1st I’ll start writing from scratch and see how far I get before the story ends.

The name I’m using for the project is The Adventures of Crackle & Bang. This is the same name I had been using for the short story series I was trying to write, and it is still the name of the overall series. I’ll decide the final name of the book by the time it is finished. Probably by the time I’m a third of the way through. I’m sorry if this is confusing to anyone. This really is a case of a project that has gotten a hold of me and won’t let go until it is really done.

So let me begin at the beginning. Because that is where this story is going to start. The elevator pitch for the series is that it is a steampunk mash up of Doctor Who, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and Around the World in 80 Days. It definitely borrows elements from both. I’ve also come up with a slightly longer radio pitch:

The Adventures of Crackle & Bang

The year is 2010 and it is still the reign of Her Eternal Majesty Empress Victoria the first. Steam power is still ascendant and the digital age has never arrived. While the people feel safe in their homes under Victoria’s Peace, ambitious men and woman plot to gain power without incurring the wrath of the Eternal Queen and her lightning powered armies. Onto this stage comes Professor Harmonious Crackle and his assistant Miss Titania Bang. Exiled for a crime he did not commit, Professor Crackle tries to prove his loyalty to the crown by seeking out those who threaten the empire.

This is a world of steam power and mad geniuses. Queen Victoria never died. Indeed, it seems that she may truly be immortal. She has used the superior power of her armies’ lightning guns to enforce order on most of the known world. Over the last hundred years she has married her children into every royal house on the planet, giving her familial control over their monarchies. Even the independent nations pay respect to the Eternal Empress. As long as they maintain order within their borders, she lets them be. But the peace is only a facade. Power hungry men and women are everywhere, from scientists who are sure their intellectual prowess gives them the right to rule, to heads of state who chafe under Victoria’s yoke, to members of the royal family who yearn for their own chance to take hold of the reins of power. Beneath the veneer of civility, rebellion festers and criminal empires rise and fall.

One way in which this series will be different from other steampunk offerings is that England is the one place where the action won’t be happening. Instead of endless stories in 1890′s London, The Adventures of Crackle & Bang will explore the rest of the world, both within and outside of the Empire proper. The first adventure begins in what is now Czechoslovakia and then moves to India, the Indian Ocean, Austrailia, America, and then back to India. There is a whole world to explore, the question is where I want to go next.

The plan is that there will be further updates as things progress. Both through November and the rest of the writing and editing process. I don’t want to talk about selling the story until I get there, but I do have some ideas on how to get the story out once it is done. Stay tuned.

Today we are heading back to February 26th, 2011 for another Galley Table episode. The guest today is Jonathan Jacobs of Nevermet Press. We talk about RPGs, world building, and when enough is enough and you just need to get on with the story. And we curse Skype. A lot. A whole lot. Oh, and we invade Zach Ricks‘ brain.

Some notable quotes from the episode:

• “Stop stealing my lines!”
• “World building is a bit… masturbatory.”
• “Paging Mr. Tolkien, the white courtesy phone…”
• “I made friends with J.C. Hutchins just like you would make friends with any puppy, you feed him.”
• “If you’ve spent 20% of your story on world building, you’ve gone on too long.”
• “I think we’re saying world building when we mean Info-dumping.”
• “I think a lot of writers do their world building as they are writing.”
• “… she does all the world building throughout the story, but there is no info dump at all.”
• “It needs to be familiar enough that you’re not questioning how everything works, but different enough to be intriguing.”
• “That old saw, show, don’t tell.”
• “You are trained to tell. In most American schools, that is how kids are told how to write.”
• “And it is not surprising that kids think school is boring.”
• “I don’t know why I have to explain every detail to my mythical audience…”
• “This is not a story, but a book of myths and legends.”
• “I was basically going to grunt in disbelief for a while.”
• “The other tricky part is making sure you don’t get lost in your own world building.”
• “It is never a crime to do not enough world building and start your story.”
• “Which comes first, the character or the setting? My answer has always been ‘Yes.’”
• “How do you as a writer recognize when an info dump is happening?”
• “You can send your defenses of Tolkien to … sroche@…”
• “You could argue that all Dune is is one big volume of world building.”
• “It’s the book, and the RPG at the same time!”
• “You can send your defenses of Jules Verne to…”
• “Put it into captain dummy talk, Kaylee…”
• “You know what they call that in gaming, right? Railroading.”
• “If you want your player characters to go somewhere, they don’t want to go there.”
• “The characters are going around with candles, and all you can see of the world is what you can see by candlelight.”

This was a great conversation about building your world vs showing the world to your audience. A bit more serious than our usual Galley Table fare, but a good show.

Check back here on Friday to see if the Wayback Machine has managed to produce another historical episode for your listening enjoyment.

Happy Monday, folks! It is happy for us because the Wayback Machine is still ticking over. It’s all warmed up this morning and for once, we’re not going to visit Galley Table for a change! We’ve finally caught up to where I left off with the Master Feed back in February. Today’s destination is February 21st, 2011 and Episode 10 of The Shrinking Man Project. This episode dealt with the changes I was going through with the impending move of my office to a new location, literally a different state, and how I was expecting it to alter my life. Unlike the Galley Table episodes, this one is just a short thirteen minutes long. This episode also announces my first paid writing sale to Issue 4 of Flying Island Press’s magazine Flagship. For those who are not familiar with Flagship, it is an e-published magazine with short stories and articles on the craft of writing in every issue. The magazine is available in both print and audio format and puts out new issues every two to three months. Anywho, on with the episode!

Show notes included below.

Show Notes:

• Welcome!
• Off to the scales…
• Promo – Flagship, Issue 4, featuring stories like:
  • Ovid’s Legacy – by Chris Ward
  • Martin the Dictator – by Jason Palmer
  • Broken Dolls – by Philip L. Tite
  • All Elves are Stupid – by Jeromy Henry
  • The Sideways Machine – by Richard Zwicker
• Weigh in
• Week in review
  • Back injury.
  • Four of Five exercises done.
  • Started Couch to 5K.
  • My food has been good this week.
  • My office is moving. Chaos ensues.
  • Lessons learned: Try new variations.
  • Moving forward: Focus on priorities.
• Feedback!
• Sign off
  • Comments on the blog at http://theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • E-mail at Doc@theshrinkingmanproject.com
  • Voice mail at (240) 745-5022
  • Join the Fans of the Shrinking Man Project on Facebook
  • Follow me @Scaleslea on Twitter
  • Send me your promos!
  • Leave a review on iTunes or Podcast Alley.
  • Tell your friends about the podcast.
  • Have a good week!
• End credits

Mentioned on the show:

• Flagship, Issue 4
• Fans of The Shrinking Man Project
• The Maryland Renaissance Festival

Is it working? Do we have contact? Holding steady? Good!

Hey, folks. We’ve managed to get the Wayback Machine up again and we’re ready for another trip into podcasting’s past. This time we are headed to February 20th, 2011 and the release of Galley Table Episode Twenty-Three. This episode features special guest Dan Sawyer sharing his expertise at story telling for film and audio and some of the lessons he has learned in making his living with writing. Fortunately Dan is an interesting and entertaining conversationalist so it doesn’t come off as a dry lecture. In fact I think this is one of the funnest Galley Table episodes we’ve ever done.

And, of course, I’ve pulled out some fun highlights of the show:

• “He is having babies, so he is qualified now.”
• “It was the most annoying voice I’ve ever heard.” “Oh, Gilbert Godfrey.”
• “I hate to make this the Nathan Lowell show, but…”
• “Life is too short for that. I’ve got a lot of stories to tell.”
• “You need to go into it thinking, even if this fails, am I better off in the long run than if I hadn’t done it at all.”
• “Expect to fail, then any success is just gravy!”
• “There is a difference between getting a return and getting money.”
• “I’m going to start writing to day because in a couple of years I’m going to be a Mid-List Author!”
• “Writers, like all artists, tend to be spectacularly poor at business.”
• “We think of these as our babies but not as our products.”
• “You have to raise your darlings and then sell them off for scientific experiments.”
• “Never hire anyone to do a job you couldn’t do if you needed to.”
• “I’m not always in the same mood as the story.”
• “Anyone who gets on top tends to want to become the next Jim Jones.”
• “I almost got arrested bringing tea through an airport on the way to Balticon.”
• “And they still didn’t think of bringing the drug sniffy dogs!”
• “The guards were all around him, but he disarmed them with his tongue.”
• “I have a large cranial capacity.”
• “I want to hear more hat talk!”
• “I’ve heard you should mainline these podcasts before showing up.”
• “It’s what I get for being a stowaway.”
• “Stop violating the laws of physics, dammit!”
• “He has an old soul he keeps in a jar.”
• “You are a veritable font of bad television.”
• “Edit that out, my brain skipped a track.”
• “Maybe I need to drink more.”

I hope you enjoy listening to the episode. Everyone, have a good weekend, and hopefully we’ll get the Wayback Machine to fire up again next Monday.

I know I said that we would be firing up the Wayback Machine again today, but we seem to be encountering some problems. We’ll keep working at it here at Swimming Cat Studios and see if we can get it working for this Friday’s scheduled jaunt into the past. Anyone happen to have a spare flux capacitor?

Chris Miller, one of the founders of Podiobooks.com, came to me in late August and asked if I would be willing to read a book and write a review for The Secret Lair, his online magazine dedicated to the plight of the grown up geek trying to survive in this modern world long enough to achieve world domination. Because I’m a nice guy, and it represented an opportunity to reach out to new readers and listeners, I agreed. Chris sent me an e-copy of Gary McMahon’s “Dead Bad Things”. I’m not really a fan of horror, but I gave the book a read, and my review went live yesterday over at The Secret Lair. Please check it out, and take a peek at some of the other things that Chris and his partners in crime have to say about the state of geekdom.

And let Chris and I both know if you liked the review and would like to see me do more of them for The Secret Lair.

The Wayback Machine is powered up again, and this time we’re traveling back to February 11th, 2011. Once again, we’ve got an episode of Galley Table. This week’s episode features guests Willie Freeman and the lovely Veronica Giguerre. In this episode we are talking about voice acting, playing roles, roleplaying games, and discussing the various offerings coming up from Incubator Press, Willie’s company.

Some quotes from the show:

• “Where were you when you realized that mankind had completely lost the war on zombies?”
• “That’s how you practice your voice acting. You screen calls and when the telemarketers call you drop into the Pandemona voice.”
• “It’s called voice acting practice time.”
• “They either hang up or they start laughing at you.”
• “Answer our trivia questions and Veronica Giguerre will do the message on your voice mail!”
• “So… you were gaming with Mercedes Lackey?”
• “Mercedes Lackey was playing an MMORPG?” “Yes!”
• “Sounds like there are a few other storytellers here who are gamers.” “Yes…”
• “We always play on the evil side.”
• “Let’s all walk on the evil side of the map!”
• “Some of the best stories I can think of off the top of my head are from video games.”
• “You kids and your fancy-smancy video games.”
• “You’re stepping on me, Doc.”
• “Having to rely on your imagination for your game…”
• “We played D&D, Champions, Lords of Creation, just about any gaming system under the sun. You had to have a great grasp of character.”
• “Our GM offered extra experience for write ups of each weeks adventures. So I wrote them up as my characters would write them…”
• “Not just a pimp, a demon pimp. Nothing says sinning like trafficking in demons.”
• “Kind of the Huggy Bear to your Starsky and Hutch?”
• “High School and college is the time when people are supposed to get all their stupid out.”
• “He’s a teenaged necromancer.”
• “He’s going to save people by killing them and raising them as zombies.”
• “They zombies are not as dumb as they thought they were.”
• “Skype, for all your lack of communication needs!”
• “What was that? Trashy two-bit tease?”
• “I have fun making funny voices in my microphone.”
• “Reading for Laura and reading for Midsummer Night’s Dream wassomuchfunIwanttodoitagain!”
• “It’s awkward question time!”
• “To heck with it, I like writing!”
• “You’ve been mainlining Galley Table Podcasts?”
• “I’m on this show and I don’t even listen to it.”
• “Laura revealing her age is actually my ring tone.”
• “Scott has a battle cry?”
• “It’s a love-hate relationship.”
• “I’m somebody’s hero.”
• “Lack of confidence and Angry Birds.”

That is it for this trip through the Wayback Machine. While you’re waiting for the next one, we invite you to listen to Veronica’s work on The Secret World Chronicle. There is a lot of good listening there. And we’ll be back on Wednesday to fire up the machine again. See you then!

Strap in, folks! This time the Wayback Machine is taking us back to February 4th, 2011 for the 21st episode of The Galley Table! To celebrate the twenty first episode, we set about discussing young adult fiction. Joining us for this discussion is our special guest J.R. Murdock, along with the rest of the Galley Table crew. We disassemble what it means for a story to be YA, and some of the prevailing advice on fitting into that market.

Some excellent YA works mentioned in the episode:

• Tumbler
• Pocket and the Pendant
• Empress Sword
• Space Casey
• Nina Kimberly the Merciless
• Schlock Mercenary
• Archie Comics
• Dragon Age Comics
• Bone
• Invincible

It is Wednesday, and time for another trip with the Wayback Machine. For a change, this time we are NOT going to be revisiting an episode of The Galley Table. This time we’re going to January 30th, 2011 when the Every Photo Tells… podcast released their performance of my short story The Price of Surrender. This story was nominated for a Parsec Award in the category of Best Speculative Fiction Story (Short Form), but unfortunately did not make it to the finals because of the amazingly fierce competition in that category.

The prompt for this story was a picture of a stream with clear water running over rounded stones. And a duck sitting on the end of a plank. So looking at this, it was obvious to me that magic was involved…

This was the first time I wrote a story for a particular performance. While I had written stories for the Every Photo Tells… podcast before, this was the first time I’d written specifically for Mick and Katarina’s voices. And I think it came out very well. They both did an excellent job with the accents of the multiple characters, making them distinct despite only the two of them reading. I was very happy with their performance.

I hope you enjoy listening to the podcast. I hope to have the text version of this story up on Smashwords before the end of the month, but life often does interfere. I will make the text available soon. It is just a question of when.

If you like this story, please go to the Every Photo Tells… site and sample some of the other stories. Or better yet, go to Podiobooks.com and subscribe to the Book 1, Book 2, or Book 3 collection of stories from the podcast.

Time to start off the week with another trip through the Wayback Machine! Today’s jaunt into the past takes us to January 21st, 2011 and Episode Nineteen of The Galley Table. In this episode we are joined by Starla Huchton of The Dreamer’s Thread fame. We are also joined by Flying Island press crew JP Losier, the ninja of podcasting, as we examine supporting Podiobooks and your favorite artists. We also discuss getting paid for writing, and some ways that social media can be used to spread the word. And, of course, silliness ensues.

So sit back, relax and listen along as we discuss:

• Podiobooks.com
• Making fun of Evo Terra.
• Nathan Lowell brings Podiobooks to its knees by releasing a new book.
• Bravery or guilt?
• The power of Mother’s Guilt.
• Goodbye Clean tag.
• The economic hit.
• Audible vs. Podiobooks (Cage match!)
• Doesn’t the author deserve to be paid for their work.
• Pennies add up.
• Which do you prefer? Lots of small donations, or a few big payoffs?
• Touching the larger community.
• Rich stalkers.
• Podcast fiction: a different animal?
• Cliffhangering bastardy.
• Serial Fiction vs. Novels.
• The Venn diagram of audio fiction.
• “Maximizing the potential of the media”
• Keeping the reader engaged.
• Where do the hits come from?
• Go where your audience is.
• Like getting slash dotted or boing-boinged.
• Serendipity.
• The humor of awkward pauses.
• Don’t make me pull this podcast over!
• Finding and building communities.
• Participate, don’t just spam.
• Better groundswell than Oprah.
• The Minion Effect.
• A small percentage of obsessive fans.
• Influencers.
• Minion Pride.
• Minions are good to have.
• Controversy for popularity.
• Pimping stuff.
• Full of win.
• A mime is a terrible thing.
• The Uwe Boll effect.
• Goodnight serenade.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and will be back on Wednesday for the next trip via the Wayback Machine!

Today we are letting the Wayback Machine take us back to January 15th, 2011. We didn’t have any guests, so this one is just me, Scott Roche, Zach Ricks, and Jeff Hite. Join us as we send up Star Trek captains, self publishing, and author love. And somewhere along the way we actually managed to have a semi-serious discussion about the craft of writing. Give it a listen!

Some episode highlights:

• Weebles Wobble.
• “Hold my head underwater, I speak French fluidly.”
• Copyright infringement.
• Picard was a wuss.
• Being a professional writer.
• Politicians and Prostitutes.
• What are our stories really worth?
• Smashwords love!
• Dan Sawyer, Man of many talents.
• “Nothing sells a back catalog like a back catalog.”
• The Trunked Novel.
• You’ve got to maintain quality.
• Shape-shifting, Vampire-killing, biker chicks!
• Can you write a novel that someone will buy?
• The editorial process.
• Hiring an editor.
• The Microsoft Grammar Mangler.
• “There is no excuse for not doing a final read through or listen through.”
• Criticizing the Future Dark Overlord. Or at least his editing minions.
• It’s a great time to be creative!
• Thank you, listeners!
• Moose curling.
• There are no short cuts.
• How do you practice and rehearse writing?
• Work your way up to Old Man and the Sea, and then kill yourself.
• Geek rumble!
• Put in the time.
• First and foremost, you need to write.
• Second you need to finish what you write.
• Third, you need to show it to someone else.
• Heinlein’s Rules
• To be successful, you need a cheerleader, a critic, and an honest opinion.
• Brutal honesty.
• You have to separate yourself from the work.
• Manage your expectations.
• Know what you’re doing and why.
• There is work involved.
• Wacky, madcap, in depth writing analysis.
• Pragmatic violence.
• To boldly go near… and far… near… and far!
• To seek out new worlds and new breakfast cereals.
• The dread star fleet captain.
• Captain Dresden.
• Around the universe in 80 days.

I hope you enjoyed the episode. We’ll have something new from the Wayback Machine on Monday!

This time the Wayback Machine is set for January 6th, 2011, and we’ve got another episode of The Galley Table! This was a fantastic episode with guests Podcasting’s Rich Sigfrit and Mike Plested. As a way of celebrating the New Year, we were supposed to be discussing where we thought new media would go in 2011, but with a guest like Podcasting’s Rich Sigrit, the conversation moved around a bit more than usual.

A few of the many topics touched upon during the conversation:

• A coup.
• Christina Hendricks as Wonder Woman.
• Christina Hendricks.
• Defining new media.
• Something is funny in the podiosphere… It’s comedians.
• Adam Curry and Shakespearian insults.
• The low cost of entry to New Media.
• There is nothing wrong with doing things out of your basement!
• Throwing off the “made in the basement” stigma.
• Podcast backlogs.
• Zack’s thoughts on the floor.
• Cats with coherent thoughts.
• Getting outside the fishbowl.
• Podcasts on your TV.
• Podcasts on your phone.
• Hookers and Blow.
• What is your business?
• We’ll fix it in post.
• You should be supporting NPR financially.
• Hookers and Blow.
• There is a mute button.
• I am Sparticus. I am the Fishbowl. I am the Eggman. Koo coo katcho!
• Christina Hendricks as Wonder Woman.
• The invisible costume.
• Cash donations.
• Who isn’t using a bell?
• The plight of Canadian Podcasters.
• Zack Ricks as Wonder Woman. (twitch, twitch)
• Laura Nicole as Wonder Woman.
• Tighter controls on the Canadian border.
• Another coup.
• The inhumanity of Pokemon.
• Choking the Poke.
• Redecorating the canteen.
• OCD in the military.
• Another stake in the heart of the clean rating.
• Scott hits on Evo Terra.
• Look at the show nuts.

Dear god, this show was hilarious.  Here, listen for yourself.

Ok, folks, that is it for today. See you on Friday when we warm up the Wayback Machine again!

Once again the Wayback Machine provides us with another Galley Table episode. This one was released into the wild on December 25th, 2010. This Christmas present contains special guests Val Ford and David Sobkowiak. Join them and the rest of the panel as we rant about reality tv, passive protagonists, vampires, and fanfic. This is also the episode where Scott decided that I’d done so many episodes of Galley Table that I no longer counted as a guest.

Some highlights from the show:

“I am the Paul Lynde of Galley Table.”

“Are you willing to be the hot babe eye candy of the group?”

“Why does it take more than 12 hours to edit 2 hours of audio?”

“You know what would make Survivor better? Velociraptors!”

“That’s why he’s not here. You took his shoes!”

“I think Alfalfa would make a great werewolf.”

“Succubi always swallow.”

“And the subscriber base just shot up!”

“Because you’re young, you have the stamina to outlast them. So when you go drinking with them… Oh, wait, you’re a lightweight.”

“I’ve seen pictures of Emma Watson. She’s filled out nice.”

“Better Rob Lowe than Danny Devito.”

Check back on Wednesday when we’ll fire up the Wayback Machine again.

For those of you who prefer the Kindle, or just like the flexibility of the Kindle app, my short story The Gift is now available from Amazon through the Kindle store for just $0.99.

Today, the Kindle! Tomorrow the Nook! Oh, wait, tomorrow is Saturday. Maybe we can work the Nook in next week.

Time for another trip back on the Wayback Machine. This time we’re heading for December 16th, 2010 and the release of the fourteenth episode of The Galley Table. This episode featured Val Ford and PG Holyfield as guests and marked one of Laura Nicole‘s first forays as the head of the panel. This episode also marked the first official announcement of my podcast The Shrinking Man Project.

The episode’s discussion focused around how to balance work, life, writing, and other projects. Also mentioned:

• plans for Bodices and Fedoras at Balticon 45
• Laura is taking auditions for a Sugar Daddy (requirements are lots of money and lots of rum)
• “Stolen time is the sweetest time of all.”
• “Writers are the best procrastinators in the world.”
• Laura reads in the bathtub. And the rest of us are inspired.
• “Keep your hands above the table!”
• “Petting P.G.’s ego.”
• “The DVR is my friend.”
• Guilty Pleasure movies.
• A round-robin coup.
• “I love big guns and I cannot lie!”

Today I have published my first short story, The Gift, on Smashwords. The story in question was first released on the podcast Every Photo Tells… and was nominated for a Parsec Award in 2010. Now the text is available in print on Smashwords for just $0.99.

This is my first story on Smashwords, but it won’t be my last. Keep your eyes out for more news on further writing and publishing adventures. If you’d like to see more of my writing, please buy a copy of The Giftand encourage your friends to do the same. The money I make will help fund future projects, and encourage me to make more time for writing.

Return with me to December 4th, 2010, when I joined with the Galley Table crew to welcome Alex “The Gearheart” White, and Nobilis Reed to The Galley Table. To celebrate the end of NaNoWriMo, we talked about endings. Writing them, reading them, how people relate to them, and what makes a good ending.

Along the way we also touch on why world-building is the enemy of storytelling and the relative unimportance of Story Bibles. Patchwork writing styles in contrast to Discovery and Outline writing.

Quotes along the way:

“The Snowflake Goes to Eleven.”

“Next Week: Zombie Tolkien!”

“Tentacle Erotica.”

And the episode rounds out with some music from Alex White’s Maiden Flight of the Avenger Soundtrack. That is worth a listen as well.

Enjoy the episode, and keep your eyes peeled for more from The Wayback Machine.

Today we’ve set the Wayback Machine for November 24th and the release of another Galley Table. The guests for this episode are Brand Gamblin and SV Allie. In a massive fail of planning, we hadn’t planned a topic for this particular episode, and just kind of let the conversation ramble aimlessly. Which, of course, led to an excellent episode.

Topics briefly touched upon:

• Kermit the Frog
• The Book that Brand spent a year on and cannot sell.
• Copyright laws.
• NaNoWriMo
• Star Wars Opera!
• Ghost Bears
• Alien vs Pooh
• Cinderella’s Zombie Army
• Battle Dresses

Really.  You can’t write this stuff.  It just has to congeal. Sort of. Thingy.

Also in this episode, an insight into Brand Gamblin’s The Hidden Institute from back when Brand was writing it. If you haven’t heard it before, you should give this episode a listen!

Keep an eye on the feed for more from the Wayback Machine.

My second submission to the Every Photo Tells… podcast went live on October 24th, 2010. This story was an interesting challenge. The prompt photo featured a shot of a spooky face graffiti-ed onto a wall, with a man lying on the sidewalk next to the wall and box sitting at his feet. The picture was oddly engaging, but left me confused as to how to proceed. The objects in the image were discordant with each other. They didn’t fit. And that became my hook. They didn’t fit. A man out of place. And that soon became a man out of time. I’ve always been fond of time travel stories, so I wrote one of my own. Welcome to Paradox, the story of a man convicted of a crime he had yet to commit, and how his sentence nearly destroyed the fabric of the universe. Sometimes, the only person you can depend on is yourself…

I hope you enjoy listening to this story. I am proud to say that it was nominated for a Parsec Award in the Best Speculative Fiction Story (Short Form) category. Competition in this category was fierce and I did not make it into the finals. Maybe next year…

Later this fall I plan to put this story up on Smashwords for those folks who prefer text. Or who just like doing all the voices themselves. I’ve been tied up of late trying to untangle some other projects, but as soon as that is taken care of, the next thing on my list is getting this story ready for release.

If you like this story, please go to the Every Photo Tells… site and sample some of the other stories. Or better yet, go to Podiobooks.com and subscribe to the Volume 1 collection of stories from the podcast.

The Wayback Machine has been down for a while, but it is time for me to fire it back up and mention some of my appearances that either pre-dated this blog, or didn’t get put onto the Master Feed because I was too busy to add them when it all happened. This one is from before I stood up Swimming Cat Studios. We’re going back to November 12th, 2010, when I made my third appearance on the Galley Table Podcast.

This episode also features an interview with Chris Lester of Metamor City, talking about how Metamor City evolved, and how he got into podcasting. Aside from the interview with Chris, we talk about “Gotchas” those little things that appear in fiction that just get under your skin one way or another. And of course, there is Issue Three of Flagship Magazine. If you missed it the first time around, have a listen. Or give it another listen, it is still a fun podcast!

I’m going to try to keep the Wayback Machine ticking over regularly and get the Master Feed caught up. I won’t pound the feed with content, but hopefully I can make it worth mentioning.

Stay tuned!

Today my guest post at ChocolateScotch.com went live. This is part of the Creativity series, where different creatives from around the net have been asked to present their ideas on Art, Creativity, and Inspiration. This has been a really interesting and varied series. My article is post number 54, so there are a LOT of folks chiming in on this. You can find my essay over on the Chocolate Scotch site, and while you’re there, take some time out and read some of the other articles!

It is a really excellent series, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

I have got to tell you about this great book I just finished reading. Which also means telling you about a lot of other books by the same authors. The book is Ghost Ship by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, and it is the third book in one series and the 8th book in another series, and… it’s kind of complicated.

Ghost Ship is the sequel to Fledgling, and Saltation, and it continues the story of Theo Waitley, young Jump Pilot, Starship Courier, as she finds herself with a rather tangled problem. Theo has been given a key to one of the most sought after space ships in the galaxy. Sought after mostly because it was lost right after it came online. This ship is now stalking her, with one purpose on it’s electronic mind: to bring her aboard… and have her take her rightful place as Captain. Of course, there are problems with that. Her sometime boyfriend Liaden Scout Win Ton yo’Vala found the ship and sent her the Captain’s key. He has the Co-Pilot’s key, but he was captured by the Department of the Interior and tortured in an attempt to get him to turn over the ship and the Captain’s key. Win Ton escaped, but he has been poisoned, and the only technology than can save him is on the ship.

In over her head, Theo follows some old advice from her father and goes to Liad and puts her problem before the Delm of Clan Korval, the head of one of the most powerful Clan on the entire world! Doing this, she discovers a few things: Korval is battling the same Department of the Interior, The Clan just got kicked off of the planet for using the planetary defense grid to take out the Department’s Headquarters, and the Delm Korval? He just happens to be her half-brother Val Con yos’Phelium.

Confused?

Don’t be. The confusion is in my summing up, not in the writing. And in the fact that Ghost Ship joins the Theo Waitley series with the Agent of Change series also by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. That series starts with Agent of Change and up until this month concluded with the 7th book, I Dare. Those books follow Clan Korval’s stuggles with the Department of the Interior in their attempt to covertly take over the planet Liad and wipe out the unwanted Terran influence. The Department sees Korval as an unbalancing influence and seeks to remove them. Bad move.

Honestly, all of these books are great, even the other Agent of Change books that I haven’t listed and a few more Liaden Universe novels that are outside the two series. Sharon Lee and Steve Miller do a great job of creating characters and the cultures that shaped them, and setting a stage to a world that is both familiar and unique at the same time. These really are books that you can’t put down. You’ll read them in record time because you have to know what happens next, and they leave you still wanting more. I have to say that these books are the best of Space Opera as a genre. I finished Ghost Ship in a weekend, then handed it to my wife who consumed its 300+ pages in a day.

I shan’t spoil the book for you, but encourage you to pick up the Theo Waitley trilogy for yourself. Until the next book. For the authors, I bow in the mode of Grateful Audience to Master Artisan.

Some people fear birthdays. They hide them. They deny them.

Not me.

For me, a birthday is a victory celebration! Another year to stride upon this Earth, win battles, and fight off death for another day.  In the end to plunge my banner into the heart of another year and cry to the heavens that this year will not defeat me! I have taken on all that it had to dish out and I remain standing! Victorious!

But not everyone sees it like that.

There have been a lot of changes over the past year.

We discovered how hard hit our finances were with my wife losing her unemployment benefits, and managed to come back from the edge of disaster and balance accounts out again. There is still some debt to pay off, but at least now we’re not losing ground hand over fist.

I got my weight down under 300 pounds. It meant a lot to me to pass the century mark, although it is still odd to have strangers come up and tell me that I’ve lost weight.

I started my own podcast, and became a regular on Galley Table. I have found that I really enjoy podcasting. Although I still can’t believe I suckered myself into doing a weekly release schedule.  D’oh!

Somehow I got nominated for a Parsec Award… three times!

I sold my first article. Not a story, but an essay. Still, my first sale of written words. And that really made me take a close look at my writing and what I planned for it. I don’t have a lot of completed works. I really need to get the stories I have out there and get them earning. And I need to do more writing and develop a catalog of work. Something to make my Goodreads profile look a little more filled out, at least.

I started voice acting, and kind of dove into it in a big way, racking up six different parts so far. And I’ve got at least two different offers of more parts.

My day job office relocated, bringing another set of changes.

I attended my first convention as a panelist. While it was great fun, it was different saying, “Hi, I’m the most obscure person on today’s panel.” But I would not have traded it. I would have bargained away the throat ailment that I picked up at Balticon, but not the rest of the con…

And there was surgery, removing a blood clot from my arm. I got through that.

Now a new year looms ahead. Forty-Five. It is already preparing a new set of challenges. But I shall meet them. And I have goals of my own. I will see about getting paid for voicework. Selling more stories, and aiming towards my first professional sale. NaNoWriMo. Completing my first book. Maybe even that Parsec Award!

There are many obstacles ahead, but I intend to press on.

TO VICTORY!

To try to make things a little easier for folks to find my various projects, I’ve set up a new splash page for DocColeman.com. This new page links to each of the major projects that I have going, providing a simple launch point for anyone looking into my work. Please take a look at the page and let me know what you think of it.

Right now, it is just a basic page, but I may end up moving some things over to that site, such as some of the galleries and the Lee of the Scale blog from scaleslea.net. It will depend on what happens with the host for that site.

Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel is the first novel from Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris writing together. They take us back to the age of Queen Victoria, and give us a view of a secret organization in Her Majesty’s government. This clandestine organization, the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, deals with the strange, the bizarre, and those things best not talked about in polite society. Agents of the Ministry travel the world investigating these strange and unusual events, and returning dangerous artifacts to Mother England where they can be safely stored away from dangerous hands.

This tale follows Eliza D. Braun, an agent of the Ministry originally from New Zealand. Exiled from her homeland under mysterious circumstances, Eliza is one of the most effective agents of the Ministry. And one of the least covert. After her latest mission led to the destruction of a stronghold of the secret society known as the House of Usher, and the mountain that housed the stronghold, Eliza is put on suspension, and re-assigned from the field to serve the ministry in the Archives, the repository of all these dangerous artifacts and boring agent reports.

Another thing deposited in the Archives is one Wellington Thornhill Books, Esquire, the Ministry’s appointed Archivist, and the object of Eliza’s last mission. Kidnapped by the House of Usher, and returned by the unconventional Miss Braun, Mr. Books was looking forward to returning to the peace and quiet of his Archives, but instead finds himself with an unconventional assistant. An assistant who insists upon reopening unsolved cases of the Ministry and investigating them. Starting with the case of what happened to her old partner…

This begins a roller coaster ride of intrigue, secret societies, and steam-driven science gone mad. With a touch of hedonism thrown in in case you got bored. Everyone has their secrets and surprises, and this book is full of twists, turns, and reveals. This is an excellent book. If you’re at all insterested in steampunk, I’m sure you’ll enjoy Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel.

For those who have waited and wondered and hoped, the fateful day has arrived at last! Flying Island Press‘ Pirates Cove has set forth on a new literary journey, Treasure Island. Those ready to set sail on this journey can begin with the first chapter, to be found here. Those who wish to follow the entire tale had best set their course for the Podcast Feed.

It is my great privilege to have leant my talents to voicing the tale of Treasure Island as the Narrator, an adult Jim Hawkins. Joining me in this first episode are Jeff Hite, as Billy Bones, Michell Plested as the young Jim Hawkins, and Dan Absalonson as Dr. Livesey. We all hope that you shall enjoy our telling of the tale. Should you be so moved to an expression of gratitude, you should be relieved to note that 60% of any donations to the production will be passed on to the actors, with the smaller portion of donations going to support future productions from Pirates Cove.

We also hope that you will spread word of this production so that others may share in it and find it pleasing to their ears as well.

This is based on the draft schedule, so it may be subject to change, but as of today, here is where I will be this coming Balticon weekend:

Friday, May 27th:

The Singularity and Eschaton, 5 PM, Salon B

Steampunk Update, 9 PM, Salon B

Saturday, May 28th

Brewing Your own Beer at Home, 1 PM, Derby

The Galley Table Live!, 3 PM, Derby

Sunday, May 29th

How to read for Pleasure, 1 PM, Salon B

Metamor City Live, 5 PM, Chesapeake

Podcasting for Non-Technical People, 8 PM, Derby

Dirty Mad Libs, 10PM, Derby

Monday, May 30th

The Shrinking Man Project Live!, 1 PM, Derby

I hope to see you there!

It occurred to me that since this is the one stop shop for all things involving Doc Coleman on the net, that perhaps a more easily guessed domain name might be in order. So now if you enter www.doccoleman.com, you’ll be re-directed here to Swimming Cat Studios. Since Swimming Cat Studios is the name I’m currently operating under, I’m going to keep it as the primary domain for now. Both will get you right here.

Zack Ricks put out a challenge to write 1000 words in two days. Deadline is midnight, Friday, May 13th. I took up the challenge. So far I’ve spent a day working on required writing, which doesn’t count. But now with that out of the way, here is my new, original, creative effort.

I was roused from a sound sleep by a peculiar, strident honking sound that permeated my cabin. I sat up in bed, and the sound repeated itself. I shook my head to clear the sleep cobwebs and realized that the honking sound was actually a klaxon that was sounding throughout the ship.  The odd, honking klaxon continued to repeat from the steam pipes that threaded through a corner of my cabin. It sounded remarkably as if a clarinet had been lodged into the pipe to produce the sound.

Rising from bed, I grabbed my trousers from the valet by the wardrobe and nearly topped the polished walnut stand in my haste. I stepped into my trousers, fastened them, and grabbed a shirt, hastily donning it as I headed to the door. Throwing open the door to my stateroom, I stepped out into the corridor, where the same honking klaxon was sounding from points every twenty feet along the passageway. I looked both ways, trying to discern the cause of the emergency.

Somehow I managed to still be looking the wrong way when Tinka, the Argos’ chief rigger, pushed past me and ran down the corridor, simultaneously fastening the odd harness she uses for support and shrugging into a long tailed shirt. “One side, luv! Gotta run!” I could not help but stare after her as she ran, her bare feet slapping on the deck as she went. In her haste Tinka had chosen to forgo the leather trousers she usually wore when on duty, and I was treated to an unexpected view of her long, athletic legs until she turned the corner.

I could now hear other, booted feet running as well as other members of the crew responded to the emergency. I ducked back into my room to clear the way as a handful of airmen ran by on the way to their stations. Poking my head back out in their wake, I spied another figure making a more sedate but equally purposeful way: Miss Titania Bang. Miss Bang had covered herself with a belted dressing gown and donned slippers before venturing forth from her room, her long, chestnut brown hair flowed down her back instead of being piled up in a variety of tasteful styles she favored. This framed her delicate features in an fashion that emphasized the air of innocence that she habitually wore.

“Miss Bang, what is going on?”

She crossed to me and taking my arm, pulled me out into the passage, indicating I should follow her. “We are under attack, my lord! That is the alarm for battle stations!”

“Battle stations? Where are we to go?” My mind reeled with the very idea of someone attacking the Argos. Who would be such a fool?

“We must go to the bridge. That is where Harmonious will go, and it is the most defended part of the ship. And it will be the best place to find out where we can help.” She continued on, and I found myself being towed along by the small yet stately woman. I regretted not thinking of donning slippers as well, as the bare deck plates in the working areas of the ship proved to be rather cold to my bare feet. I missed the warm wood and plush rugs that served as flooring in the living compartments.

Twice, as we made our way to the bridge, we had to flatten ourselves on one side of the passage to allow members of the ships crew to pass by to man their stations or attend some other issue. My father had told me tales of his naval service when I was a boy, describing the excitement and chaos of battles at sea, punctuated by long hours of attentive boredom as ships maneuvered to fire once again. So far, there had been none of the chaos he had talked of. No gunfire, no shuddering lurches as the ship took a hit, or the cries of wounded, or of men fighting fires on deck. I hoped this was a good sign. A chase could buy us further time to prepare, but if an attacker had already latched on, the Argos could be boarded any moment.

We stepped onto the bridge of the Argos and were hit by a cacophony of sound, ranging from the blatant to the subtle. Crewman at various positions relayed messages from other parts of the ship delivered through acoustic tubes. The helmsman wrestled with a large wheel set into the floor that clicked and tinged as he turned it to adjust and correct the course of the ship. Another crewman pulled at a bank of levers decorated with different bells that communicated some information to other parts of the ship. Captain Oscar Peerless stood in the middle of this noise slightly to one side of the helm, pulling sense out of the reports being shouted around him and occasionally thundering out an order in his deep, rolling voice. He stood stock still upon his mechanical legs, their clockwork ticking adding a low background to the noise of the bridge. A faint rustling of papers came from the navigator’s station at the back of the bridge, where Professor Harmonious Crackle, fully dressed, although missing a coat, examined the maps along side the navigator, a tall freckled Irishman who barely looked to have fifteen years under his belt. Below all this, the thrum of the ships propellors could be heard more clearly on the bridge than in the corridor.

“Damn!” The Professor’s voice carried across the bridge although he was clearly speaking to himself. “Captain, I believe that we’ve drifted too far to the east. If I am correct, we’ve run into a band of Burmese air pirates operating out of the Nicobar Islands. They’ll try to take the ship, but if we cannot outrun them, they’ll try to shoot us down.”

“They’ve already tried,” the Captain growled, his anger directed at the pirates. “The riggers are heading aloft now to check for damage, but I think those armor plates of yours did the trick. But unless you’ve got something else to give us more speed, sir, we’ll have to fight them off.”

I followed in Miss Bang’s wake as she crossed to the Professor. I tried to mentally picture the Argos as I had last seen her. The Argos was a proper airship, a dirigible. A massive cigar shaped balloon defined the majority of the ship, with the cabins, living and working quarters slung underneath as a long, wide hull. Propellor assemblies jutted out from the hull at intervals and provided additional lift and the propulsive force behind the craft. The balloon has always been the most vulnerable part of an airship, being most of the ships surface area. Pirates had been known to attack from above in dirty aereoplanes trailing grappling hooks. They would strafe along the body of an airship, hook the balloon with their grapples, and then try to drag the ship off course, usually to an airship of their own which would then board the victim. If the airship put up too much resistance, two aereoplanes would hook the ship and attempt to fly off in different directions. This would usually result in the balloon being torn open, dropping the ship from the sky, or one of the planes over-stressing its diesel engine. This alternative typically ended in the plane and the airship catching fire and crashing.

While the Argos was a peaceful ship, she carried some armaments for just these encounters. By now, gunners would be in their emplacements, manning large caliber machine guns on gimbals to give the widest possible range of fire. I was not sure where those firm points were located on the ship, but looking out through the forward port into the inky night, I imagined that they would have some difficulty hitting their targets in this light. In contrast, the Argos’ running lights would have lit us up as a target for the pirates that could be seen for miles.

The Professor looked thoughtful for a moment. “I have something that may do one or the other, but not both. I’ve been experimenting with other uses for the furnace’s fuel. It should form a decent flame thrower. Or possibly a thruster.”

“You want to throw coal at them?” I could not contain my incredulity. What the Professor was suggesting didn’t make sense.

“No, my friend, coal is too heavy and dirty for regular use. We use it to start the boilers, but once they’re hot we burn Oxygen and Hydrogen torn from the very water itself. It provides for a much cleaner engine. The only problem is fuel storage, and I believe I’ve come up with an effective answer to that.”

He turned back to the Captain. “I think our best bet is to fight, Captain. Buy us as much time as you can. If we can get some morning light it will give us a much better chance.”

The Captain’s gaze was hard, “I’ll do my best, sir. Make sure you don’t do the pirates work for them.” He did not seem fully confident in the Professor’s ability to fashion a weapon.

Miss Bang spoke up. “How can we help, Harmonious?”

He turned to the pair of us. “Yes. Come with me, you can both help me set things up. Captain, we’ll be taking over the rear firmpoint. I know it will leave us vulnerable while we set up, but it will also give us the best vantage to strike at them.”

“Well, don’t dawdle. Prentis!” the Captain thundered, “inform rear guns that the Owner will be modifying weapons. Prepare to aid and assist.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” and the Airman I presume to be Prentis grabbed an acoustic tube from an octopus’s nest of tubes and blew into it to signal the rear position.

The Professor gathered us up and ushered us from the bridge. “We’ll have to head up into the rigging areas and make our way along the catwalks to the back of the ship. But first we must stop at my laboratory and pick up some pumps. And some extra tubing. Quickly now!”

Seventeen hundred words on a new Crackle and Bang story. I’ll finish it later, but this is my start.

Doc

Even though I’ve been an avid reader for most of my life, I’ve never paid much attention to book-finding tools. I have tried using Amazon’s recommendation tool, but it always seemed like it would recommend one or two things I might actually like, and five or six things that they were currently pushing. My tastes ares pretty eclectic, so “what’s popular” usually doesn’t appeal to me. I’m either not interested, or I’ve already discovered it before it became popular. So, despite the fact that many (if not most) of the folks that I interact with online are using Goodreads.com, I was never really interested in it. I’ve done pretty good finding my own reading materiel.

I’m not sure what changed last week. Maybe it was seeing the occasional status update on Twitter that mentioned Goodreads, or someone mentioning putting reviews there. Something happened, and as a result I went over to Goodreads and created an account. As I mentioned before, a lot of the folks that I follow on Twitter and Facebook were already on the site, so I began accumulating numbers of friends in chunks. I also began the effort of listing and rating the many, many, many books that I have read over the years. So far I’ve barely scratched the surface.

In the process of setting up my presence on Goodreads, I stumbled on one of my friends who had rated an issue of Flagship magazine from Flying Island Press, and noticed that each of the writers who contributed to the issue was listed as an author.

I’ve been published in an issue of Flagship.

I went digging and pulled up Flagship issue 4, the issue with my article in it. Sure enough, in the list of authors was the name Doc Coleman.

I clicked it.

Naturally, it linked to an empty profile. All that was there was a name and a link to the Flagship issue. And another link that said, “Is this you?”

I clicked it.

I typed up a little note telling the Goodreads folks that I was new to the site and I had just discovered that an author profile already existed for an article that I wrote and asked them for access to that profile.

Last Monday I got a notification that I was now a Goodreads Author.

It is kind of interesting, considering that I have never really pursued the idea of being a writer, the way this made me feel. I guess it is the sense of achieving a milestone along the way. Having that byline on Goodreads makes me feel proud, as if I’ve arrived. Not that my reputation is made by any stretch of the imagination. There are a lot of steps necessary to become successful at writing, however you may personally describe success. Arriving at the party is an early step, but an important one. Arriving at the party is no guarantee that someone will dance with you, but if you don’t show up you definitely won’t have a dance partner.

In the big scale of things, it isn’t much. Especially not compared to how much so many others have achieved. Or all the hard work that they’ve put in building their writing careers. Compared to them, this is a drop in the bucket. A nothing.

But it is my nothing. And it makes me happy.

And now I need to get back to writing. I need to rack up some more bylines on that listing. A body of work will not create itself.

Hope you enjoyed this small moment.

Next up from the Wayback Machine, the fifth episode in the Bird House Rules/Nifty Tech Blog joint review of Twitter clients for iPad. In this one we’re looking at TweetTime. We weren’t happy with the original audio from this episode, so then we re-recorded this the night before the post was to go live over Skype. This was also the first time we had to pan an product after we’d decided to include it in the series.

This was the last episode of the crossover to be podcast, but not the last episode of the series. Tee’s writing career heated up shortly after this episode went life and he was unable to find the time to finish editing the final episode, or indeed publishing any additional episodes of Bird House rules. While I’m quite glad for the personal and professional success that Tee has had, I do wish that folks could hear that last episode. That was the one where we were most on form.

More from the Wayback Machine soon.

My return to the Galley Table! This marks my beginnings as the Galley Table Stowaway. I knew when Galley Table was to be recorded, so I went onto Skype a few minutes early and hoped that they would include me on the call. And that is pretty much what happened. Scott Roche placed the call and included me in with everyone else.

Back in those days, I pretty much considered myself as an “extra” guest on the podcast. I stayed quiet at the beginning, letting the regularly scheduled guest have their say first before chiming in with my two cents.

This show wandered a bit from topic to topic. Among the topics covered were the perceived legitimacy of electronic publishing, and how to bridge from a short story to a longer novel. The last is interesting because I think that is something that I hope to do in the coming year.

More to come from The Wayback Machine. And a lot more Galley Table, at that.

Next up from the Wayback Machine, the fourth episode in the Bird House Rules/Nifty Tech Blog joint review of Twitter clients for iPad. In this one we’re looking at Twittelator’s transition to the iPad. Along the way we also discuss some design mistakes that we’ve run into along the way.

Still a couple episodes left in this series. Go ahead and check them out over at Bird House Rules. More from the Wayback Machine soon.

My debut on the new Galley Table podcast. Scott Roche was looking for a guest to discuss how technology was affecting reading and the future of Storytelling. Pretty much right up my alley. So we jumped on Skype and recorded this episode.

This was the beginning. But not the end.

Look for more posts from the Wayback Machine in the coming days.

Giddy!  I am giddy! Want to know why? I’ll tell you why. This time last year, I was just a tech blogger with aspirations to be a podcaster.

This year, I’m a Parsec Award Nominated writer.

Let’s say that again. Now, I have my own podcast, I’m a regular on the Galley Table Podcast, I’m a contributing writer to Flying Island Press’ Flagship Magazine and the Every Photo Tells… podcast, and I am a Parsec Award Nominated writer!

Hee!

If you’ve not heard of the Parsec Awards, the Parsec is an award for excellence in Podcasting that is given out every year at Dragon*Con in Atlanta. The Parsecs are given out to shows that are deemed to embody the best of Speculative Fiction for each year. Speculative Fiction embodies Fantasy, Horror, and Sci-Fi elements in storytelling.

Mur Lafferty, Michael R. Mennenga & Tracy Hickman founded The Parsec Awards in 2006 to celebrate Speculative Fiction Podcasting, under the banner of Farpoint Media.

Podcast shows are nominated by fans, and finalists are chosen by a yearly steering committee. Those finalists are then voted on by an independent panel of judges from outside of podcasting. Awards are given in several categories ranging from content to audio quality.

So, the easiest part of the process is getting nominated. But it is still an honor because someone out there liked my work enough to nominate it. Or three someones. Because I didn’t just get nominated for one story. I got nominated for all three stories I did for the Every Photo Tells… podcast. If you’d like to check them out, those stories are Episode 24 – The Gift, Episode 32 – Welcome to Paradox, and Episode 51 – The Price of Surrender. Nominations end June 1st. At that point, we’ll have to wait and see if any of my stories move on to the Finalist stage.

If you’d like to see who else was nominated, you can check it out here.

Fingers crossed!

Doc

Have you subscribed to Flying Island Press’ Pirates Cove latest audio production, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. No? Well why not? all you have to do is go to your favorite RSS catcher and enter the URL http://feeds.feedburner.com/MidSummerNightsDream. They’ve just released Act 2 Scene 1, and this is where it gets interesting, as mortal intrigues get mixed up with the power struggles of the fairy kingdom. Can Titania unravel the plottings of Oberon? Will Lysander and Hermia’s love win out? Will Demetrius steal Hermia away, or will Helena turn his false love for her to true? And how is Puck mixed up in all this? And what of the players and their play?

You need to go to Pirates Cove and subscribe! This is an excellent audio production. Don’t trust me. Go listen for yourself.

Do you like Shakespeare? Do you like Audio Drama? Are you looking for a little of both? Then this is your lucky day! The Pirates over at Flying Island Press’ Pirates Cove have started a new audio production, and this time they’re doing their own version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And part of what makes this version special is that I am a member of the cast!

So fire up your favorite podcatcher and go to Pirates Cove and subscribe! Act 1 Scene 1 has just been released, so this is the ideal time to get in at the beginning of the story. And when Act 2 is delivered, you’ll be able to listen to my performance as Oberon, King of the Fae. Along the way, you’ll be able to listen to plenty of excellent voice actors in this production.

I hope you’ll subscribe and enjoy the show.

And so it begins! Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris have released the first of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences: Tales from the Archives – One: The Evil that befell Sampson…

It is revealed just how Miss Braun ended up being exiled from her native country, New Zealand, and working for the Ministry in its London Offices. It’s a tale of nefarious doings, stalwart ladies, and the sound of clockwork.

Theme music for the Ministry composed and created by Alex White.

Don’t forget to pre-order the upcoming Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novel, coming April 26th from all good online and bricks and mortar stores.

I’ve been waiting to hear more of this universe for what feels like years now. Now we’ve got a new look into the world of Books & Braun!

This is our third episode inthe crossover series Tee Morris and I did for Bird House Rules. In this episode we took TweetDeck for the iPad to task. This episode is also the origin of “Gorilla Origami”.

I am still adding the other parts of this series to this feed, but I recommend that you check out the other episodes of Bird House Rules.

Doc

This year I have been fortunate enough to be invited as a panelist to Balticon 45.  This is my first time being a panelist at a con, and I’m really looking forward to it. I also want to make sure I do my fair share of making the con an entertaining and enlightening experience for everyone (so they’ll invite me back…). I’ve submitted a number of ideas for Panels that I might be able to participate in, or even lead.

But as I’ve remarked elsewhere, sometimes an author (or podcaster) is too close to his own materiel to be able to see what others find interesting… So I’m asking you. If you’re reading this, you’re following one of my projects, either my tech blog, The Nifty Tech Blog, or my podcast, The Shrinking Man Project, or maybe you like some of the short stories I’ve written for Every Photo Tells…, or perhaps heard my appearances on Galley Table. At the very least, you’re someone who is aware of me and some of the things I’ve done.

So I’m asking you to pitch me ideas. Given my background with tech, social media, podcasting, story-telling, writing, and such, what kind of panels would you be interested in seeing me in participating? If you’re going to Balticon 45 (even if it is only in your imagination), what would you like to see me doing, or hear me talking about as part of a panel?

Feel free to comment at whatever length. I want to hear what you’ve got in mind.

Doc

This is the second episode of the crossover series I did with Tee Morris for his Bird House Rules podcast. In part 2 of 6 we turned our attention to Echofon for the iPad.

I will eventually add the other parts of the series to this feed, but I recommend that you check out the other episodes of Bird House Rules.

Doc

Another Shrinking Man Project episode is on its way!

This week’s promo is for Season 4 of The Secret World Chronicles.

Also in the news, The Shrinking Man Project is now available at Podcast Alley!

Enjoy the show. See you next week!

My on-mic podcast debut was a crossover series I did with Tee Morris for his Bird House Rules podcast, an ongoing podcast about Twitter and how to get the most out of it. We actually met and recorded audio twice before this, but life got in the way and the audio got to be “stale” before Tee could get it edited. This show came from the third attempt, and it marked the beginning of a six part series.

I will eventually add the other parts of the series to this feed, but I recommend that you check out the other episodes of Bird House Rules.

Doc

After a long, painful day of audio editing, I finally published Episode 1 of The Shrinking Man Project. This episode gives a little history of my weight loss journey, and the first installment of philosophy.

Full Show notes available at The Shrinking Man Project.

My podcasting debut happened back in July of 2010, with a writing credit. On July 17th, the Every Photo Tells… podcast dropped their 24th episode, featuring a story I wrote entitled The Gift. It is the story of an old woman visiting her first love, despite her husband of over 20 years. Or is it? I guess you’ll just have to listen and find out…

If you like this story, please go to the Every Photo Tells… site and sample some of the other stories. Or better yet, go to Podiobooks.com and subscribe to the Volume 1 collection of stories from the podcast.

Doc

This morning I dropped Episode 0 of my new podcast, The Shrinking Man Project. The official launch date for the podcast is December 19th, this episode is just an introduction to let folks know about what they should expect from the podcast.

From the show notes:

Please join me as I continue my weight loss journey. I’ve lost over 100 pounds in the past year, and I’m not done yet. Follow along as I share my observations on the ideas and attitudes that lead to successful weight loss, and the ways we set ourselves up to fail.

While the focus of The Shrinking Man Project is weight loss, many of these ideas can be applied to any kind of life change. Episodes will post weekly. Part of the podcast will be these bits of philosophy. In addition, each week I will check in with my listeners for my weekly weigh in, and a review of how I have been coping with the past week.

Please feel free to contact me at Doc@TheShrinkingManProject.com and share your challenges and sucesses. Part of the aim of this podcast is to build a community and support each other and share ideas.

The Shrinking Man Project is a Swimming Cat Studios production. For more information, go to http://theshrinkingmanproject.com. Some sound effects provided by The Freesound Project.

Subscribe to the podcast by using the feed http://theshrinkingmanproject.com/feed/podcast/.

Or Subscribe via iTunes.

This is my first podcast, and I am learning things in the fine Swimming Cat tradition, but I hope you’ll give it a listen and pass it on to your friends.

Doc

If you haven’t heard of Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris‘ Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novel Phoenix Rising, you’ve been missing out! If you have heard of it, you probably noticed this post, where Tee reveals to the world the cover of Phoenix Rising, which is due out in May of 2011 from Harper Voyager. I’m sure Pip has a similar article on her website, but unfortunately, it is blocked from where I am at the moment.

I’ve been waiting eagerly for this book to come out, having heard bits and pieces of it from Tee and Pip (Tease!). Everything I’ve heard indicates that this will be a great book. If you want to learn more about the book and the series, check out the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences website.

Make plans to buy this book in May! (Why can’t I just skip ahead to Balticon 45?)

Doc

Swimming Cat Studios is proud to open its doors! Metaphorically speaking, that is. This site is the parent organization for my various web projects. Why Swimming Cat Studios? Because I’m learning this all the same way the cat learned to swim: by jumping right in.

Currently, there are three sites under the Swimming Cat Studios banner.

• Scaleslea.net – My personal site and photo gallery.
• The Shrinking Man Project – A podcast journaling my weight loss journey and my observations on creating successful life changes.
• The Nifty Tech Blog – Tech Blog that finds the best and easiest to use technology around.

This feed will also contain occasional links to my appearances in other online projects. Once this site is fully up to speed, it will contain links to everything that I am doing online.

Doc