Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:18 — 12.7MB)
Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS
Adam Christopher suggested we talk about stepping back when get frustrated and being grateful for what you have accomplished so far.
(Boy do I wish that were true…)
I’m taking some time off from podcasting while I finish my work-in-progress, which is close to being done. But I’m driving hard to write as much as possible, launch Minecraft: The Lost Journals, and stay sane during the summer of busy travel and family stuff. So I’m taking some time to finish the book, and then some time to recover. I may put some stuff out here and there, but I can’t promise anything till August.
Thanks so much for your support!
Beta readers sometimes suck. We deal.
Welcome to the Advent Shopping Network, where we’re on the air no matter what is falling from the sky!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (17.2MB)
Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS
We talk awards and feedback and I wonder what happened at WorldCon. We will find out when I record again!
ONE WEEK till I Should Be Writing comes out! Get your preorder now!
Affiliate Links:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (25.4MB)
Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS
I recover from the latest depression cloud and enter into pre-vacation frenzy. This one is late, and the next one will be two weeks from this one. (August 14)
Ditch Diggers will be on hiatus for most of August, as I’m traveling and Matt is moving, and we’re both super frantic busy.
But here I recover from my latest short depressive period, and talk about why writing my new book is hard. Every book is your first, according to Gene Wolfe and Neil Gaiman.
If you’re going to WorldCon, let me know! And come to the live Ditch Diggers show on Thursday!
And HEY preorder my book cause it’s awesome!
Affiliate Links:
“Maybe we can use prisoners.”
The eager-faced private was probably a little older than most recruits, but carried herself well as she refilled water glasses in the war room.
Admiral Kang looked around slowly, murder in her eyes. “Did someone ask your opinion?”
“Er, no ma’am, I just thought if you can’t find someone to risk their lives in the barrel, then you could perhaps send a prisoner in there to do it.” The private swallowed nervously and her hand tightened on the water jug.
“The weapon will probably kill them during the test fire. That’s what happens when you’re in a barrel of a giant weapon. If they face death on the outside why would they face death on the inside?”
“Well, you said it would ‘probably’ kill them. If the weapon doesn’t kill them, then you can promise to release them?” the private said, her voice dry.
Admiral Kang briefly considered this. Then she shook her head.
“The problem, I think, is the weapon’s design,” Captain Folda said, leaning back in his chair his feet lifting slightly off the floor. “Test fires are suicide. Who thought it was a good idea to place the diagnostic computer inside the actual barrel of the weapon?”
Kang glared at the short man. She hated the way he spoke, unsure and hesitant, always saying “I think” when it was bloody obvious that when he spoke, he was thinking the words that came out of his mouth.
“Of course it’s in the design. That’s why we can’t fix it. That’s why we need a workaround,” she said. “I wish I could put the actual design team in there to fire the weapon. That would be fitting punishment.”
“All are dead but one,” said Dr. Wu, the physicist who oversaw the project. He looked at a tablet and scrolled through some names. “One of the designers: an Aleksandra Zielinski. A prodigy, it seems.”
The private had begun to slink from the room, obviously hoping to escape now that the focus was elsewhere.
“Private,” Admiral Kang barked. “What did you say your name was?”
|
What happens next? That’s up to you. Read more about The Page One Project here.
Links are affiliate.
|
  |
I was on vacation last week and missed posting the latest ISBW. So there will be a new Ditch Diggers later today, ISBW later this week, and ISBW next Monday to make sure we’re caught up. Then a live DD the following Monday cause I’m seeing Matt in person soon.
And I’m cooking up something cool for the live DD at WorldCon! And I will NOT mess up the recording this time! Cross my heart and all that.
I am working on a redesign to my site (OK, Pablo Defendini is working on the redesign, I’m just watching) and in cleaning some things up, I have broken others (mainly the Ditch Diggers site). This will be fixed when the new site launches.
Speaking of things that I broke: many of you have told me that the Ditch Diggers feed isn’t updating, and I’m sorry about that. I have gone into iTunes and put a new feed for ITunes to grab, and it should be fixed within 24 hours or so.
<— Aside- BACK IN MY DAY fixing your feed within iTunes was nigh-impossible. Once you told iTunes what your feed was, you were stuck. I wasn’t too optimistic about this fix, but then found out iTunes has changed in the past 10 years. Who would have thought?
So the Ditch Diggers feed should be fixed shortly. Crossing fingers.
HEY did you know that you can win a copy of Bookburners from Goodreads? It’s true! Enter the giveaway here to win the glorious doorstop of a book with stories by me, Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, and Brian Francis Slattery.
I hate to toot my own horn, but who’s gonna toot it if I don’t? Last week Six Wakes got awesome coverage in Popular Mechanics! They listed Six Wakes as one of the best SF books of 2017 (so far). Seriously.
The clock was already going to tell him he’d lost the spot, wasn’t it? He hated the thing, it was small, beeping, and insistent. It had no personality, but Michael hated it as if it had told him his mother was dead.
His mother was dead, actually, but the alarm couldn’t know that. It knew nothing except the time, and the time was Too Late.
He reached over the stained mattress and felt along the floor until he found the cheap digital clock. He’d bought it at the pawn shop while trying not to think of what poor bastard was so down on their luck that they got value from pawning a piece of shit clock. He had punched SNOOZE three times and was now ready to yank the cord from the wall. His hangover assailed him from behind his eyes and somewhere in the back of his throat. Something had to die, and it was going to be that wretched clock.
The sound stopped right before his hand fell on the clock. He blinked slowly, unable to process. Then it started again, and he grabbed the clock and threw it.
It gave no resistance at all, trailing its cord behind it. He’d already yanked it out of the wall.
He searched for the source of the noise, which continued to blare like a siren. His phone. It was underneath his clothes from last night. He squinted at it, and a dim memory appeared from the night before. He’d been drinking with other musicians and had laughed and changed his conductor’s ringtone to be the most obnoxious siren his phone could provide. It had seemed funny.
The ringing stopped abruptly, and then the phone began to ping as texts rolled in. They had different levels of profanity and threats, but they all said essentially the same thing:
Where the hell are you?
We’re practicing The Mediterranean Song today and we can’t do it without you.
|
What happens next? That’s up to you. Read more about The Page One Project here.
Links are affiliate. * Title supplied by Paul Byford – thanks, Paul! |
|
