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Ditch Diggers #55: Christopher Brown and Timely Subjects

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:49 — 39.4MB)

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ARGH I put this in the feed but somehow didn’t make the blog post live! Here is #55. #56 will be coming soon.

Notes of Show:

Matt and Mur come to you live from Morgan Freeman’s Border Crossing (it’s an inside reference) with special guest co-host Christopher Brown.
Morgan’s border crossing is a cerebral crossing into expanding your mind (Matt mostly comes here for the colors), because Morgan is an open-world kind of guy.
Mur apologizes to Christopher for inadvertently botching her recording of Christopher’s interview on her OTHER podcast, I Should Be Writing.
Christopher talks about his novel, Tropic of Kansas (Harper Voyager, 2017), a dystopian road trip about a walled-off America, and how the themes and events in the book came to life around him after he finished it.
The Ditch Diggers discuss with Chris how writing a novel that abruptly became so topical affected, for better or worse, the process of shopping his novel to publishes and selling the book to the public.
The folly of chasing headlines and current events in your fiction, and how it mimics attempting to write to the market and chase the next fiction “trend.”
Matt and Mur engage Christopher on the subject of award season, as his novel is on the long list for the Compton Crook Award, and the three discuss the do’s and don’t’s of campaigning for literary awards.
Christopher talks about how awards and the marketing of them can be used to spotlight underseen and unrecognized work from around the world, using an anthology of Mexican fiction he edited/translated that was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, and how it affected and validated the authors, as a prime example.
The Ditch Diggers dive into the email question bag and take on the always popular topic of MFA’s.
The customary end of episode shilling (Ditch Diggers is once again eligible for Best Fancast Hugo!)

Twitter handles: Mur, Matt, Chris

Affiliate links to our books!

Podcasts, Projects, Transcript

[Transcript] Ditch Diggers #53: The Money Taboo

January 25, 2018

Theme Song: [00:00:04] Ditch Diggers appear, ain’t no wannabes here. With some not so nice advice for your writing career. To be clear, no punches will be pulled, but the punch may be spiked, how they like before they get on the mic. To my left we got the mighty Mur Lafferty, and if I piss her off, believe me, she’ll come after me. And her co-host Matt F’n Wallace on the right, yeah she may be half his height, but she could take him in a fight. So settle in folks, buckle in, and boot up. Time to meddle in a way to make you write or shut up. It’s hard work, but the perk is that it’s fun and exciting. Facebook will still be there when you’re done writing. Ditch Diggers!

Mur: [00:00:44] Ditch Diggers #53 coming to you live from Morgan Freeman’s gender neutral statue factory. It’s the Ditch Diggers with Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace. How are you Matt?

Matt: [00:00:55] I’m good, Mur. I didn’t expect the factory to be in New Jersey, oddly. I feel like I judged New Jersey unfairly in that respect. But here we are.

(more…)

Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #54: Retcons and JKR

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:09 — 43.9MB)

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NOTE- I got an important call in the middle of this episode and was a tad distracted for the rest of the show. But Matt’s on a good enough tear that I’m not needed much anyway. I can let you know the purpose of the call some other time.

Matt and Mur come to you live from Morgan Freeman’s official historical retconning chamber.
Matt makes it clear that Morgan Freeman’s retconning chamber is NOT to be confused with a time machine.
Somewhere between Morgan Freeman cross-breeding bees and butterflies and Mur being responsible for the diamond trade, the Ditch Diggers explain the concept of retconning.
How retconning, while sometimes necessary in and accepted as part of the vernacular of the comics medium, is more often than not detrimental to writing and publishing novels, using JK Rowling’s constant retconning of the Harry Potter books as an example.
The difference between retconning to continue telling a story and retconning for the sake of altering the past.
Matt recaps the controversy over the handling of Dumbledore in the forthcoming Fantastic Beast movie (spoiler alert: No gay Dumbledore), and gives his opinion on why JK Rowling retconning the HP books is a detrimental betrayal.
Mur talks about how if characters in fiction aren’t explicitly identified, audiences will default to straight and white, using Hunger Games as an example.
What the JK Rowling situation can teach smaller authors about brand management for themselves and their book series, specifically making promises on which they can’t deliver and not engaging legitimate criticism of their public behavior.
How being an author in the SFF field reacting publicly to one of these situations can also affect your brand.
How, in Matt’s opinion, popular authors, especially in SFF, are given “passes” when they screw up if they’ve accrued enough good will points and the cliquishness of fiction communities and how they protect those authors.
On being aware enough to acknowledge and deal with your problematic behavior as it happens.
Mur and Matt are working to make Ditch Diggers a more inclusive podcast and need your help to do it through their Patreon.
The customary end-of-episode shilling, including Hugo Award awareness raising.

Affiliate links to our books!

Podcasts, Projects

ISBW #392: Convention How-To

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:14 — 18.0MB)

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It’s time for the yearly discussion about conventions, how to talk to pros, how to talk to editors and agents, and don’t harass people.

ISBW is sponsored by Serial Box! Yes, my publisher for Bookburners, one of my favorite projects I’ve worked on in the past few years! Get a discount on a whole season of content with the code WRITING18.

HEY- did you know I’m offering transcriptions of both ISBW and Ditch Diggers? They will go up as soon as I get them for Patreon supporters, and a bit later for everyone else. It’s only at the $1 level, and you’re helping me offer a more accessible show, so pledge now!

- Current Writing Project: LIMBY (code name), a standalone SF book.
- Currently reading: The Sol Majestic (ARC) by Ferrett Steinmetz (follow me on Goodreads if you like, I’m usually reading a bunch of stuff at once.)
- Last movie seen: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Affiliate links to my books!

Podcasts, Projects, Transcript

[Transcript] Ditch Diggers #52: Cleaning Out Old Business

Ditch Diggers #52

January 18, 2018

Theme Song: [00:00:05] Ditch Diggers appear, ain’t no wannabes here. With some not so nice advice for your writing career. To be clear, no punches will be pulled, but the punch may be spiked, how they like before they get on the mic. To my left we got the mighty Mur Lafferty, and if I piss her off, believe me, she’ll come after me. And her co-host Matt F’n Wallace on the right, yeah she may be half his height, but she could take him in a fight. So settle in folks, buckle in, and boot up. Time to meddle in a way to make you write or shut up. It’s hard work, but the perk is that it’s fun and exciting. Facebook will still be there when you’re done writing. Ditch Diggers!
Mur: [00:00:46] Coming to you live from Morgan Freeman’s snow bungalow. It is the Ditch Diggers with Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace. Happy New Year!
Matt: [00:00:55] Happy New Year, Mur. It’s our first episode of 2018. These are exciting times. (more…)

Podcasts, Projects

ISBW #391: Emotions Get In the Way

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:11 — 17.7MB)

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I got some News. I wish I could tell, but I can’t. But the news has made my brain and schedule all higgledy piggeldy. So I talk about that.

Current Writing Project: LIMBY (code name), a standalone SF book.
Currently reading: Miranda in Milan (ARC) by Katharine Duckett (follow me on Goodreads if you like, I’m usually reading a bunch of stuff at once.)
Last movie seen: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Affiliate links to my books!

Podcasts, Projects, Transcript

[Transcript] ISBW #390: Timelines

January 25, 2018

Original podcast here.
PDF: ISBW-390-transcription

Mur: [00:00:00] Hi there, welcome to I Should Be Writing: the podcast for wanna-be fiction writers. I’m your host Mur Lafferty, and I already recorded this today, but it was in the car. I like recording in the car, like thinking in the car, like talking in the car, and then I get home and I look at the audio, and I’m like, “I don’t want to give this to you, because the audio is crap because you can hear all the car stuff in the background.” Maybe if I got a better mic, I don’t know. But so, I’m re-doing this. Of course, now the dogs are in the background. I can’t win.

[00:01:08] But, what I’ve been up to is we got a … went to ConFusion last weekend. Had a really great time with other writers and some editors and some agents, and there were fun panels. I did a reading of something I had just written, which is kind of scary, but awesome. It went over well, anyway. And now I’m home working on a variety of big deadlines and small. I’m working on my new novel, and that’s going pretty well. But I’ve got other more important deadlines, which of course is why it’s easy for me to work on the novel, because my brain is a jerk. (more…)

Podcasts, Projects, Transcript

[Transcript] ISBW #389: Get Bored

I’ve worked getting a transcription service going for my podcasts, and will be transcribing the episodes from 2018. Having an accessible podcast is important to me. It’s not cheap however, so I’ll be adding a few tiers to the Patreon to help pay for it.

It will be up for only Patreon supporters for a week, then it will go up here for everyone.

NOTE: I am posting the text here. If you would rather I post the transcription PDF as a link, then let me know. I’m new at this.

—

ISBW 389

January 17, 2018

Original blog post is here.>

Mur : [00:00:00] Hi there. Welcome to I Should Be Writing: the podcast for wanna-be fiction writers. I’m your host, Mur Lafferty. Happy New Year! I know it’s middle of January, but hey, what better time to talk about New Year’s resolutions, because everybody else has stopped talking about New Year’s resolutions because they’re already forgotten two weeks in. I could be exaggerating. Maybe some of you were holding on to them, maybe some are not. But revisit them. What did you think you were going to change this year? I made one resolution this year, and I’ve been ok at keeping up with it. In short, my resolution is get bored. I know that sounds kind of silly, but the deal is when you’re bored your mind wanders. When your mind wanders, you get good creative ideas. If you’re bored and you pick up your phone or tablet and play Candy Crush, you’re not getting good ideas, you’re playing Candy Crush.
(more…)

Podcasts, Projects

Ditch Diggers #53: The Money Taboo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:05:10 — 43.5MB)

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Matt and Mur come to you live from Morgan Freeman’s Gender-Neutral Statue Factory in New Jersey (and talk about why they chose the show’s patron well).
Matt talks about adjusting to his new schedule with a full-time marketing writing job atop his existing full-time fiction writing job.
Mur apologizes for the delay in getting the last episode posted via the blog (and how she’s a pro-am DJ).
Mur recaps ConFusion (including a shoutout to author Michael R. Underwood), and Ditch Diggers possibly featuring a guest appearance by Justina Ireland in the near future.
A brief interlude to silence Mur’s excitably adorable dog.
Mur talks about the importance of medicating regularly when you’re prescribed medication, the consequences of not doing that, and how to cope with it.
How that led to an epiphany on Mur’s part about the meaning behind being mindful. She explains that epiphany, and Matt weighs in with his take on mindfulness.
Everybody needs schtick.
The Ditch Diggers talk about author Fonda Lee’s Twitter thread concerning how much she makes from her books, the response to it, positive and negative, and share their thoughts on transparency in authors’ income.
How to address the core issues behind the money (of lack thereof) authors make (Matt uses pro-wrestling as an analogy).
The disparity in people’s reaction to women making money vs. men making money in our industries, and how it is used to derail the real discussion/discourse.
How to positively build on the actions of author’s like Fonda Lee, and Mur talks about her own experiences selling and publishing her newest novel, SIX WAKES.
A writer’s self-perception vs. the their perception of “successful” authors.
A lament for Ursula K. Le Guin.
Matt offers up his Hugo Award recommendations.
There are no viewer questions this week, but we do have shilling and Hugo nomination pleas to get through!

Author Fonda Lee’s Twitter thread about author income.

Podcasts, Projects

ISBW #390: Timelines

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:05 — 14.9MB)

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The dogs and I have some things to say about when you should worry about what, and how worry is just another form of procrastination.

HEY- did you know I’m going to start offering transcriptions of both ISBW and Ditch Diggers? They will go up as soon as I get them for Patreon supporters, and a bit later for everyone else. It’s only at the $1 level, and you’re helping me offer a more accessible show, so pledge now!