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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!

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.

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