For a hint of what you’ll find between the book covers, give a listen to the trailer and/or watch the video, then get to your favorite bookstore or online bookseller tomorrow and pick up a copy. In addition to being a greatly disturbed individual who has assured all his listeners on multiple occasions that he plans to kill them, Scott has given away some terrific fiction over the last several years. This is our chance to say thanks and give him a little support. I have a gift card that I’ve been reserving for just this occasion.

And remember, if it doesn’t sell, he may do for your hometown what he did to Detroit at the end of CONTAGIOUS. No pressure.

PROMO — Merciless Storytellers

INTERVIEW with P.G. Holyfield, author of Murder At Avedon Hill

PROMO — Murder At Avedon Hill Book Launch

Nominations are now open for the 2010 Parsec Awards, which means that anyone who is a fan of a certain show (or, ahem, a certain podcast novel) can nominate it for consideration. So, if any of you feel so inclined as to nominate Purgatory for the Best Speculative Fiction Story (Long Form) category, far be it from me to stop you. And while it would be entirely beneath me to remind you that you can submit nominations on the Parsec Awards Web site (or by sending an e-mail) any time between now and June 1, I understand other more shameless podcasters are doing just that. Personally, I find that to be undignified. (Incidentally, have you noticed that Parsec and Purgatory both start with the letter P? Just sayin’.)

Remaining above the fray while shopping for a tux,

Tim

And Purgatory is actually part of the reason for this blog post. Those of you who listen to a lot of podiobooks and are involved with the podcasting community are well familiar with the story I’m going to relay in the next couple of paragraphs, so feel free to skip ahead. However, some of you know this site only because you know me or because a friend gave you a CD of either Acts of Desperation or Purgatory, so this is fresh news to you.

Most of us in the podcast fiction community owe a debt in one way or another to Tee Morris, the guy who first podcasted a novel he had previously published. Tee has written two novels in the Morevi series — Morevi: The Chronicles of Rafe & Askana and Legacy of Morevi. As Dragon Moon Press was readying Legacy of Morevi for publication, Tee discovered podcasting and decided to give away a free, serialized podcast of the first book as a way to promote the second (to paraphrase Tee, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”) He recorded an abridged version of the 534 page book and blazed a trail for me and dozens of other aspiring authors. Soon, Scott Sigler and Mark Jeffrey jumped in with podcasts of their unpublished novels, and the podiobook was born.

Tee subsequently co-founded Podiobooks.com, launched an immensely helpful podcast for writers called The Survival Guide To Writing Fantasy, produced a Parsec Award winning unabridged podcast of his print novel Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword with a full cast of actors performing the voices, re-recorded Morevi (this time unabridged and with a full voice cast), guest starred in more podcast novels than I have time to count, and generally helped out virtually everyone who asked him. He also co-authored Podcasting for Dummies, Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies, and wrote All a Twitter, Sam’s Teach Yourself Twitter in 10 Minutes, and The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery (a sequel to The Case of the Singing Sword.) During all this, he grappled with a prolonged search for permanent employment while still very generously giving his time to other podcast authors. When I first released Acts of Desperation as a podcast and was fretting about the low audience numbers I was getting, Tee chatted with me on Skype and talked me off the window ledge. I had the pleasure of spending time with him at Balticon last year and on one of my business trips to Washington.

On January 5 of this year, Tee’s wife Natalie died very suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving him as the single father of a five year-old girl who’d just lost her mom. The response of the podcasting community, led by the amazing Pip Ballantine, has made me proud to call myself a part of it. Pip organized a very successful Chipin fundraiser to help Tee cover the funeral costs, but she didn’t stop there. She dreamed of an internet-based auction where people could bid on all sorts of treasures donated by anyone with an interest, and raise money to start a trust fund for Tee’s daughter, who goes by the code name “Sonic Boom” (to protect her privacy, he avoids using her real name on the ‘Net.)

The result of Pip’s efforts will occur on Saturday, February 27 starting at 10 AM Eastern Standard Time, when The Boom Effect goes live. As of right now, the auction includes 76 lots, though more could come in before starting time. One of them is a rare (that is to say, the only) print copy of Purgatory. It will be autographed by me and by J.R. Blackwell, who took the cover photograph and who has so much talent in so many areas that it’s kind of unfair to us mere mortals. I arranged for Lulu.com to publish the book, and I must say they did an amazing job. If my writing career ever moves beyond the self-publishing stage, I hope the end product looks as good as the one I got from Lulu.

If you enjoyed Purgatory and would like to own the only print copy, please consider bidding on it during The Boom Effect on February 27. Every nickle of your purchase price will go to Sonic Boom’s trust fund; I’m picking up the printing and shipping costs (for shipping within the continental U.S.). And please, take a look at the other auction lots. There is an awful lot of good stuff going up for sale that day; my contribution is one very small part of it.

No amount of money can replace SB’s mom or fill the emotional void left by a wife and mother. It can, however, ease the financial worries that accompany such a traumatic event. To the extent you are able and inclined to buy something next Saturday, I heartily urge you to do so. I know that 2010 has started poorly and that all our concerns have rightly focused on the devastation experienced by some of God’s most vulnerable people in Haiti. None of us involved in The Boom Effect want to take away from anyone’s efforts to help the people there. But if you have the cash to spare and you see something you like for sale in the auction, you would be helping make a little girl’s future a little bit brighter.

Thank you.

Wonderful things happen to a boy of 11 or 12 or 13. And some of those wonderful things are also awful, confusing and frustrating things. He discovers girls in a new way. He develops (in my case) acne on steroids. And he hears about this really cool book titled The Catcher in the Rye. I grew up in a house that had no books. It took some powerful peer pressure to interest me in a book, but when you’re extremely tall and skinny (at 12, I was 6’ 2” and 150 pounds) with a possibly terminal case of acne—-you long to fit in. So I read J.D. Salinger’s book. How does a Catholic boy in Louisville, Kentucky indentify with Manhattan-born Holden Caulfield? Well, it happened. And it continues to happen for millions of adolescents all over the world. Salinger was writing for adults, but it’s young people—especially 12-year-old boys—who embrace the book and sustain its legend. Transformed by reading “Catcher,” I found Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. I was hooked on Salinger and his Glass family, wondering where I fit among Seymour, Buddy, Boo Boo, Walt, Waker, Zooey and Franny. While the Beats were proclaiming their alienation, Salinger was mainstreaming neurosis, paving the way for Woody Allen. When I exhausted the Salinger output, I longed for more. I found The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, then a biography of my President, JFK, and I was on my way to Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner. Then Henry James, Mellville and Twain. Ultimately, even Tolstoy and Flaubert. Thomas Merton and Thomas Mann. Andre Gide, Albert Camus and Jose Luis Borges. My library grew in this time of the 35-cent Dell paperback. I once had to move to a bigger place to accomodate all my books. Then, last April, my wife of 30 years divorced me and I moved to a condo that had no room for a library of many thousands of books. I donated most of them to American University and miss them very much. But it all started with Jerome David Salinger and his magical book. Critics pounded Salinger and he went into hiding. It’s said that he continued to write, but did not publish. Too bad. I am now 50 years removed from that 12-year-old boy—-but I remember him and his immersion in “Catcher.” Critics may not have high regard for J.D. Salinger, but he got millions of young people to read. Critics also didn’t care for James Michener, but more people learned history from Michener’s novels than they did from the world’s great historians.

Jerry—-can you hear me? I know the critics hammered your books, but I loved them—and so did many millions of others. And I know your peers said you were an egomaniacal womanizing bastard. And it couldn’t have pleased you that your little fling with that young vixen Joyce Maynard ended up with her saying you were a weirdo control freak with sexual problems. And having your daughter trash you in a book and reveal that you drink your own urine was not a Hallmark family moment. But hey, as my ex-wife would tell you, we all have our little flaws. In the end, I conclude that you——and you alone—-are the guy who led me to a richly rewarding lifetime of reading.

Thanks Jer.

Bob

via Salinger – Home/Blog – The Bob Edwards Show.

Listen to “Beautiful Fool” by Kathy Mattea

I can honestly say that I would not be podcasting my fiction were it not for the example and generosity of Tee Morris. In recognition of his loss, my podcast is going dark for a few days. Look for the new episode late this coming weekend.

And, if you have a couple of bucks to spare, there’s a guy and a little girl in Northern Virginia who sure could use some support right now. Please consider giving. God bless.

“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

One thing we know – there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all.”

Tee Morris and Philippa Ballantine, two of the best podcast novelists you’re likely to hear, have been collaborating on a novel for many moons now. They gave the world a sneak peak at the project, titled Books & Braun, with a reading at the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose, California a few weeks ago.

For those who might not be familiar with their work, Tee is the author of the Morevi series of print and podcast novels, the Billibub Baddings Mysteries series, several non-fiction titles, including two Podcasting For Dummies books and two recently-released books about Twitter. His print and podcast novel The Case of the Singing Sword: A Billibub Baddings Mystery won a Parsec Award in 2008. He has hosted the wildly popular writing podcast The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy for the last four years and is now ending its run with a four-part final episode.

Pip is one of New Zealand’s two great contributions to popular culture (film director Peter Jackson being the other.) She is the author of the print and podcast novels Weaver’s Web, Chasing the Bard, and the award-nominated Digital Magic; she launched the podcast of Digital Magic two weeks ago. Earlier this year, Pip signed a contract with Ace Books; Ace will release her next novel, Geist, in the fall of 2010.

Besides being extremely talented, entertaining, and hard-working, both of these folks are among the most generous people I’ve ever met. Give a listen to this excerpt, and if you feel so inclined, leave comments on their Web sites (here and here.) I know they’d love to hear from you.

To all my U.S. listeners, have a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday. To the rest of you, just enjoy the day!

Interested yet? It gets better. If you’re not quite ready to plunk down $14.99 for it yet, sample it online. For a limited time, 7th Son: Descent is available as a free PDF from Google Books. Download it and read the first few pages, or listen to the remastered podcast that Hutch started releasing last week. This is a new-and-improved version of the podcast that grabbed the world of podcast fiction in 2006 and hasn’t let go since.

I can only speak for my reaction to this story, but I can tell you this much: If you read it to the last page, the only thing you will say is, “When the hell do I get book two? You can’t leave me hanging like this!”

Help Hutch make this book a success and book two will be on its way to publication. This is a big day for Hutch and all podcast fiction writers. A lot is riding on the success of this book; the fact that it is one gripping story makes the effort to ensure its success worthwhile. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did listening to it, and I hope you’ll consider buying a copy. My local indie bookstore should be holding my pre-ordered copy as I write this.

Congratulations, Hutch!

After the awards ceremony, several of us gathered in the room at the Hilton occupied by Chooch and Viv, P.G. Holyfield and Patrick McLean for post-Parsec revelry. At some point, Kim the Comic Book Goddess and Patrick decided to write a song about zombies, set to the tune of The Rainbow Connection, a song made famous by Kermit the Frog in the first Muppet Movie. If you know Kim, you know that she never goes anywhere without her guitar, and she’s let me play it more than once. While she and Patrick ground out new lyrics, I worked out the chords to the song, and after 30 minutes, everyone was ready. Because this was a room full of podcasters, something like 18 Zoom H2s suddenly appeared, lest this moment somehow not get captured for posterity. And so it was, with Kim providing the vocals and yours truly accompanying on her guitar.

Here for your listening enjoyment is the world premiere, live, unplugged, undubbed, unpolished, un… well, you get the idea. The Zombie Connection. Enjoy.

That’s right, I went to a game at Yankee Stadium this afternoon.

I know what you’re thinking: That I’ll have to go to confession or something before I try to attend another Red Sox game at Fenway. Still, my youngest son has somehow grown up a Yankee fan (I haven’t ruled out DNA testing to confirm paternity.) I blame his mother’s insidious influence for this. In any case, today was the last day of the Yanks’ home stand; they hit the road after today until Aug. 6 (when the Red Sox come to town to administer a proper thrashing.) And so it was that we left Vermont after my brother and sister-in-law’s wedding yesterday and drove for a couple of hours so we would be that much closer to New York this morning, enabling us to make a timely arrival at the new baseball palace on East 161st Street. Hey, it’s a dad thing.

I’ve got to say, it’s a pretty amazing stadium. Modern but still with some of those old-fashioned touches, like the signature facade from the Yankee Stadium of old. The seats were very comfortable and the restrooms clean. The food and drink prices stopped just short of blatant robbery. Our “assigned” seats were in Section 307, in the deck second from the top directly behind the right field foul pole. My youngest and I started the game up there. My wife has issues with sitting very high up at sporting events, so she remained downstairs with my middle son. We had a terrific view, though the intense sun (yes, it does come out on occasion this summer) made me a little sleepy. However, sometime around the third inning, I received a text message summoning us downstairs to Section 125. It seems my wife had fanagled four seats there for us, directly across from third base on the lowest level. This gave an even better view for those of us actually interested in baseball and a fine perspective for the person among us whose primary interest was Derek Jeter’s physique.

The day was far from perfect, in that the Yankees prevailed over the Oakland A’s, 7-5. Worse, the Red Sox’ continuing experiment with John Smoltz suffered a setback as the Orioles beat them, 6-2. This allowed the Yankees to add a game to their lead in the A.L. East. However, my son got to see his pitching role model, Mariano Rivera, come in and save the game for the Yanks, and that’s really what he wanted to see. So, I’m glad for him. That said, I hope the Red Sox slap Rivera silly when they visit the Bronx in August.

On Tuesday we check out the Mets’ new home, CitiField, in Queens. I’ll post an in-depth, quality comparison of the two facilities that will contemplate an analysis of ambiance, quality of views, and customer service. Or it may just depend on the selection and price of beer. Either way, you’ll get my thoughts, such as they may be.

Obviously, the answer is no. He and his new bride are crazy about each other and about the little girl of whom they are, legally-speaking, foster parents and whom they want to adopt. He’s a successful salesman and she’s a kindergarten teacher, which qualifies her, among other things, to understand the dynamics of the New York State Senate. But I digress…

They got married on a mountaintop in the Green Mountains of Vermont. You could see clear across Lake Champlain to the Adirondacks in New York from up there (with the help of a guide, I was able to pick out Whiteface Mountain, near Lake Placid.) The bride walked down the aisle as my brother played his guitar and sang Thank You, a song from Led Zeppelin’s second album, making this the first wedding ceremony I’ve ever attended that featured music from Led Zep. A friend of theirs officiated the ceremony with a mixture of dignity and good humor. My niece read a Maya Angelou poem, and then it was time for the couple to recite their vows, which they wrote. My brother literally had everyone in tears. He is a superb writer; I wish he would podcast some of his fiction. The first time I read one of his horror pieces, I informed him that, for the first time in my life, I was a little afraid of him. Sigler would have been proud.

The bride, too, recited a very emotional and heartfelt vow. It really was one of the sweetest wedding ceremonies I’ve ever attended. The reception was held in the backyard of two of their friends, complete with a bluegrass band led by a 12 year-old fiddle prodigy. This girl looks like an average American middle-schooler and plays the fiddle like she’s been practicing every day for a couple of decades. All in all, a very intimate, fun, and touching day.

Pat and Sonia, you have all my love and best wishes for long and happy lives together. PS In honor of your wedding, the Red Sox beat the Orioles today, 7-2.

Having said that, I’ll now proceed to make this about me — specifically, my memories of them. For Farrah Fawcett, my memories begin and end with The Poster, and if you were a teenager in the mid- to late-70s, you know exactly what I’m talking about. She was an insanely gorgeous blonde in her late 20s; I was an adolescent white boy. Need I say more? I shared a bedroom with my brother Rick, and one of us hung that poster on the wall; I honestly don’t remember which one of us it was (it could well have been me.) I really have no memories of her as an actress; I’m sure I must have watched Charlie’s Angels, but I don’t remember a single episode. I understand from the tributes I read yesterday that she was able to transcend the eye candy image with her later movie roles. More important, I think, is the courage she showed in the last months of her life, especially the TV documentary that aired last month. I know how rotten I look when I have a head cold; she let cameras film her as she was fighting cancer, when she felt a million times worse. Don’t underestimate how hard that must have been for her.

With Michael Jackson, I remember the Jackson 5 Saturday morning cartoon. I remember when I was 10 or so, I got a small paperback about the Jackson 5 from one of those book orders kids get in school. When I was in sixth grade, my homeroom teacher used to give us a half-hour or so once in a while to spin records and just hang out. Someone used to play Michael Jackson’s record Ben over and over. It remains one of my favorites of his, even if it was the title song for a movie about a rat.

Flash forward to 1983. I moved to Washington, D.C. for my last semester of college to do an internship and lived there for a year after graduation. Michael Jackson’s Thriller album was the soundtrack for that summer. This morning, I heard the opening seconds of Want To Be Starting Something and I was instantly transported back to that humid Washington summer. It’s hard to overstate how ubiquitous his music was in 1983-84. The album produced seven hit singles, and I still know most of them about as well as I know my own pulse. He was, at that time and at age 25, probably the most idolized man in America.

Like so many others, I lost track of him in ensuing years. His follow-ups to Thriller were progressively less successful, at least in terms of airplay. I bought a copy of the Bad album for my wife during her first pregnancy; unfortunately, she listened to it during her morning sickness period and forever after associated that music with nausea, so it seldom got played after that. His reported eccentric behavior made me wonder what exactly was going on with him, though I tried to keep in mind the remote possibility that the media might just be distorting the story a smidge. The things we know for certain, that he had young boys at his home for sleepovers, showed incredibly poor judgment. The molestation trial, on charges for which he was acquitted, was an almost inevitable result of that. And anyone who has ever been a parent (and a good many who haven’t) still shudder at the video of him dangling his infant child over a hotel balcony railing in Berlin. It was an unbelievably reckless thing to do.

Still, how much did any of us really know about Michael Jackson? He lived his entire life with a spotlight on him. If I couldn’t drive to the mall without attracting a crowd, I’d get a little weird within about 10 days. He lived that way from age 11 on. So those of us who used to make him the butt of jokes (I plead guilty) should be rethinking our behavior today.

We lost yesterday two very talented people at young ages. Farrah was only 62, and Michael was but 50, and since I’m only a couple of years from 50 myself, I really feel that 50 is very young. Today, I’m not not feeling quite so young. Two parts of my youth left the stage for good, one of them very unexpectedly. Two more very important reminders of how fleeting and precious each day is.

Rest in peace, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.

In any case, this work sounds like nothing I’ve ever read before. It comes equipped with all kinds of extras that give clues to the story, web sites, e-mail addresses, phone numbers. It sounds more like an immersion than a mere book.

Some of the brightest lights in podcast fiction put together this video trailer. Take a few minutes to watch. Get yourself good and creeped out. Then go out and buy it. As Hutch would say about his novel of an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane:

“Get Committed.”

Wait no longer…help push Nina Kimberly up the Amazon charts. Support podcast fiction!

The first video features our heroine fending off a group of ruthless vampires. Will Nina have to turn up the heat?

The second one features a snarling, bloodthirsty werewolf. Viewer discretion is advised.

They just don’t make films like this anymore.

Anyway, be sure to visit Amazon.com on Friday, May 15, and order a copy (or two…or three) of Nina Kimberly the Merciless. Support podcast fiction and treat yourself to a magical tale about a beautiful barbarian, a king with the IQ of plant life, a dragon with a sense of social justice, and a handsome Robin Hood for hire. Visit ninakimberly.com to find out more.