The Murverse Mothership

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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!

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:32 — 37.7MB)

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• Coming to you live from the poured concrete foundation of the brand new Ditch Diggers HQ, it’s the first episode of 2020!
• No longer will Matt and Mur squat on the estates of celebrities who let them down with their moral and ethical decay. They are taking responsibility for their own destinies.
• Matt launches into an unrelated tangent about how Alton Brown seems like kind of a dick, and how Matt will not mill his own flour.
• The year has began both late and in a frustrating fashion, but Mur states the Ditch Diggers goal of increasing listenership in 2020.
• The topic of the episode finally emerges! Matt and Mur are going to talk about the ways in which they will achieve expanding the podcast’s listenership, and how those lessons relate to promoting books and other creative works.
• But first! A brief explanation of both how Hugo voting works, and how being nominated or winning an award like a Hugo can be a false metric by which to measure the size of an audience or the reach of a particular work.
• The importance of consistency, and how consistently releasing content at a scheduled time can be an essential component in building a large audience (and some of the challenges you encounter when trying to consistently produce and release content).
• Cross-promoting your work with other content creators, whether it’s interviewing them on your podcast or appearing on their platform.
• Matt longs for simpler times when authors didn’t have to do virtually every job in publishing, and he launches into a rant in which he compares himself to The Rock.
• Mur reigns in Matt’s angry tirade and recaps the Ditch Diggers’ plans to expand listenership in 2020, and how they’re going to achieve it. Keep tuning in to see how it unfolds!
• No Q&A this episode, but there is a plea to nominate the Ditch Diggers for the Best Fancast Hugo Award, despite it being a poor metric by which to measure audience growth.
• Also, please preorder Matt’s epic fantasy novel SAVAGE LEGION, out July 21st!
• ALSO, support the Ditch Diggers Patreon, which Mur does benevolently share with Matt, and she makes that abundantly clear.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:07:22 — 41.7MB)

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Matt and Mur come to you live from a Christmas tree farm just off the winding lonely road of loneliness for the penultimate Ditch Diggers episode of 2019!

• Mur laments the final dark days of the year while Matt questions establishing a Christmas tree farm along the lonely road of loneliness.
• Matt explains why he is over the holidays and not in usual festive mode.
• Mur has come to the it’s-good-to-breathe-in-and-out realization that the holidays take a lot of time, yet regular life doesn’t stop during the season, and you have to force yourself to stop.
• Matt and Mur update their listeners on what’s going on in their professional lives, which includes anxiety-inducing publisher-issued questionnaires, Mur being a local girl, and how they don’t let you stop writing during the holidays.
• The Ditch Diggers segue into talking about persistence, the false perception of it, and how it’s not only okay to fail, it is often necessary in maintaining that persistence.
• A writing career is Jeremy Bearimy.
• Matt and Mur take a tangent into how no one can actually tell you what to do or how to do it when it comes to advancing your writing career.
• Mur’s Bond villain catchphrase is revealed (spoiler: it’s “Uh-huh”).
• Matt segues (poorly) back into the main topic, which shifts to how there are times when you CAN’T quit and have to do the writing.
• Mur and Matt talk about having to do creative work when you’re creatively burnt out, and how to do it/get through it.
• Mur is the Hugh Grant of local girls.
• The Ditch Diggers rant about Lupita Nyong’o not getting a Golden Globe nomination, despite it having nothing to do with anything else being discussed.
• Matt talks about writing as chair building vs. sculpting.
• Listener Q&A! Topics include tax write-offs for freelance writers, the joy of big gay wizards, and developing your online presence.
• Finally: Mur is the wellspring, a.k.a. “Local Girl Becomes Wellspring.”
• The customarily disjointed end-of-episode shilling occurs.

Preorder SAVAGE LEGION!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:00 — 59.5MB)

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WOW Matt and I have had a month! We are super behind with existing episodes, and will be posting this week and recording new stuff tomorrow!

• Matt and Mur come to you live from George Lucas’ treehouse made of money, in Jeff Golblum’s vast field of treehouses.
• Mur cut her finger, and tells stories in the wrong order, which causes Matt to get stern with her.
• Mur received her first piece of fan mail in snail mail paper form.
• A brief tangent about hanging personal mementos and why Matt’s house is called “unwelcoming” by his mother-in-law.
• Mur launches into a very entertaining and impassioned rant about George Lucas selling the rights to Star Wars for FOUR BILLION DOLLARS (a figure she will repeat throughout the episode) and yet continuing to complain about the handling of Star Wars.
• Matt attempts to steer Mur’s ranting into a discussion about the line between art and commerce, and writers and other creators thinking about how much control they want to retain over their intellectual property vs. what they want to accomplish with their work, professionally.
• “Four BILLION dollars!” – Mur
• Matt and Mur free associate about why creators of massive media franchises who make billions of dollars choose to continue publicly wading through the discourse of their fandoms.
• Matt makes it clear if he ever sells IP for a billion dollars you will never hear from him again, because he will be on his private island avoiding all human contact.
• George Lucas wanted to make TIE Fighters purple. That’s a true fact.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:15 — 31.1MB)

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– Mur and Matt come to you live from Jeff Goldblum’s financial advisor’s office (they are totally trespassing, but it’s cool, it’s off-hours).

– It’s the first full-length Ditch Diggers episode in a while! Also, Ditch Diggers is world-wide now! Woo-hoo!
– Matt and Mur catch up on book projects new and old, and talk about Mur podcasting daily (without Matt, of course, because he lacks the work ethic).
– Mur goes on a worthy tangent about “excitement fatigue,” the concept that by the time a writer can share news about a project they’ve already gone through so many emotions about it they’re too burned out to join in on the celebration of those they share the news with.
– Authors are like artichokes.
– Matt and Mur are not going to dissect THAT Medium post (the one with the author who wrote of squandering all their book advance money), but they do briefly discuss what it is and how it was the catalyst for today’s topic.
– That topic is revealed! What should you do (and NOT do) when you receive your first book advance check?
– Matt and Mur talk about how book contracts and payments are structured and what an advance payment actually is.
– Matt rants a little (or a lot) about the “idealized” version of what to do with an advance and how our expectations are warped by both the publishing industry and (at least in America) by debt culture.
– The basic steps to take when you receive your check, and why you take each one. Taxes, agent commissions, sequestering money, interest-bearing accounts. All that good stuff!
– “Day jobs,” and the too-common idea that being an author is the only way to make a good living as a writer, and alternative methods of writing for a living.
– No Q&A this episode, but they will get to it next time!
– Jeff Goldblum’s HorseShare app, and why you should invest in it (but not with your first book advance).
– The end of episode shilling (Mur is a one-woman empire).