The Murverse Mothership

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!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:01 — 47.4MB)

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NOTE: I was in Detroit for ConFusion and didn’t get a chance to post this until today- Mur

• The Ditch Diggers come to you live for the first time in 2018 from Morgan Freeman’s snow bungalow (which is actually a bungalow made from snow)!
• Morgan Freeman and Kryptonian technology, how he is the only man who can act as his own attorney and is NOT a fool, which is also the premise of his next movie, and his eternal feud and love affair with Betty White.
• Matt talks about fulfilling his major 2018 writing career goal right under the wire, defying all freelance writing conventions of the industry closing down over the holidays, how it came about, and thanks everyone for their support and encouragement.
• Mur talks about dog surgeries and her novel SIX WAKES being nominated for the prestigious Philip K. Dick Award!
• Ditch Diggers will now be recording weekly!
• Wrapping up their career recaps, the theme of the premiere episode of the year emerges: Old Business!
• Mur and Matt continue to be bad at segues, and gods willing they always will be.
• Mur assures listener Allie Wade that we WILL answer her questions about contracts by dedicating a whole episode to it in 2018. We will also get Cameron Rowe’s blueprints for Morgan Freeman’s imagined compound up on the website.
• Mur digs into the email bag for questions unanswered from 2017.
• The Ditch Diggers respond to a question about new authors using samples of their work as free promotion, and when and how that crosses the line into working for free.
• @TheFaldor on Twitter asks what a good daily word goal is. Matt believes it to be more than one and less than eleven thousand. Mur is, thankfully, more helpful with her answer.
• @WordsByStacia asks how the Ditch Diggers feel about reading fees, and Mur and Matt expound on the differences between beta readers, sensitivity editors, and manuscript doctors.
• Having handled the old business, the Ditch Diggers look to the new business of 2018.
• Matt launches into an epic pitch/plea for the podcast being nominated for a Hugo in 2018.
• Mur makes suggestions for other potential and deserving Hugo nominees you might have overlooked (Matt promises to have his recommendations next time).
• The obligatory end-of-episode shilling of books and other things.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:12:57 — 54.0MB)

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• Hugo losers Matt and Mur come to you live from Morgan Freeman’s Tobias Funke Memorial Sobbing Shower.
• Matt and Mur discuss how it feels to lose a Hugo Award, what it means to be a Hugo loser, and Mur recaps the events of the post-Hugo ceremony Loser’s Party (which Matt did not attend because he wasn’t at WorldCon).
• Matt recaps the events of his not being at WorldCon, which dove-tails into Mur praising Mary Robinette Kowal (and rightly so).
• Third Annual Ditch Diggers Live recap.
• Mur talks about the unexpected problems that arose on the launch day of her new I SHOULD BE WRITING book, how she as a professional author dealt with them, and the status of the book now (with bonus discussion and explanation of meta data!).
• Matt talks about professional expectations (e.g. winning a Hugo Award right before your agent takes your new book to market) and how to manage disappointment and adjust to changing events as a freelance creator.
• Twitter Q&A! Including several topics on which the Ditch Diggers vow to do extended episodes, including what to include on your author/freelance creator website, managing multiple drafts and story notes, and sensitivity readers.
• If the Ditch Diggers Patreon reaches $3k a month, Matt and Mur will take the show weekly! So, give us more money!
• A final “thank you” to everyone who supported us for the Hugo Award and got us so far this year, and everyone who continues to listen to and support the show!

Affiliate links to our books!