Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #92: So you’re working from home now…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:56 — 37.4MB)

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NOTE- Recorded last week (the 12th I think?) and the news has moved fast since.

Matt and Mur come to you live from their shiny new quarantine room within the new Ditch Diggers mansion.

  • The Ditch Diggers are not theological scholars.
  • COVID-19 is discussed, as is America’s response to it, because how could they not be? It’s a pandemic. And Matt and Mur are in America.
  • Many people are working at home right now, and thus the topic of the episode emerges.
  • How “doing more stuff around the house” can become your whole day when you work from home, and transitioning your daily/weekly commute time into valuable work-from-home time.
  • The foundation of your new work-from-home routine is still getting ready like you’re going to go to work.
  • You have to find your version of pants.
  • Advice for people for whom “stick to a routine” is useless advice, and how writers are the worst people to put in charge of writers.
  • Working from home with partners/spouses and also kids.
  • Matt talks about staying in the moment when you work from home, triaging tasks, and the almighty reward system.
  • Mur talks about her Two-Face-esque random chance method of managing daily tasks.
  • At the end of the day, you just have to find the method that works for you, and working from home is a wholly individualistic thing.
  • Mur talks about the Pomodoro Method and Matt invents the Pompadour Method.
  • Twitter Q&A! Topics include choosing your “people,” those from whom you take advice on your work.
  • Read more romance!
  • The ceremonial end of episode shilling (buy Mur’s SIX WAKES which is still not about a space deli and please preorder Matt’s book SAVAGE LEGION).

Affiliate links to our books! NOTE that Six Wakes is a Kindle Monthly Deal in March!

Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #91: Q&A Time!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:05 — 35.6MB)

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  • Matt and Mur come to you live from the snack tent outside the construction site where the new Ditch Diggers mansion will one day be.
  • Everybody loves snacks, and it’s a fun word to say.
  • Mur and Matt don’t know if construction workers call it a “snack tent,” but they want their construction worker aspiring writer listeners to popularize it for them.
  • Personal lives! They happen, and they must take precedent, and for Matt and Mur personal lives have been an issue recently.
  • Tiger Balm is the greatest name for anything ever created.
  • It is going to be one of the Ditch Diggers’ infamous, patented, ever popular Q&A/feedback episodes!
    A question concerning the need to be “marketable” to agents, and when/if to broach topics like your ability to continue regularly producing books.
  • A listener reacting to Matt’s previous rant on publisher’s marketing ability asks about the necessity/value of traditional publishing, and the Ditch Diggers discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both trad and self-publishing.
  • The definition of “debut” author and when and how it’s appropriate to use the label is discussed.
  • Children age, and it is hard on those observing it.
  • Matt is steadily becoming anti-list, and he apologizes for mispronouncing a listener’s name repeatedly.
  • With the questions answered, the Ditch Diggers commit the traditional end of episode shilling.

Affiliate links to our books!

Books, Books, Consuming media, News, Projects

News! Updates! Stuff!

I’m slowly returning to getting shit done, and wanted to make a few announcements:

  • I can finally announce my book deal! I have a three book deal with Ace, and I’m excited to be working with my new publisher! More info when marketing allows it.
  • I’m co-editing an anthology for Escape Pod’s 15th anniversary! S.B. Divya and I are bringing together some reprints and some original stories to make an Escape Pod anthology, out from Titan books!
  • Six Wakes is a Kindle MONTHLY Deal! Check it- for all of March, Six Wakes is on sale for $3!
  • Currently reading: Docile by KM Szpara and Or What You Will by Jo Walton (ARC). Both recommended.
  • And the podcasts are returning this week!
Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #90: Kameron Hurley and Writing THAT Story

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:03:52 — 43.5MB)

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Matt and Mur come to you live from the jigsaw where they are cutting the joists for the brand new Ditch Diggers HQ!

  • Brief discourse on Timothy Olyphant, aka Olyphantastic.
  • The spike in your daily allergies is probably caused by tree sexism.
  • Mur interviewed Kameron Hurley at ConFusion last month and you’re going to hear it on this episode.
  • Before that, Matt and Mur talk about publisher vs. author responsibility and dig into the American Dirt catastrophe.
  • What to do as an author or other professional when big publishers, possibly even publishers with whom you’re affiliated, behave harmfully or problematically.
  • Matt announces a new book deal!
  • We go live-via-prerecorded-tape-but-not-really-tape to ConFusion where Mur talks to blockbuster author Kameron Hurley!
  • Mur and Hurley are at ConFusion, but they are not confused, nor are they drunk.
  • THAT story publishing by Clarkesworld, and being the author of a story that goes viral and polarizes people so widely and heavily.
  • Hurley talks about criticism, more specifically how authors should (and shouldn’t) relate to it.
  • Content warnings, their evolution, and their purpose and validity, and being aware as creators that your content is going to provoke reactions in those who consume it, good and bad.
  • Hurley finds an excuse to talk at length about The Witcher.
  • Hurley advises authors on what to do if they find they have written THAT story.
  • Hurley shills her many platforms and works, all of which are good things.
  • Returning to Ditch Diggers HQ-in-Progress, Matt and Mur end the show.
  • Matt beseeches you to preorder and talk about his forthcoming epic fantasy novel, SAVAGE LEGION.