Dan Absalonson | Author of SciFi & Fantasy

Free eBooks in January

2012-01-08T13:34:00.000-08:00

To start off this new year, and since my birthday is this month, I thought I'd generate some coupons to make all of my eBooks that I've set a price on as free. Please find links to the eBooks, a brief synopsis, and their coupon codes below. Thanks, and enjoy!

My Last Day - Short Story
It's police Captain Matt Selznick's last day on the job, and he's going to make sure he ends his career on a high note. Rather than ending with a customary day at the desk, he goes out in the field impersonating a criminal transporter to pick up a bad guy and bring him in for questioning. Sounds simple right? If only it had been.
Coupon Code: GR68S

Helsa's Secrect Ingredient - Short Story
Helsa and Vairgar had always done well selling their stew outside the castle walls, but now they were going to need magic. Lately none had come to visit the castle, so they had not sold any stew in many days. They had to do something.
Coupon Code: KL59V

A Second Chance - Novelette
Jerry has problems. A few years ago his pregnant mother died. His Dad has reduced himself to a drunk. Dad gets violent when he drinks, which is all the time. Jerry decides to run away, but ends up destroying another family by taking all of his anger towards his dad out on a stranger. How will this all be reconciled?
Coupon Code: SL49K

The Last Butterscotch - Short Story
Henry Jr. and his family are excited about their newborn kittens, but when Henry goes into the barn to see them - he finds that there's an extra. It looks and weighs the same as another. Henry's mom is spooked. Where did this extra cat come from, and why does it act so strange?
Coupon Code: PU28W

Little Willie's Revenge Little Willie's Revenge - Short Story
This story is based on this "Little Willie" poem: Little Willie Feeling Mean Fed his sister paris green As she lay in agony Willie boy was full of glee. Willie's mother passed away and now his dad has remarried. Now Willie has a new sister. He hates her. How far will he go to show her how he feels?
Coupon Code: PY79B

And Another! (Book Cover)

2011-12-30T14:51:00.000-08:00

My friend and fellow writer J.R. Murdock, author of such great books as V & A Shipping, Billy Barbarian, Astel, and a great collection of short stories called Murdockian Tales, asked me to create a cover for one of his new short stories called Grandpa's Little Red Barn. As of the date of this post it is currently free so snag it while you can. Also, those first two titles are available for free in audio and I highly recommend them. They're very entertaining romps, a great time. Some other covers for this great author are in the works - you'll see more on that in later posts in early 2012. I'll just say he's going to be busy cranking out lots of fiction next year. I'm excited. Next year will be the year of my debut novel and I have plans to also release a novella. Yes 2012 is going to be a great year for fresh fiction my friends. For this cover I was happy that J.R. had a clear vision of what he wanted. He knew what he wanted the font to look like, where everything should go, and he even provided the photo I used. I desaturated it a bit so it was no longer stop sign red, and then snagged some of the front wall to create the "RED" text in the story title text. It was fun and we both like how it turned out. I'm really excited for another cover I'm doing for him which is much more involved and included several painted illustrations to make the final image. It's going to be awesome!

I Made Another eBook Cover

2011-12-21T08:54:00.000-08:00

I did a cover for my friend Scott Roche. He's the first one to ever give me a crack at making an eBook cover, and since his first request I've been happy to do a few more for him and some eBook artwork for others. I love making art and if any of you need an eBook cover I'd be happy to give you a smokin' deal, or even trade for it. With Scott, I asked him to be a beta reader for my novel when it's done. He was happy to do it and I'm really glad to have him as one of my beta readers. On this cover I'll say that Scott had a clear idea of what he wanted which made my job very easy. An artist can ask for nothing more than a client with a clear idea of what they want. He gave me a few pictures to choose from and told me what he wanted. I picked the photo with the best composition. I found an image of an envelope, erased out the text on it and made my own new text on it. Then I added some lighting effects to it to make it blend in with the scene better. The folder didn't take up all of the space in the bottom of the picture so I copied some of the pavement, enlarged it and placed it over the blank space to make it look like the walkway kept coming towards you. I think it's a fun and awesome cover. It makes me want to read the story. Does it do the same for you? If so you can name your price and pick up a copy of the eBook in any format you need right here: Operation Barghest

Great Resources for Writers

2011-12-12T15:38:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you probably have several writing books on your shelf. You read them and revisit them and take notes from them and highlight them. Then when you're writing you try and remember what they said about something you're working on. The best is when you read something to watch out for in your writing, like using adverbs, and then go back to your writing to find it all over the place. Been there? While the best way to become a better writer is to do just that and write, there are some things that can turn on a light bulb and speed along the process of making you a better writer. Tools for your tool belt you can use when crafting your fiction. I have discovered that the writing itself isn't the hard part, but coming up with a great story can be a lot of work. One of my favorite things to do and something I really enjoy, but a lot of work. The two books I got the most out of are:

Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life
by Terry Brooks
On Writing
by Steven King

So if you haven't read those then you should pick them up and give them a read. You'll thank me for it. If you don't want to lay down some coin to get great writing advice, then I also have two awesome resources for you that are free.

The first is David Farland's Daily Kick in the Pants. You'll find the subscribe button on the upper right of the page. David emails you often with great writing advice. He is a veteran writer and what he has to say is worth reading. You should also check out the Writing Tips page on his website. David writes all kinds of stuff in many genres, but he's most famous for his fantasy Runelords series.

The other resource I've come to love is from Michael J. Sullivan, one of my favorite new epic fantasy authors. He has been giving writing advice every week on his blog. A lot of it has helped me and the way he writes makes it fun. If you haven't read the first in his new Trilogy, then you owe it to yourself to read Theft of Swords. If you're not sure then check out a free short story in the same world he wrote called The Viscount and the Witch.

If you're still looking for more free resources to find great writing advice then check out my list of, you guessed it, "Great Writing Podcasts" located on the right column of my website. Thanks for stopping by, happy reading and happy writing!

A Free Christmas Story

2011-12-09T08:01:00.000-08:00

Last year I wrote a fun little Christmas story, and recorded it. It's also available as a free eBook. It is still one of my favorite episodes. Find the audio story and eBook links in the post from last year. I have an idea for a story for this year, but I'm not sure if I can find time to write it and record it. It would be about the elf who comes along with Santa to help him eat all the cookies left out by children once Santa is too full to eat any more. It should be a fun little story if I can find time to write it. Until then, or if I can't get around to it - please enjoy my Christmas story from last year. Happy Holidays everyone!

Why I'm not Upset About LosingNaNoWriMo for the First Time

2011-11-28T07:55:00.000-08:00

This is my third time doing NaNoWriMo. Both of the other times I've had moments where I was pretty sure I wouldn't get to fifty thousand words by the 30th, but both times I pulled it off by the 28th. This year, however, I was almost certain. I am very pleased and surprised to tell you that this year I'm okay with not winning NaNoWriMo. Let me share with you my reasons.

I did finish my NaNoWriMo novel, or should I say novella.
I have three other completed novels that are still in their first drafts

As I was writing my NaNo novel this year it seemed that my story wasn't going to end up being fifty thousand words long. This has not been the case before. My last couple novels had thirty thousand some words to be written after I reached the 50K mark by November 30th. This time around I was at the midpoint of my novel and not even at 15K words yet. It ended up being a complete story at 24K words. I'm really excited to have a finished novella though, it seems to be a new length of choice for eBooks. A lot of people read on their phones, and having something shorter like that is becoming more desirable. I worked a lot on how to make the story work too, and even though my outline was sometimes just ahead of what I was writing, I once stopped for a couple days to nail down how I would get through Act II into the climax and I think it worked well. This little novella might be the first long form fiction I've ever written where I don't feel I need to go back and change a whole lot after finishing it. I'll get some beta readers on it and see if I'm way off base, but I don't think I'll have to do a ton of story revision like I am with my first three novels.

Another reason I am a bit relieved that I can move on from NaNoWriMo this year is that I'm almost halfway through revising my second NaNo novel, and once it's cleaned up it will be the first full novel I will podcast and self publish. I've been waiting a long time for this and if you look a couple blog posts down you'll see that I even have some spectacular cover art for it! I can't wait to get this novel in front of beta readers, and on podiobooks.com, Amazon, and the other online eBook retailers.

So yes I am a bit blue about not winning NaNoWriMo this year, but it's okay. I've got three other novels to get ready for publishing! It's time for a season of revising and rewriting!

How Self-publishing Liberated Me and My StoryA GUEST POST

2011-11-11T08:09:00.000-08:00

By Dan Kolbet, Guest Blogger

When I decided to write my first book, it was one of those “you better do it now, or you’ll never do it” things. For years I had struggled to get my story out – any story for that matter. I’d start and stop, never really getting anywhere. So when the miracle happened and I actually finished Off The Grid, I thought the next steps would be cake. I would submit my wonderful manuscript to agents who would fall all over me with big piles of cash and a book deal.

That’s not exactly how it happened.

I followed the traditional steps of writing, editing and finalizing a manuscript. I ran the book past four beta readers, including Dan Absalonson who hosts this site. I had it edited by a copyeditor. It was ready for submission, or so I thought.

I spent weeks finalizing a query letter after learning the ropes and meeting some agents at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference in Bellevue, Wash. Some agents wanted just a query letter, while others wanted a 1-2 page synopsis or sample chapters. Every agent wanted something different. I spent about a month sending out 40 submissions – exactly the way they asked for them.

Experienced writers may say 40 submissions is a small number. You should have sent out more. I only picked agents that I actually wanted to represent me. I didn’t shotgun out my heart and soul to everyone who claimed to be an agent. I wanted a good one.

The rejections trickled in, but after two months of waiting and checking my email like a crazy person 20 times a day, I was tired of it. The waiting killed me. To me it meant that my work was being held hostage. It’s just a story after all – it needs to be told, not sitting in the inbox of some agent in New York.

The alternative to the gut-wrenching waiting and self-doubt was right in front of me the whole time. I knew self-publishing was Plan B. But I wanted to give the traditional route a try before I shifted course.

In early October I was in Coeur d’Alene Idaho at an event and I ran into a fellow author who I also saw at the PNWA conference back in August. She asked me about where I was with the book. She was probably the 200th person to ask me about it since I started querying. Without putting a lot of thought into what I was saying, I said that I was tired of waiting and was about the begin the process of self-publishing on Kindle, Nook and CreateSpace.

That decision sent me on a whole other journey to get a cover design and put my words into the format that Amazon and Barnes & Noble wanted. I could spend multiple posts on what that was like, but I’ll just say this – it wasn’t easy for a newbie. I get it now and feel that I’ve mastered it, but it was rough.

I’m so glad that I self-published. With the amount of thought and hard work that any first-time author puts into their work, it’s insane that we then cross our fingers and hope that an agent can then do a better job of publishing our story than we can. Sure, they’ve got some sort of mystical powers that no one quite understand, but I’m pretty damn mystical too.

The world has changed, people. Don’t let rejections get you down. You have a real alternative, you just have make the decision to feel good about your work.

Off The Grid is Dan Kolbet’s debut novel. The book is available on Kindle, Nook and in paperback through CreateSpace. Kolbet blogs at www.DanKolbet.com. I really enjoyed Dan's book when I read it as a beta reader. Grab a copy and support an awesome indie author, and once you've read it leave him a review. Thanks for stopping by the blog, which is now my main website. Hope you like the redesign.

I Found Artwork for my first Novel!

2011-11-09T14:53:00.000-08:00

I'm an artist. I can do 3D and Photoshop and all that stuff. I've created eBook covers for others. So of course I'm going to make my own book cover right? Well I was going to, but at this point in my life - I barely have time to write. So I've been surfing images at Deviantart.com for the past month or so, and I finally found THE image for my first novel release. The ship is somehow exaclty what I describe in my book. The perportions are dead on, there's a huge chuck of ship that's cargo area in the back - it's perfect! I asked Eric the artist if I could use his amazing artwork for the cover of my book. He said that I could, all I have to do is send him a copy of the book when it's done. I will send him a signed copy in the mail, and email him all the eBook formats. A small price to pay for his breathtaking piece of artwork to go on the front of my novel. Click on it to see it in a larger size. If you're interested you can see the process he went through to create this piece here, something I'm always interested in being an artist myself. So thank you Eric!

NaNoWriMo Update & The 7 Point System

2011-11-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

HippoPLOTamus

I've been ahead of the curve on my word count for NaNoWriMo until this weekend. Last year I had my whole novel plotted and outlined. This year I knew the end and a couple other things, but have been constructing my outline as I write, barely staying ahead of what I'm writing. This weekend it all came to a standstill, and today I'm starting to figure out what to do to get my character from Act I to Act III. The main tool I've been using is a 7 Point Story Structure System from Dan Wells, published Tor author and co-host on my favorite writing podcast Writing Excuses. If you haven't heard about this story structure system, you really need to check it out. I has helped me figure out what was wrong with and finish the outline for every story I've written since I learned it. I'm still trying to get a better handle on what each of the seven story points are, but this system is such a great tool for constructing a story that I just have to mention it here. If you've run into a huge hippoplotamus like I have, then please check this out and use this amazing tool to find your way through your novel to the end.

Here's the link: Dan Wells on Story Structure

You're very welcome :)

It's November which means NaNoWriMo!

2011-11-02T16:42:00.000-07:00

This will be my third year doing NaNoWriMo. Now that I've won twice, I'm confident that even though it might be a crazy month, I will get 50,000 words of a novel written. I was going to write the sequal to the novel I've been trying to get ready for beta readers, but then I changed my mind. This is only my fourth novel ever attempted. While I write that I think, DANG! Four novels? That's awesome. Okay, so I'm starting my fourth novel. The point is, most people have to write five to ten novels before they can crank out something worth publishing. I'm really excited to see where this story goes. I have the character's end goal and most of the main story points, but the outline is being written just before the actual story. Hopefully I'll get ahead of that and finish the outline soon. Until then, I know the main story points and I'm truckin' along!

The House Sitter (Bonus Halloween Episode)

2011-10-31T13:39:00.000-07:00

Download the .mp3

When Tammy is house sitting, she get creeped out. She keeps hearing and seeing things in the dark corners of the mansion she is alone in. Then, she hears and sees something and this time it's not her imagination.

Now available for FREE in all eBook formats at Smashwords.com.

Bed Music Attribution:
http://www.freesound.org/people/thanvannispen/sounds/30274/

How It's Coming | Editing & Revising My Novel

2011-10-12T09:01:00.000-07:00

A good friend and writer I look up to, J.R. Murdock, asked me on twitter how my editing was going and said he'd be curious to see examples of my changes. I give you the old and new beginning to my novel. My original tells you a lot about the character, but takes a long time to get into some conflict and dialog. It's what we writers call an info dump. A lot of set up, a lot of details, and most of it is not needed. In my new version I tried to take all I wanted to say and compact it into one quick paragraph, then get right into some conflict and dialog so I have characters interacting. Let me know what you think of my changes, and as always thanks for stopping by and reading.

Original Opening

Most people love Fridays; Trent Smithton hated them. Those afternoon hours that drag on for everyone else, lingering just before the weekend, flew by for him. While others felt the clock slow down, he worked like a man on the wrong end of an energy rifle. Trent, with his straight black gray sprinkled hair, hated Fridays; but this Friday would take the cake.

His thin fingers sprinted across the keyboard the fastest in these final hours. He was very aware that he was nearing a stopping point; he would have to go home and leave things unfinished. To Trent there never was enough time in the day. If he could he would work 12 hour days all week, and come in on Saturdays. When his green eyes weren't analizing market trends, or guiding his soft office hands to make stock trades, then he wasn't happy. Sure he had a wife and two kids at home, living the dream; but his heart was in his work. After all, it was his work which afforded his family a nice house and all the things that kept them happy while he was away in his office all day. Except now, due to cutbacks, he couldn't work anymore overtime. So when he noticed that he only had thirty minutes left to finish his work, he cursed the current state of his planet's economy. At least they were going to Tina's parents this weekend. He liked his wife's old man, he had always understood Trent and his drive towards work. "Working is good for a man," he would always say. Trent had promised his wife the family would spend more time together, so he suggested they go visit her folks for the weekend. At least he had something to look forward to, and Grandma's cooking wasn't too bad either. As he pushed those thoughts away to focus on his work he saw something out of the corner of his eye. The light on his office phone blinked, and then made the familiar tone. The sound made him jump a bit. He was still used to hearing phones outside of his office go off all day long, but now there were no calls coming into those cubicles. The office was now barren and silent. He picked up the phone.

"Yes Mr. Tops?"

"Hi Trent, could you come in here for a moment?"

"Sure, I'll be right in."

As Trent entered Mr. Tops's office, the same thought he'd had a million times scrolled through his brain. Even after getting to know the man, this wasn't what you would expect for the VP's office. It was too cheery. Sky blue walls, family pictures covering every surface. It was a room ill suited for its purpose.

"Close the door would you Trent?"

"Sure."

The blood drained from Trent's face. Mr. Tops cleared his throught as he tried to stop the well of emotions from flowing into his voice.

"As you've heard in our meetings Trent, the company isn't doing so well these days."

Trent, usually verbose with positive words to score browny points could only get out,

"It's a tough market out there right now sir."

"Yes that's one way to put it. I'd say it's a dead market out there; it's just killing us. People's faith in the stock market, and their ability to use it to make money, is in terrible shape right now. I don't see things getting any better any time soon. You've got a great track record Trent, and have done well. In all of your performance reviews, we've been honest in telling you, you're one of the best employees we've got. Now you've seen a lot of people being let go here, we've had to make severe cutbacks just to keep our heads above the water, and I know you've helped with that. Keeping your remaining clients as positive as anyone can. But where we stand ... I just can't keep paying you for the good work you're doing for us."

Mr. Tops stopped and looked down at nothing in particular.

"Now I've been dreading this moment all week, I hate this Trent; but the fact remains," his face held a genuine look of sympathy as it looked up to face Trent,

"There's nothing else I can do."

He stopped and looked down again, unable to look Trent in the eye, who's responce was immediate.

"I can't belive this. I'm the best stock broker you've got! I've helped make this company what it is! What do you mean there is nothing else you can do. You can fire somebody else!"

"There is no one else Trent, you know that."

"So, you're going to handle my remaining clients then? You'll probably lose most of them, and..."

"Believe me Trent, I've tried coming up with any way to keep you on, but it's just not possible."

The office grew silent for a moment, and then Mr. Tops spoke again.

"I have however, made you this."

He slid a memory card across his desk.

"It's a personal recommendation from me. There's an explanation of why I had to let you go, and a full report of your excellent service to our company. I truly hope you can find a great job out there Trent. And I hope this helps you. Please encourage any possible employers to call my direct line, I'll tell them all about the great things you've done for us here. Your next employer will be lucky to have you Trent. In the mean time, maybe this will give you a little more time with that beautiful family of yours."

Trent's expression never changed; his eyes didn’t drop to the data card. He stood and walked out the door, leaving it on the desk without saying another word.

New Opening

Most people love Fridays. Trent Tradesman hated them. While others felt the clock slow down, he raced against his dread of leaving things unfinished over the weekend. He was interrupted by a call from his boss.
“Hi Jim, what’s up?”
“Trent, I need to see you in my office please.”
No hello back, no customary cheerful tone. This can’t be good, Trent thought as he walked past silent empty cubicles.
"Close the door, please."
A bleak pallor swept across Trent's face as he pulled the door shut behind him with an ominous click. Mr. Stipple cleared his throat and leaned forward in his ancient chair as Trent took a seat.
"I'm just going to get to the point here Trent."
"OK."
"As you know, the company isn't doing so well these days," Mr. Stipple said. He shifted in his chair again. The chair was known around the office as old yeller, because with every slight movement it creaked and moaned like it was crying to be put down. Trent thought it sounded like it wanted to be rolled away to some place where no butt could ever sit in it again. Mr. Stipple’s butt had in it since his first day at the company.
Trent tried to ignore the screams of the chair and said,
"It's a tough market out there right now sir."
"Yes that's one way to put it. I'd say it's a dead market. It's just killing us. People's faith in it is gone, and I don't see things getting better any time soon.”
Mr. Stipple stopped and cracked a measured smile before continuing.
“You have done well here Trent. In all of your performance reviews, I've been honest in telling you, you're my best. Now you've seen all of your coworkers go; we've had to make severe cutbacks just to keep our heads above the water. I know you have helped with that, keeping your remaining clients as positive as anyone could, but where we stand,"
Mr. Stipple stopped and looked down at nothing in particular.
"I've been dreading this all week, I hate this Trent; but the fact remains. . ."
He looked back up with genuine sympathy.
"There's nothing else I can do. I just can't keep paying you for the good work you're doing for us. I've delayed this for far too long; I'm going to have to make this your last day. I'm sorry."
He stopped and looked down again to miss Trent’s immediate response.
"Let me get this straight. You are willing to keep that creaking old chair around, but not me?”
Mr. Stipple’s head snapped back up as Trent continued.
“I've helped make this company what it is! What do you mean there is nothing else you can do? You can fire somebody else! Fire the receptionist!"
"There is no one else Trent, you know that. Even she has to go. I've given her until the end of the month."
"So what, you are going to handle the remaining clients then? You'll probably lose most of them and,"
Mr. Stipple interrupted him.
"Believe me Trent I've tried coming up with a way to keep you on, but it's just not possible. I’ve been over it again and again. I’m sorry."
The office grew silent for a moment. Trent's face began to redden.
"I have however, made you this."
He slid a data card across his desk.
"It's a personal recommendation from me. There's an explanation of why I had to let you go, and a full report of your phenomenal work here. I hope you can find a great job out there Trent, and I hope this helps you. Please encourage any possible employers to call my direct line. I'll tell them all about the great things you've done for us here. Your next employer will be lucky to have you Trent. In the mean while, maybe this will give you a little more time with that beautiful family of yours."
Trent's face looked like a ripe tomato. He stood and walked to the door, leaving the data card on the desk. In the doorway he spun, failing to keep his mouth shut.
"You're making the biggest mistake of your life! This company is doomed without me! The only reason you have stayed afloat this long is because of me!"
He grabbed the door handle.
"Good luck with your retirement ... Mr. Nipples!" he said, and then slammed the door; rattling the framed pictures on the wall.

6 Goals Podcast Ep. 20 (With a Reading from Ch. 2 in My work in Progess SciFi Novel)

2011-10-10T13:04:00.000-07:00

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In this episode (of the 6 Goals Podcast) I make up for not publishing a podcast in weeks and weeks with a special bonus - a reading from chapter two in my work in progress science ficion novel, and a short running spot. Thanks for sticking around, and I'll keep my schedule of posting every Monday going from now on to the best of my ability.

Need Your Honest Opinion - Book Cover

2011-09-30T13:05:00.000-07:00

I'm creating the cover for my first podcast novel, and I need your honest opinion. The one below uses a photo that I'll end up replacing with a similar image I'll generate in 3D and with photoshop, but it will basically look like it does now. So tell me, if you where looking to pick up a Science Fiction adventure novel for $2.99, would this cover grab your attention? Is there anything you would change? Anything look kinda cheesy? Thanks for your honesty.

Click on the image to see a larger version of it.

Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan 09 - Bullets and Tears

2011-09-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

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(Right Click, Save Target As...)

I had a short story published by an online eZine publisher who runs a short story contest called Fiction Tuesday! It's about soldiers sent to rescue children who have been made soldiers themselves. You can read it on their website or listen to my recording of it with sound effects. I had a blast writing it and putting the recording together, and I think you'll have a blast reading it or listening to it. Below is the link to my story, and please enjoy listening to it here after some chatter and updates. Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

Flying Island Press - Pirates Cove
http://flyingislandpress.com/cove/fiction-tuesday/writing-contest-fiction-tuesday/

Promo at the end of the Podcast was for John Mierau's new Podiobook Asunder at:
http://servingworlds.com/

Videogame Memories 13 | Laith PrestonGUEST BLOG POST

2011-09-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

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Thinking back I have a hard time placing what the first video game I played. Computer games of one form or another have been a part of my life for so long that it is hard to pick out when we first met. While considering this many happy memories float to the surface of my mind.

I remember many hours spent with my Mom waiting at the Kansas City airport for Dad’s flight to arrive, as I mastered the intricacies of a little hopping guy and a snake. To my recollection I got fairly good at Q*Bert in those days. In my mind this wonderfully addictive game endures as one of the great early games.

The next machine over was Joust. I never really got Joust. I mean seriously ostriches? What kind of messed up world do the soldiers ride around on freaking ostriches?

I then spent years in a close relationship with a console.

It all started with stick, a big red button and a triangle. Yes, I’m talking about Asteroids on the Atari 2600. I remember spending many hours in my elementary and middle school years playing games on this venerable system. Pitfall, Zaxxon, River Raid... ah the memories, yes even Pong.

Then in 1988 I was introduced to what would become my new love, the personal computer. I wrote my first program on a good old grey box TRS-80. Many games, many good times, on one PC or another. Many, many failed attempts to write game programs in BASIC, but the path of my future was set in these early days.

When others were spending time engaged in Mortal Kombat, I was far more likely to be spending time wandering the world of Myst, or dialed in to one BBS or another playing various text based games.

In my college days in an attempt to relieve class related stresses I got back to basics with various Rouge-like games and my favorite harking back to my gaming origins, the Asteroids update for Mac, Maelstrom. My wife can tell you I probably spent way too much time on these.

Now a days I don’t spend nearly as much time on games as I used to, have a Wii but mostly it gets used for Netflix streaming or my daughters playing their own games. Yes, the gaming circle of life is complete as I pass the torch to new new generation.

Laith Preston is a voracious reader, aspiring writer and jack of manytrades. When he is not at his day job as a web application developer,he can be found wasting way too much time on various pastimes in DesMoines, Iowa, with his wife, three kids and the cat. You can find hisaimless meanderings at his blog, http://laith.wordpress.com/.

Videogame Memories 12 | Justin MacumberGUEST BLOG POST

2011-08-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

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The earliest writing I ever did were adventures for my friends to play through in Dungeons & Dragons. We were just kids, and we couldn't afford store bought modules, so I saw it as my duty to create stories that we could all have fun with. Plenty of monsters to fight, dastardly arch-villains to overcome, kingdoms to save, and priceless treasures to uncover. For a kid not even in spitting distance of his teenage years, it was a thrilling undertaking, and one that I didn't take lightly. As I grew older I branched out into short stories -- even giddily contemplated writing a novel -- and fantasy was the genre I stuck with. Most of the books I read where fantasies, as were the movies I enjoyed, the comic books, and the cartoons. It was a genre I felt really comfortable with.

But, around the time I entered high school, relatives suggested that I give horror a try. King and Koontz were the authors they recommended, and I was quickly swept away. It was an amazing thrill to pick up these new authors and discover the joy of being terrified out of my mind. My writing, as you might imagine, followed suit.

One genre that I never dared tried to write, though, was science fiction. My favorite film of all time, Star Wars, is a science fiction movie, but for whatever reason I grew up thinking that only brilliant people could write the genre. I mean, it was right there in the name - SCIENCE fiction. What did I know about science? I barely knew where the moon was, so how I could write about people in far flung places doing things I couldn't begin to understand or describe. Science fiction was a genre I adored, a genre I consumed with an insatiable appetite, but it was the one genre I didn't believe I could write in. That changed when I played the Wing Commander series of computer games.

Now, I'm a 38 year-old guy, so I'm of the first generation that really grew up with video games. I fondly remember playing Berserk and River Raid on my Atari 2600 using a small black and white television. When I would go to my uncle's house, we would play Warlords and Kaboom on his big color TV, and that was like a revelation. On long drives I always took my Pac-Man mini arcade game and annoyed everyone in the car with the incessant beeping and booping. How they stood it, I'll never know. And in every mall I ever walked into I always headed right for the arcade to play games like Gauntlet, Altered Beast, Afterburner, and Tron. It was an amazing time to be a kid, watching technology grow and grow right before my eyes.

Unlike a lot of my contemporaries, around the time the Nintendo came out I was too deep into computer games to notice. I didn't play Zelda or Super Mario Bros. much. I was busy playing Ultima, King's Quest, and Sid Meier's Pirates! on the Tandy 1000 SX my family owned. That baby had two 5.25" floppy drives and was capable of outputting 16 colors! Simultaneously! The number of hours I plunged into those old games is mindboggling to think about now, but it all went into my brain, shaping who I was and who I was becoming. Computer games were my life's blood.

Sadly, the ol' Tandy couldn't last forever. Though I'm sure it still works for whoever it was we ended up selling it to, when 1993 rolled around it was just too old. All of the newer games needed more memory and processing power than it could provide. So, using money I earned from my own sweat and tears, I bought an Acer computer. I wish I could remember the specs on it now, but suffice it to say it did everything I wanted it to and more. And, it came with a CD-ROM drive, which opened a whole new world of experiences. Now able to play the new games, I dove in headfirst. It was a heady time, but the defining moment came when I saw a magazine ad for the upcoming Wing Commander game. It was Wing Commander 3: Heart Of The Tiger. I hadn't played the previous Wing Commander games because my old computer wasn't powerful enough, so I had no idea what they were about, but all I had to see what that picture of Mark Hamill in the ad and the text that said the game featured loads of video footage that told the game's story in a cinematic way never before imagined for a PC game. I was sold. Mark Hamill, star of my favorite movie of all time? Acting in a science fiction video game? Where I got to fly a starfighter around and blow up giant alien cat creatures? Oh hell to the yes! I was nearly vibrating with anticipation.

Thankfully, the game more than lived up to my expectations. Not only was it amazingly good, but the cinematic cutscenes were jaw dropping. I couldn't believe my computer was capable of such wizardry. I played it over and over again, an addict who couldn't get enough. The next game, Wing Commander IV: The Price Of Freedom, was somehow even more amazing. There were new villains to fight, new ships to fly, and new crewmates to fly with, not to mention loads of new cutscenes to enjoy. I was in sci-fi geek heaven.

Once I was done with Wing Commander IV, I didn't want it to stop. I was too jazzed, too filled with ideas of what-if and how-about. So, to give myself an outlet, I decided to write the game's developer, Origin Systems (R.I.P. dear friends), and offer them my take on where they should go next. It was a grand story about a secret project to create A.I. piloted drones capable of fighting the enemy so that human lives could be saved, and how the project went awry, becoming a new threat humanity had to face. You know, the classic tale of our hubris biting us on the tuckus. I followed that up with an idea about a new alien threat coming from beyond the galaxy, but these aliens were far more strange and terrible than the cats we'd fought before. These new threats actually had living ships, coming in shapes large and small, capable of war in ways we never dared think possible. Again, a classic tale of the unknown and our greatest fears.

At the time they seemed like fantastic ideas, and I was excited to write about them. Without even realizing what I was doing, I was writing science fiction. I spent days upon days outlining, plotting, researching, and writing. When I sent them off to Origin, I was pretty certain that I'd be getting a call shortly telling me to move to Austin where they were located and get to work helping them chart the future of Wing Commander. One thing I didn't lack for back then was confidence. I wish I was so cocksure now.

As you can probably guess, that call never came. No messengers arrived with contracts, no emails flew to my inbox. I was disappointed, to be sure, but after awhile I moved on. The only time I became angry was when the next Wing Commander game came out, Wing Commander: Prophecy. It was supposed to be the start of a new campaign with new characters (though Mark Hamill was still in the mix) and a new enemy. To my shock and horror, that new enemy was from beyond our spacethat used living ships. And, the new fighters the humans used were called Tigersharks, which was the name of the new fighters I'd created for my out of control A.I. story. I was dumbstruck.

Now, did Origin steal my ideas? At the time, I was sure of it. There were just too many similarities for that not to be the case. I don't think so anymore, however. Living starships isn't something I'm the first person to think of, nor am I the first person to name a fighter plane after Tigersharks. When I was young I thought I was breaking new ground, but one of the benefits of age is perspective. Plus, I'm sure Prophecy was well under development before my little idea package was put in the mail. Computer games as big as that one aren't made over a weekend. It was merely a case of certain minds thinking alike and coincidental timing.

But that wasn't the end of my love affair with Wing Commander. About a year or so after I sent that package off, I stumbled across some people at AOL (my internet provider at the time) who had a writing club centered on the Wing Commander universe. It was like a chain letter fan fiction club, and I begged to be let in. They were kind enough to do so, and that began my real writing life. Over the course of several years I wrote them enough stories to fill at least two novels, and together we took the club in bold new directions. By the time we disbanded, my character had risen to the rank of Captain and was in command of his own ship of privateers. We loved, we fought, we laughed, and we wrote. I would not be the writer I am today -- for better or ill -- were it not for the Wing Commander Pilots Club. I owe them a debt I'll never be able to repay.

I'm not much of a science fiction writer anymore, but it's not out of any loss of love for the genre. I'm just trying to spread my writing wings and see else I can do. But, science fiction is no longer the boogie man it once was to me, and it's something I'll always love and return to. And I owe that in large part to Origin Systems and their amazing Wing Commander computer games. Much like Star Wars nearly twenty years before it, Wing Commander opened my mind and filled it with wonder. And wonder is the foundation upon which every great story is built. Thank you, Origin Systems, and thank you to my old friends at the WCPC.

Now I see it as my duty, and the duty of every writer out there, to pay it forward and pass that same sense of wonder on to a new generation through the stories we create and the characters we breathe life into. Not all of us will succeed, but we have to try. We have to create and built and explore the strange reaches inside of us. We have to write.

- Justin R. Macumber

Justin Macumber is a happily married fella in his late 30’s, and right now he’s a full time writer and podcaster. He lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex with his lovely wife of eleven years, and with them is a motley pack of dogs and cats that they think of as their children. Right now he has to say that he is happy, though getting published would go a long way toward making him even happier. Find his work at:

http://www.justinmacumber.com/ and the writing podcast: http://deadrobotssociety.com/

Videogame Memories 11 | Zach RicksGUEST BLOG POST

2011-08-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

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I remember “Chrono Trigger.”

SPOILER ALERT. Warning. This is a game that was originally released in the US for the SNES in 1995, again for the original PlayStation in 2001, again for the Nintendo DS in 2008, and yet again in May of 2011 for the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console. It’s had such a long life because it is the greatest game ever created for any platform, period. I’ve owned it in at least three of these iterations. But because it’s only been recently released for one of these platforms, you might be playing it now for the first time. If so, STOP READING OR LISTENING TO THIS NOW. I am deadly serious.

Cool? Okay.

I don’t remember when I picked it up, or where I first started playing it, but I absolutely remember Chrono Trigger. Oh, I bought it because the artwork was cool, and it was a Squaresoft game, and I knew they did good work because I’d already played and enjoyed the heck out of Final Fantasy III. I remember looking at the Akira Toriyama artwork, and thinking “this looks kind of familiar.” (Toriyama was the artist who created DragonBall and DragonBall Z. There is no DragonBall GT. Doesn’t exist. Shared hallucination. Sad story. Anyway...)

Then I took it home and started playing. Oh, sure, there was some kind of a thing about a fair and then there was this blonde girl who wanted to hang out, and I played some fair games and won a life-size replica of myself. And then my friend wanted me to demonstrate her teleporter… which then tore open a hole in space and time and flung the blonde… someplace. And my character stood up and volunteered to go get her back. He had no way of knowing where she’d gone, how to return, anything. He’d known her for maybe an hour. But he was the kind of guy who was willing to go after her anyway. And I was hooked. I was all in. It was fun, but what really sunk its claws into me and kept me coming back for more and more were the characters and their stories. I met a frog who used to be a man. (And once I discovered his real name, he’s never been anything but Glenn to me). I found myself accused of treason and sentenced to death. I defeated a dragon tank. I travelled to the dark and dismal future and found out that I was going to be fighting some sort of WORLD DEVOURING EVIL. I found out my friend blamed herself for the death of her mother, and because the game involved time travel, I got to give her the chance to make it right. I enjoyed every minute of it. Right up until we faced WORLD DEVOURING EVIL for the first time.

And my protagonist refused to run away. And he died for it. Obliterated. Disintegrated. Dead.

And the game kept going...

I remember sitting in a basement, staring at the television set, dealing with the fact that this character that I’d invested so much time and energy into… this character that represented ME in the game world... this character that I loved... was gone. And while I was doing that, I was watching his companions do the same thing – dealing with their grief at the loss of their friend. I’ve never had a game pull me through that kind of emotional experience, and it’s that moment, and what follows it that has made Chrono Trigger my favorite game of all time. Sure, I take a lot of good-natured ribbing for my love of Pokémon, and that’s been a wild and crazy ride for the last twelve years. (Long story. I blame kindergarteners. Darn kindergarteners.)

But Chrono Trigger continues to be an influence on me because the story was so deep and rich. It hit so many themes – loyalty, family, self-sacrifice, regret, love, tragedy… and ultimately, triumph. And don’t get me started on the music. To this day, I cannot hear the opening theme without getting a little emotional.

If you have a chance to play it, I highly recommend it. It’s the greatest game of the 16-bit era, and I dare say it’s my favorite game of any era. (and it’s like 8 bucks on the Wii virtual console. Seriously.)

Zach Ricks is an attorney, writer, and publisher living in Austin Texas with his wife and one daughter. He’s known for his love of science fiction, fantasy, Pokémon and breakfast tacos. He’s also occasionally a big fat crybaby. Find his writing at http://www.madpoetfiles.com/, and his publishing company at http://www.flyingislandpress.com/.

Videogame Memories 10 | Michell PlestedGUEST BLOG POST

2011-08-19T08:49:00.000-07:00

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I remember the first time I ever saw a video game at someone’s house. The game was Pong (yes, I know I’m dating myself) and it was in black and white on my aunt’s 20” television. I was amazing; for the first time I could actually interact with something on television.

The next ones I remember were at my neighbour’s house. They had a Nintendo Entertainment System - one of the original NES. It was a household filled with kids and I spent the majority of my time sitting, watching others play.

It wasn’t until High School that I actually spent any time playing video games. Living in the country without one of my own, I had to content myself with the occasional trip down to the pool hall and arcade to play with my limited allowance. Games like Tron, Galaga, Space Invaders, I tried them all. I was fascinated with the movement, strategies and, most of all, the technology used to create them.

It wasn’t until my family finally made the plunge and bought a Colecovision that I had anything of my own to play. The best part was, the system also doubled as a computer with a printer, keyboard, word processor and Basic language for programming in.

I think that is when I truly made the decision to work in technology. I took every opportunity to work on computers. I programmed Tandy colour computers at school and eventually graduated from Technical School with a diploma in Computer Technology.

I’ve never looked back. Many years later, I’ve worked in just about every facet of computers you can. Programmer, desktop/server/network support, routing and security. I’ve worked as a Product Manager and as a Project Manager. It’s been a very rewarding career and one that I know was influenced by those early video games.

Little is known about the origins of Michell as they are shrouded (or at least covered with a moth-eaten towel) by the mists of time. What is known is largely obscure and often contradictory. Oh and he sometimes speaks about himself in the third person. One thing that is known to be absolutely true is he is a perfectionist (a nice way of saying anal) as can be evidenced by the number of iterations it took him to write the first chapter (completely) of his first book (31). On the subject of his first book, Michell is always more than happy to discuss, often to excess, the trials and tribulations he has faced. He usually misses those visual cues to shut-up or change the subject (like the audience falling asleep or simply walking away).

I Won my First Short Story Contest!

2011-08-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

I had a short story published today by an online eZine publisher who runs a short story contest called Fiction Tuesday! You can read it on their website or listen to my recording of it with sound effects. I had a blast writing it and putting the recording together, and I think you'll have a blast reading it or listening to it. Here's the link to my story:

http://flyingislandpress.com/cove/2011/08/16/fiction-tuesday-2/

Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

Videogame Memories 09 | Laura NicoleGUEST BLOG POST

2011-08-12T07:21:00.000-07:00

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A chick with a game controller is hot... or that's what I was told anyway. I didn't play video games much when I was younger. This is mostly because I was outside rollerblading, camping, or taking my dog Lady for long walks in the woods. When I got older I learned to appreciate the artistry of video games through watching my friends play Final Fantasy, Zelda, and the like. I loved the story lines and how the game made you interact with the story and you could see the consequences that your choices had for the character.

When I went into the Army is when I really started to move from a button masher to an actual console queen. Street Fighter, Soul Caliber and those games were my favorites to play. They had beautiful female characters with amazing, paralyzing moves that I learned to master. Naturally, all of my male counterparts wanted to take me on and I think I only lost a handful of times but those few times lead to some good conversations.

Later on in life, I gave MMO's a try. Not my cup of tea. The biggest reason is that if I want to hang out with people, I like it to be face to face with no other distractions like a group from another faction trying to gank you. RPGs on the other hand are my favorite way to escape when I want to be more than an observer as I am while reading a book. Right now my favorite is Dragon Age: Origins, Though Neverwinter Nights 2 is up there on the list.

So that's my spiel on video games. I hope you all enjoy. I am really looking forward to Dan's new work, and I hope you all will stay tuned. To find out more about what projects I am working on, you can visit my site at http://www.gypsylaura.com/ or http://www.scrivenerscircle.com/.

Videogame Memories 08 | Nathan LowellGUEST BLOG POST

2011-08-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

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Hey everybody, the post for today will be a little different. Nathan Lowell, my favorite podcast novelist, was kind enough to share his video game memories via his daily podcast #TOMMW (Talking On My Morning Walk). Everyday he goes for a 2 mile walk, and records his thoughts for the day on the second half of that walk. Today he talked about his video game memories. Enjoy.

Nathan Lowell is the author and podcaster of several novels. His books can be found on Podiobooks.com and now on Amazon.com as well selling eBooks. He is with Ridan Publishing now and has been able to make a great living selling eBooks. You can learn more about him at http://www.nathanlowell.org/

Videogame Memories 07 | J.R. MurdockGUEST BLOG POST

2011-08-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

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I grew up with video games. I think I was 5 when I was first introduced to the PONG console and I could hook up the Atari system to the back of the television by the time I was 7. I watched the games in the bars (yes, I grew up in a town where kids could go the bar) change from Tank and Breakout to Pac Man and Zaxxon. Computers in the schools that started appearing were the Apple II and Apple II+. I discovered Lode Runner quite early.

I was fascinated with video games. It was in the early 80s when I discovered Dungeons and Dragons. It was also in the early 80s when I discovered Dungeons and Daggorath for the TRS-80 that my father had bought for me. I was entranced by the thought of exploring a dungeon, but it was a difficult game that was slow, clunky and you couldn’t save your place unless you had a tape drive (that I would acquire much later).

But then I found Wizardry for the Apple II. This game took much of what my young brain knew about Dungeons and Dragons and put it into a game that I could play. I could roll up characters, put them into the dungeon and explore, map, and discover and best of all save my progress! Before my eyes games grew up from being a static simplistic game to something where you could grow, expand and play longer than the machine you were playing on was turned on.

My characters were saved and I would find any excuse to sneak out of class and into the computer lab. I skipped lunch. I would go to school early. I would stay at school late. Anything to get more time on the computer to play that game just a few minutes longer. It didn’t matter that the game was green lines on a black background. I knew those dungeon levels like I knew the back of my hand. I would send hours trying to map out the mazes before I realized I was in a maze and have to erase much of what I’d mapped out.

Eventually I would have an Apple IIe of my very own. With a color monitor! I would play any game that provided me a story to follow. The Zork series which was entirely text based. The Ultima games. Bard’s Tale. Alternate Reality. I couldn’t get enough and played every chance I could.

Even after the Apple IIe was no longer a viable gaming machine I continued to play RPGs on gaming systems. Moving on to the first Nintendo gaming systems and playing Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda. Games had finally started to mature with similar story lines, but far better graphics.

I knew my addiction and I knew it well and I also knew what it took to feed the beast. I stopped playing games for a long time. I missed out on the first wave of World of Warcraft and after hearing so many people rave about how great the game was, I knew I had to stay away. I would easily be sucked into a game like that, I know.

But even today, I still enjoy going online and downloading an Apple emulator and picking up the games I used to play so much. I still have a copy of the original Wizardry on my computer and every once in a while, I’ll make a bishop, identify 9, and take a couple of characters at super high level around the dungeon and have fun.

J.R. Murdock is an avid reader of almost anything he can get his hands on. That being said, he also writes with near reckless abandon in any and every genre. His style is intended for pure entertainment. Over the years he’s written nine novels and over one hundred short stories. Only a few short stories have seen print (in actual print and on the web) so he’s decided to throw his hat into the podcasting arena with his novel V & A Shipping. Since then he has also podcast his novel Billy Barbarian and released his YA novel Astel: Chosen, not to mention the great short stories he's podcast in his Murdockian Tales series.

When not writing like a mad-man, J.R. Murdock does have a day job as a computer programmer and loves to spend time with his lovely wife and beautiful daughter.

Videogame Memories 06 | John MierauGUEST BLOG POST

2011-08-02T10:34:00.000-07:00

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Note: A few choice words lie below but were blipped from the audio.

It's kind of odd that I'm a science fiction and fantasy writer, an IT pro and-yeah, sure, world class geek-but not a gamer.

So why am I blogging about gaming? Well, I WAS a gamer. It showed up in my life at exactly the right time: my most formative years- right at the end of high school and my first year of university -and it has informed my life ever since.

My big games -now, don't laugh!- were Doom, Command & Conquer, and (ah, the memories!) Duke Nuke'em.

When I started university, a friend of mine got me my first gig in networking. It was summer, he was busy as hell with this weird new gig and he asked me to help him out.

The gig was installing network cards in a bunch of 386's for the federal government.

Back then it was a brand spanking new gig, working in IT admin. And it was a doubly wired gig, seeing as my buddy Jason went to college for Fisheries & Wildlife, before finding out on a summer job with the government that he was an idiot savant with all things computers.

A few times that summer, Jay very patiently led me through how to input scripts and plug in cards and test the network. A windows 3.11 network.

Ground floor, I tell ya!

Well I'm a slow learner, and it was probably more work fixing my mistakes than any help, but we got through it, and I was hooked on computers!

This was not the floppy-disk powered DOS computer my Dad had in his study, these puppies had hard drives and could access 'the internet'!

I was hooked on this new world. I asked for more. No, I begged and pleaded and cajoled until Jason got me a computer to set up in the hall of the place I rented, then busted up old laptops with dead pixels and dead batteries.

Then... He got me a 14.4 modem. I didn't even have my own email address and Netscape was just a painfully slow screensaver (OK with jaw-dropping possibilities) when I discovered my first true joy of the IBM clone: gaming!

That summer my wife-to-be got used to me staying up 'til all hours. I spent hours adding ram and reinstalling windows and then tweaking modem to goose a little faster data transfer.

And why? What was the key that led to what would become one of the biggest careers and passions of my life?

The Duke, baby!

Running, amped on adrenaline, through pixelated halls. Listening on my headset for telltale gunshots or movement through cheesy, looping midi music. Watching the bottom of my screen for taunts and chatter as Jay moved in for the kill--or swore his head off after I got the drop on him first!

Of course, the Duke got all the best lines:

"Damn, those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride."
"You're an inspiration for birth control."
"Uh, uh, uh, where is it?"
"Groovy!"

Before my ride on games ended, the love affair carried me through early Star Wars, Myst, and my second favorite video obsession: Unreal Tournament.

Those were heady days, oh, new-gen geeks... heady days.

And I never left the digital theme park, I just got tired of the rides. Networking an support paid all my bills for a decade. My first ongoing blog followed the beginning of the smartphone and mobile tech revolutions and of course I'm as wired as ever today.

Twitter and very real online friendships and one other thing-a dedication to my writing- have replaced the need and buzz I got off of gaming.

Because it wasn't the 'game' aspect, not the puzzler challenge of those first crude titles that hooked me: it was the communication. The head-to-head battles. Joining forces with people far in the distance to beat some ass sniping people.

It was the community.

Like a lot of you reading, I suspect, I have many meaningful interactions online. I learn online. Sometimes I work online. I'm always entertained and in so many ways I play online.

There's a lot in the way of community to fill that need in me nowadays--not the least of which is the 5-person fire-team that Is my nuke-lear family!

It's not to say I don't crave clearing a new level or taking a beautiful headshot... it's just more meaningful to me now to use the precious little time left to a family man, and provider, to write my own stories, create my own danger, my own witty comebacks, and see who gets out of *my* levels in one piece.

Duke taught me a lot. I'm putting the lessons to work somewhere else these days, but when it comes time to kick ass or chew bubblegum?

Those times, I think the Duke... And it's GAME ON!

John Mierau writes science fiction and fantasy. Ebook and podcast Stories available at ServingWorlds.com, along with roundtable and interview podcasts regarding content creation, speculative fiction and anything else I choose to stick under that umbrella!

Videogame Memories 05 | Richard Green aka MainframeGUEST BLOG POST

2011-07-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

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I Remember "Pong"

by Richard Green of Geek Out With Mainframe

I'm not talking about having a game console that happened to play "Pong" as well as dozens of other games; not a smartphone app; not a website where you can play it to your hearts delight.

Rather, back in the 70's my Dad came home with a "Pong" home game console that only played "Pong" (o.k. maybe a few other very similar games like handball, but all of them very "Pong"-esqe). It could not play anything other than the games that were loaded in the firmware; no buying more games for it, no upgrades, just "Pong".

I've tried over the years to figure out what model it was, but I haven't been able to find it in various Google Internet searches. The game controllers were wired into the console and only had a slider for the player to use. Most first generation game consoles had a knob, this had a slider. I'm not sure how many buttons and/or switches were on the game console itself, but it had to be minimal.

To watch the game, you connected it to the TV. This was decades before HDMI, so even this was primitive by comparison. TVs had two screws to connect the antennae wires. On the other end of the dual wire run was a large metal modern art sculpture held over the roof line by a metal pole. In order to get optimal reception for the 3 TV channels in our area (CBS, NBC, & Public TV ... that was it where I was) there was a motor that could rotate the pole and hence aim the antennae. In later years when the motor no longer functioned; we sons would take turn manual turning the pole, with the door open so we could hear someone inside let us know how close we were to getting the channel clearly (or as clear as it was going to get. Sometimes this was done in the rain. We also walked to school uphill, both ways. hehe

Oops, sorry for getting off track. Well, at the back of the TV where the two screws for the antenna wire; a small box was fit to allow the game signal to be visible ... at least if the slider control on the box was set to "game". After playing, the box was set so that the antenna's signal could once again be received. Yes, you had to walk up to the BACK of the TV before playing this "Pong". It was just as well, since remote controls were rare at the time. WE walked up to the TV to change channels or change the volume. Yes, we walked up and touched the controls actually on the TV ... it was THAT long ago.

Back to the game. Well, just do a quick Internet search and you can find "Pong" for almost any piece of electronic you probably own. I'm guessing that your toaster is "smart" enough to play this game. Think table tennis broken down to the simplest possible form that it would be recognizable as such. This is just a tad less complex than that. I remember that we could play solo "handball" or two could play "Pong". If there were more features than just turning it on and off, I can't recall them.

In retrospect I think my Dad bought it for us boys, so that HE could play it; but it felt like it was just for us. I was never much of a gamer and I'm still not; I had too many books and comics to read. That and I'm a pretty poor game player.

Other video games came and went infrequently over the years ... I think I remember a Commodore 64 and maybe one other cartridge system before I left for college in 1981. But "Pong" was the first ... for us and for the world. :)

Richard is a mainframe programmer, comic book fan, podcast fan, and Linux fan (esp. Ubuntu). He is also the host of one of my favorite podcasts, the "Geek Out! with Mainframe" podcast where he talks all things geek with my favorite podcast authors and creative types. His podcast can be found here: http://geekoutwithmainframe.com/

Videogame Memories 04 | Scott RocheGUEST BLOG POST

2011-07-26T09:16:00.000-07:00

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I am very much what you’d consider a casual gamer. I have a Wii and an X-Box (yes the original). I also have a GBA. Were it not for my kids these things would likely be gathering dust. I enjoy video games though, I really do. I have an iPhone and games like Angry Birds, Battleheart, and Scrabble get more of a workout than just about anything else. I just got a EEE Transformer tablet and I expect that I’ll be looking for games to play on that as well. For me these games are time killers, for use when I just want to veg.

When I was a kid though, things were different. I remember playing E.T. on the Atari 2600. Getting that little alien to navigate the pits ate up HOURS. My first video game console was an Intellivision. It had some truly awesome games including an Asteroids knockoff that owned me for months. Years later I received an Intellivision II from my Dad and this time around it was all about Burger Time. Finally, I went mainstream and managed to snag an NES. Here was were my video game consumption blew up. Blades of Steel is still my favorite hockey sim ever and the time I spent with Mario and the gang explains why my social skills are just now approaching adulthood.

Now that my street cred had either been established or demolished I have to say there’s one thing I sincerely miss, the arcade. For you kids, this was a place that was dedicated to dumping quarters into stand up version of these games. The colorful cabinets, the screaming kids, and the thrill of discovering that a new game had been delivered are all fond memories. The progress in the quality of game play, graphics, and artificial intelligence for the bad guys is certainly a nice trade off, but I miss what are the equivalent of the movie palace of my day. These chapels of geekdom were the places I went to hang out with friends and to engage in the kind of camaraderie and trash talk the jocks out there can appreciate.

I suppose some of that can be found in the dimness of one’s bedroom. Fire up the 360 and log in to Live and you can berate your friends or engage in co-op play with people from around the world. While awesome in its own way, it feels sterile. A purpose built location for hurling bits and blowing large wads of cash while hanging out with your friends should still have a place in the world outside of casinos.

A military brat, fan of horror and occult fiction at an embarrassingly

(for his parents anyway) young age, and a seeker of the true reality

beyond that which we see every day, Scott tries to include as much life

experience in his writing as he can. Every story he writes combines these

elements into something that he hopes you will not only enjoy, but tell

all of your friends about. He is active in the podcast fiction sphere

and is a contributing editor at Flying Island Press (http://flyingislandpress.com/). You can also find Scotts work on his website http://www.scottroche.com/ and many of your favorite online hard copy and eBook retailers.

Videogame Memories 03 | Alex White GUEST BLOG POST

2011-07-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

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Mario and Mother

By: Alex White of The Gearheart

Sometimes I wonder if my mother was right about video games. I’m pretty sure our right brains are getting fat.

Video games weren’t always this cheap, nor were parents always this understanding. Games may seem expensive now, but when you factor in inflation, it’s not bad at all. Furthermore, as the first gamer generations reach parenthood, they’re more likely to purchase a system, making consoles a ubiquitous presence in the American household. Seventy-two percent of American homes have consoles, and the age of the average gamer has risen from eight (1986) to thirty-seven (2011)[1]. What does this mean? What once was magical and elusive has become an indulgent digital buffet of incredible content.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Every time I walk past an abandoned PS3 or 360 kiosk, and I don’t see some kid getting neck and eye strain staring up at a tiny, broken screen, I don’t regret it. That missing child is probably off at his or her house, getting a quality experience in a social setting with family and friends. He or she is probably encouraged to go outside and have some “real” fun. Twenty years ago, however, that child would have been standing in line for a single whack at Super Mario World.

I will never forget the day our little rural Wal-Mart got its Super Nintendo demo station. I’d had a Nintendo with three cartridges (Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, Marble Madness, Back to the Future) before then. I used to rent games from the nearby gas station for a single night of play, and so I never got very far. The carts were expensive, and my parents largely distrusted the Nintendo. My mom saw what it did to me (fat, lethargic, belligerent, frustrated, inattentive). How can I blame her?

Anyway, the controller for the Nintendo Entertainment System had two action buttons, two menu buttons and a d-pad (I didn’t have the robot). It was hard, square, and it used to bruise my palms right in the middle if I played for too long. The lexan decal felt great, though, and it was fantastic to look at with that red Nintendo logo next to the buttons. It was about the least comfortable piece of tech I’ve ever used, but I didn’t care.

That’s why the first memory I have of the Super Nintendo is slipping my hands around that dogbone controller. Probably six millimeters skinnier than its predecessor with actuation in all the right places, rounded edges, triple the functions and two trigger buttons. Those triggers blew my ten-year-old mind. It felt so perfect, and with the X and Y buttons concave, and the A and B convex, the learning time was instantaneous. For the first time, I had experienced actual ergonomics, and with no apology for sounding obvious, it felt goooooood.

Then, when the system was restarted, the Nintendo logo popped up on the screen with the signature coin clink sound. Sixteen bit stereo with sampling quality that rivaled a radio station greeted my tiny ears with all sorts of ambient effects and eight channels for immersive gameplay. I didn’t know what that meant at the time. All I knew was it sounded amazing. That technology would one day give rise to the daring composers who would inspire a generation of electronic artists.

As my mother shopped for home essentials, I stood for hours, staring up at the screen and diving into the lush graphical environments. The yellowed fluorescence of the Wal-Mart with its hokey fashion and prepackaged culture disappeared, leaving Mario and me against the world. Of course my sister would muscle in and take the controller when I died, but there was a defense against that—don’t die so much.

I would visit that kiosk every week for the next two years with the religious determination of a zealous believer. The SNES was a temple, and we followed its rules. The line-jumping apostates were cast out by the Wal-Mart electronics clerk, and those who were righteous got to play just a little longer.

And then my mother would finish shopping, and we would act like little jerks because we didn’t want to leave. Like good children, we punished her for giving us time doing what we loved. We practically handed her the proof that video games make you a degenerate good-for-nothing.

Small wonder she hated video games.

[1]: “2011 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry”; http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp

Alex White lives in the woodland city of Huntsville, Alabama, where he writes pulp fiction and performs it on podcast with his wife, Renée. They have a son who is part dinosaur and a couple of animals. His work can be found at: http://www.thegearheart.com/

Videogame Memories 02 | Tim WardGUEST BLOG POST

2011-07-19T10:52:00.000-07:00

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Two of the biggest video game influences that I had growing up were Super Metroid and Final Fantasy III. Super Metroid was a real challenge to remember and read maps, as well as engross my mind in a futuristic world. Summer break from elementary school chilling in my basement with my friends doing spin jumps and shooting missiles at doors was an unforgettable experience. Final Fantasy came a few years later, and was the most impactful in developing my appreciation for fantasy adventure. FF III was unique in that it became an instant obsession. A friend brought it over and we played all the way to meeting Sabin, but there were no empty slots for memory, so I made my Mom go out and buy it. This was in sixth grade, and I became an instant FFIII nut. I could easily go home and play till I went to sleep, then at school I brought my strategy guide and drew pictures of moogles. When my teacher confiscated the book, someone stole it off her desk and I made my mom’s boyfriend go buy me a new one that night. FFIII singlehandedly made me a Fantasy fan and I probably always will be.

I played that game for years and finally beat it one morning around 3AM in seventh grade. My poor little brother, whom I got to level up my characters when I went skateboarding, didn’t get to see me beat it, but eventually played from my last save point and beat it himself. Some of my favorite aspects of FFIII were: the secret characters like Mog and Guru (mimicking Sabin’s bum rush was awesome); Sabin and his blitz abilities, though the bum rush was kind of a pain to do every time; and how halfway through the game, the world changed completely and it was like two games in one; the esper magic system with unique level up bonuses; fighting monsters from the sky in your flying ship; the forest with the dinosaur that gave you like 3k exp every battle, but was deadly if I got greedy and didn’t bring enough guys to battle; plus the story line for each character really hooked me into the story like no other game since. You know you’ve got a classic game when you’d rather play it than a newer game with better graphics.

Tim Ward is a science fiction, fantasy and horror writer from Des Moines, IA. His current project is to edit his SF novel, The General’s Shadow, about a bounty hunter trying to stop a nanobiologist from turning his people into a mutant army. Tim is always looking for people to interview on his two podcasts, AudioTim and Holy Worlds Podcast. He has a few short stories submitted for publication and hopes to see them in print soon. You can find him on Facebook, Twitter, or his website, timothycward.com

Dan here - The blog post Writing Average Heroes w/Level-Up Appeal Tim mentions at the end of his audio recording is great and was very interesting to me because I was one of the guys telling Tim he needed to read Nathan Lowell's novel Quarter Share. Go check it out and leave comments, it's a very interesting subject for writers when it comes to storytelling. The tension or action at every turn verses the everyman fiction where characters go about their business slowly "leveling up." I'd like to know what you all think about that as well!

Videogame Memories 01 | Jeff HiteGUEST BLOG POST

2011-07-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

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In the beginning, there was pong, or so I am told. I am not that old, though I am close. I have actually “written” code using punch cards, and played games that required all keyboard input because the joystick wasn’t really a real thing yet.

I was born in the 70’s and despite that fact I was pretty darn near 30 before I had ever played a video game that used a controller that didn’t look like an upside down “T.” I take that back when I was a teenager my brother had a first generation Nintendo, that he shared with me and yes the magic up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A select start does actually means something to me. Then again so do iddqd and idkfa. Despite that nearly useless knowledge, these are not my earliest video game memories. Those come from much earlier.

I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw it, that magic screen projecting device, but it was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. It was two and a half hours away from my house, and it belonged to my older cousins, but my brother and I spent many a night talking across the room ab out how wonderful it was to play Pacman.

It didn’t matter that we never had enough play time to make it past level 1. It didn’t matter that every time we got our hands on the controls that we had deal with the hoard of screaming people in the room telling us which way we should go and how we should watch out for that ghost right there. Can’t you see it are you blind? You are headed right for it! It didn’t matter that one half of the controller set had been modified for a lefty and you had to play left handed or the fire button was just totally in the wrong spot. (Something I still thank them for since I can now do most things with both hands.) What mattered was that we got to play. And the stories we would tell each other about that time were no less than legendary.

You see my cousins where the first people we knew that had a video game. We had seen them at stores and begged our parents for quarters to play them, but this was an actual system in their home and you didn’t need quarters, you just needed to wait your turn. Sometimes the line was long enough that you could have earned that quarter, but it was always worth it to sit in that darkened basement and play the three turns you got being eaten by ghosts well before you could leave the bottom half of the screen.

After that, we did eventually get a “computer.” It was a Texas Instruments 80 with a sound modulator and tape recorder back up. We had three games at first, Hunt the Wampus, a version of space invaders and PARSEC! But there was that tape backup and it had to be used.

My father was an engineer, at the time working for the Air Force, and was the first computer nerd that I ever knew. He had a plan for us. We were going to learn to write BASIC code. He got us several books, and showed us how we could follow the instructions to write our own choose your own adventure games. He even taught us how we could take instructions from one program and put them in another program so that you could have a cooler more complicated game. It didn’t take long before I was writing my own very primitive games. Heck I even wrote one that used the joystick in a very limited way, but it used it.

That was many moons ago, and even though developers now ask me never to write code, ever again, it was how I got started in my current career field. (Thanks dad for turning me into a computer nerd.) Those were good times and we did move on from there. When I begged for a commodore 64, we bought an IBM clone. I learned DOS, and started my writing career. But it was not just for writing, it had games to you know. Kings Quest, Wizardry and early flight simulators took a large amount of my days. They might have been in black and green, the characters might have been stick figure-esque, and I never did figure out how you could gnaw and something a miss, but those video games were legendary things and, if you were patient enough and held your mouth just right, you could some times even save your game.

Jeff Hite is primarily a husband and father, but when he is not at home playing with the ever growing number of kids he is an IT professional by day. In his "spare time" he is a writer, one of the co-founders of Flying Island Press and the managing editor of of Pirate's Cove. He lives by the motto : "I am a pirate your rules don't apply."

Videogame Memories - A Call for Guest Blog Posts!

2011-07-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

Even though I don't have much time to play them these days with 3 kids running around and most of my free time devoted to writing, video games have played a major role in my life. I have many fond memories of playing video games. I chose my career path because I wanted to get into making video games. Space flight games were a big influence on my upcoming novel. I thought it would be fun to get some guest blog posts before my novel comes out from people on their fond video game memories. I've provided two of my own in text and audio below as an example. My first time seeing Super Mario Bros on the NES, and my first time seeing Mario 64. I could tell so many other stories, but these have always stood out in my memory as bright and shiny.

What do I need from you?

Email me your stories, or record your experiences and attach them as an .mp3 file. I'll write up your recording, or record what you wrote so both text and audio will be available in the blog post. Also write up a brief bio of yourself, and attach a photo of you and any relevant photos if you're comfortable with that. Of course supply any links to your website(s) that you'd like me to include so people can find what you're up to as well.

Here are a couple examples from me in text and audio format:

Hi. My name is Dan Absalonson, and these are a few of my video game memories.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was walking into the basement of my cousin's house and there on a huge big screen TV was Super Mario Bros. for the NES. At home I had an Atari. The joystick was pretty cool, but there was only one red button. The games were fun, but pretty limited as were the graphics. The graphics I was seeing before me however, just amazed me. All the bright colors on such a massive display, it looked so cool and so much fun to play. I did get to play it later that day, and eventually we got our own Nintendo Entertainment System. I never knew anything like Super Mario Bros. or the NES was even possible before that day. I couldn't have imagined it until I saw it. I didn't know there was more than Atari out there, so it just blew me away.

A very similar thing happened when the Nintendo 64 came out. For whatever reason, I wasn't a Nintendo Power subscriber till post 64, I wasn't aware that the 64 was out yet. I went to my friends house to hang out, and was told he and his brother were in the basement. Once again I saw Mario in all his newly realized glory on a big screen TV. Most people didn't have big screens back then, and when I say big I'm talking a screen as tall as I was. On this monster screen I saw them playing Mario 64. Everything was in three dimensional space. The character was actually walking through a real 3D world. Mario could do flips, and you could hear his voice; it was crazy! I remember the graphics looking so good I just couldn't believe it. I had to get it for myself. We bought a Nintendo 64 a little while later, and Mario 64 was the only game we had for months. That was just fine with us, because we played it for hours; getting all 120 stars and exploring all the secret things you could find in the game. It was so cool how Mario could run and dive and triple jump and do side flips and back flips, and dive into water and swim - all in a 3D world. So awesome!

You can send your emails to: danabso[at]gmail[dot]com

I look forward to hearing from you and posting your glowing pixel memories. A new post will drop every Tuesday and Friday, starting this Friday the 15th, until I run out of them. This will be fun. Thanks for reading!

Review of Twilight (Spoilers)

2011-06-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. Really Dan, Twilight? But just like Harry Potter I finally had to see what all the hype was about. The first person who recommended the books to me was the nice lady cleaning my teeth at the dentist. It was my first time there and she was making small talk. I told her I liked to read. She got all excited and told me I had to read this book called Twilight. She seemed embarrassed that it was about vampires, which peaked my interest, but said that the story was so good she just couldn't put it down and was letting the dentist borrow them now. After that I started to hear about the books from other people. "You have to read the Twilight books, they're so good!" These comments were all from people I knew weren't avid readers, so I thought they must be good to get people who don't read often all excited. Then I started hearing the other side. All the bashing of "sparkly vampires" on podcasts I listened to. It seemed all the people who liked the genre fiction I did hated these Twilight books. They said they were awful. Well, I couldn't take it anymore. I had to find out for myself, so I read the first book. OK, on with the review.

I gave it 2 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.

OK, so it wasn't as bad as I was expecting, and it was worse than I thought it could be. Let me explain. The writing in this book is just bad. If I had a dollar for every adverb Stephanie Meyer used in this book, I just might be as rich as she is. Also, it seemed like she had a thesaurus and a cooking timer in her lap, and whenever the timer went off, she’d change the word she was on to one in the thesaurus just to make sure there were big words in her writing. It just didn’t match her voice in the rest of the prose to see these giant words dropped in out of nowhere. The plotting was bad too. Just when I thought it was finally getting good at the very end, the scene ends and you learn about what happened through dialogue. The climax of the book is relayed in conversations between characters after the fact. So yeah, the writing was atrocious, and the plotting was awful. That said, even though a lot of things bugged me as I read, it was a fun light read. I enjoyed the story despite all of the bad writing. I think Stephanie Meyer has some talent as a storyteller. The ending was pretty bad though. I guess I would wrap this up by saying I can see why people liked this book, and I can see why people hated it. I wouldn't say I hated it, it was a fun read, but it is horribly crafted and I would not consider it good literature. Let's just say I enjoyed the book, but I'm not going to be reading the second one. I just don't care that much what happens to these characters. What are your thoughts? Do you love Twilight? Do you hate it? Have you bashed on it without having read it yourself? Come on, fess up. Do you wonder why the Twilight books are so popular? I'd love to hear what you have to say.

A Call for Beta Readers!

2011-05-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

Below is a new story I plan to podcast next, but first I'd like some more eyeballs on it. Since it's such a short story, I thought I could scramble together some beta readers on the quick and get some feedback before podcasting. I'd love your thoughts in the comments section, thanks for reading!

The Day She Was Born

When I saw him pull the pistol from his right pocket I locked the car door and sat still. When I saw him enter the store where my pregnant wife was grabbing some rainbow chip frosting, I unlocked the car. I knew the small store had no security guard to deter the man, so it was up to me. For a quick second the thought crossed my mind that if I just stayed put, he would go in there, rob the place, and then leave. My wife would be fine. Then I heard shots fired.

I leapt out of the car and started walking towards the store, looking for a weapon. I had nothing in the car, and there wouldn't be time to find one in the store. I stopped before setting off the door sensor and looked over. On either side of the entrance were pale orange pots housing tall leafy plants. I kicked over the one closest to me and watched the dirt spill out onto the pavement. I hoped it was the only thing spilt onto the ground that night. I picked up the pot and shook out the rest of the soil. Weapon in hand I crept towards the store. I peered around painted letters on one of the large front windows. There he was, pointing his gun at the cashier. Everyone else was lying on the floor, but looked OK. He must have shot his gun as a warning to let them know he meant business. I didn't see my wife anywhere. She must be in the back, I thought. The robber looked pretty distracted, so I decided to chance it and hoped he wouldn't notice me sneak in.

I gripped the pot and stepped in front of the doors. I slipped my shoes off to soften my steps as they slid open with all the speed of a snail. As the opening grew wide enough for me I walked through as fast and quiet as I could manage. I made straight for the nearest aisle for cover, never looking over until I was out of his line of site. With my back to a shelf full of potato chips I leaned over to make sure I was clear. I fully expected to come face to face with the barrel of his gun, but he had not seen me. I leaned back in and breathed a deep sigh of relief, but soon my heart was racing again as I thought on what I planned to do next. I stood frozen for a moment, knowing that every second that passed could make the situation more dangerous. I peered down my aisle and saw I was alone.

With huge gliding steps I sailed down its shiny surface until I came to the back of the store. I slid around and continued until I saw his back to me past the end of an aisle. With steps that covered much less ground I strode forward without a sound. The stocked shelves of cereal and soda pop seemed to go on forever. When I reached the end a sudden spike of fear chilled me to the spot. My feet would not obey my command to take another step forward. Then I thought of my pregnant wife, sitting terrified and alone somewhere in the store. I got control of myself again, and took another step forward. As I pushed my feet forward through the swamp of fear I raised one trembling hand high into the air. Small bits of potting soil fell to the floor. The gunman's raised voice masked the tiny explosions they made as they hit the ground between us. Before my nerves could turn me yellow, I flew forward and brought the pot down with everything I had. I wasn't sure what I heard crack, as I smashed the pot onto his skull, but it made me sick. As he fell to an unconscious heap his gun bounced beside him and I scooped it up and shuffled back. I trained it on him and made some distance between us. I saw him start to move and shouted,

"Stay down!"

He looked over at me and saw that I had his gun. He flinched.

"Alright man, alright."

He laid flat and put his hands behind his head; a position he seemed familiar with. I looked over at the cashier. Her dull eyes held a blank look as she stared down at the robber.

"Hey, call the cops," I said.

She didn't hear me.

"Hey!" I shouted.

Her head shot towards me, but her eyes remained on him for a few seconds longer. When she made eye contact with me I said,

"Call 911, please!"

She snapped out of it and reached for the phone. Once I heard her relaying the story I turned to the crowd of people getting up from the ground. They were all looking at me. I needed to find Sadie.

"Do any of you know how to handle a gun?"

A burly man near me raised his hand.

"I do."

"Can you please take this and keep it on him until the cops get here? I've never used a gun and my wife is somewhere in here."

"Yeah, sure man."

He walked over and gave the man on the floor a hard look as he took the gun from me. He added the weapon to his stare and then looked back at me. His broad thin lipped frown reversed as he said,

"Nice work by the way. I thought you were nuts, but now I see it was for your wife's safety. I'm glad this crackpot didn't get away with this. I'll make sure he doesn't go anywhere, go ahead."

"Thank you so much," I said, and ran off to the back of the store.

"Sadie! Sadie, where are you?"

I heard no reply. I tore down one aisle after another until I heard some groaning in a voice familiar to me.

"Sadie! Are you alright? Have you been shot?"

She was lying on the ground in a pool of red. Was it blood? No. As I looked closer I could see that it was clear liquid showing through the red tiled floor beneath her.

"No, I think my water broke," she said in a tiny voice. She looked up at me.

"Honey, it's time."

"Oh crap!" I said, and began to run off.

"I'm getting you a motorized cart!"

I sprinted to the front of the store, minutely excited to finally get to ride a motorized cart. I hopped on and gunned it back into the store towards my wife. I helped her get on and she steered it after me towards the parking lot.

As we were leaving the store the man with the gun yelled to me,

"Hey man, where are you going? The cops are going to want to talk to you!"

"Sorry, my wife's water broke. We're going to the hospital. Can you tell them to come find me there?"

His eyebrows shot up as he said, "yeah, alright. Go!" and waved his unarmed hand in the direction of the door.

We took his advice and were on the road in a matter of seconds. I drove like a machine down those streets, getting us to the hospital in 4 minutes flat. Yellow meant go, red meant go faster. I called them on the way, and so I was pleased to see a nurse with a wheel chair waiting for us as I squealed the car to a stop. The sound made the nurse jump.

"You know she's going to be alright, you don't have to ruin your tires. We'll take care of her."

"Thank you," I said a bit embarrassed. Then I looked at my wife and gave her a kiss.

"Are you ready?" I said.

"I've been ready," she said with a smile. "Are you kidding me? Get this baby out!"

We shared a laugh.

"OK, I'll park the car and be right in."

We kissed again and then the nurse helped her into the wheel chair and I pulled away to the closest parking spot. I locked the car and jogged back to the hospital.

"My wife was just admitted, her water broke?"

"Yes sir, congratulations."

"Thank you."

"OK, go through those doors, take a right, go down the hall until you find some elevators. Take one to the second floor and ask the station nurse up there, she'll tell you which room your wife is in."

"Thanks!" I said tapping the desk twice and speed walking to the elevators, which took so long to arrive that I almost took the stairs.

"Hello sir, how can I help you?"

"My wife,"

"Ah yes, room 2002." She pointed behind her, just down there."

With another thank you I was on my way.

My wife was in a hospital gown ready to go. I stood by her side holding her hand as the baby came. It was miraculous. In a matter of moments my life was changed forever. I was a daddy. As I held her in my arms my gratitude for her and my wife and the whole world spilled onto my shirt. I can't remember the last time I cried, other than that day. She was born three weeks early at 6 pounds 11 ounces, 18 inches long, but healthy as can be. She never had to visit the NICU. We were lucky.

My wife had been having contractions during the previous week, but had never progressed. We came to find out from the doctor that they helped the baby mature in mommy's tummy. The doc also said that the excitement is probably what made my wife's water break and caused her to go into labor. I was able to hold my daughter for quite a while before some policeman came to our room. They asked if they could buy me a cup of coffee at the cafeteria and get my account of what happened. I turned to my wife to ask her if she was OK with that, but she and the baby were already asleep. My daughter lay on her chest, her legs tucked under her like a frog. They both looked so peaceful that I didn't want to wake them so I motioned that we go out into the hall.

We walked to the cafeteria and I relayed my whole story as I sipped coffee. Every time I gave them knew information, the cop name Sam wrote in his notepad and his lower lip disappeared under his bushy mustache as he looked down to jot his notes. I wasn't in trouble, they considered me a hero.

"You're a brave man," Sam said as I finished.

"Not usually, but thank you."

"Well I guess we'll do just about anything for those we love."

"Yes sir I said."

They both stood, shook my hand, gave me their business cards, and left. I sat there for another minute looking out the cafeteria window finishing the last of my coffee. As I watched cars pass by on the street below I wondered at what a day it had been. The day she was born.

Where Has Dan Been?

2011-05-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted here for a while, but hey I have a good reason :) My wife and I just had our third child! What a blessing he is too; a beautiful baby boy. We can't imagine life without him. So with a new baby comes nights without much sleep and a lot of time off from work for me to help my wife while she recovers. All of this has delayed my writing and podcasting. That said, I have started a new podcast, and I'll drop the first two short episodes in this post below. It's called 6 Goals. I came up with 6 things that I'm always saying I need to do more. I've heard that busy people get more done, so I'm going to make myself busy and try and get a lot done. I also want to get in shape. I'm overweight, and I miss running. Here are the 6 goals to give you a better idea:

Six miles run
Six short work outs
Six thousand words written
Six chapters of the bible read
Six water bottles consumed a day
Six sketches drawn in my sketch book

So I hope you enjoy my new podcast and know that I have been working on my next short story to podcast here for Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan. It's a very different story than I've told before. The protagonist is a junior high girl who gets picked on and made fun of all the time by the popular crowd. It's called Puppy Eyes, and I'll be putting it out sometime this month. Thank you so very much for stopping by, and have a great May. I can see summer on the horizon!

6 Goals | Episode 01

6 Goals | Episode 02

New eBook for Sale & eBook Pricing

2011-03-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

My Christian suspense novelette "A Second Chance" is now available in all the eBook formats on Smashwords and in the Kindle format at Amazon. I have been trying to finish editing this story for over three weeks now, so I'm really excited to finally get it out as text. It took me four long sit downs to get the editing done - with each sit down ranging from one to three hours. I'm liking the system of writing a story, editing it, podcasting it, letting it sit, then coming back to it to edit it one more time for eBook publication. I've noticed how valuable it is to let a story sit for a while before going back to edit it. Even though I have already podcast all of my stories, I still read it aloud when editing to catch all the things my eyes will skip past.

This story comes in at almost 11K words. Most of my other stories are around 5K words, and it's easy to take an hour or two and knock out an editing pass on them before publishing them. Since this story is twice as long as my others, it took a lot more work and it will be the first one I will be selling for more than .99¢ I will be selling this story for a whopping $1.99. Doing this made me rethink how much I might sell my 80K word novel for when it comes out.

eBook Pricing

This brings up a topic that's been on my mind a lot lately. It's a hot topic: eBook pricing. I was going to sell my 80K word upcoming novel for $2.99, but now I'm thinking I might sell it for $3.99. Here's my new breakdown:

FREE - Around 2K words or less (loss leader for other stories) Flash Fiction/Short Story
$0.99 - 7.5K words or less Short Story
$1.99 - 7.5K to 20K words Novelette
$2.99 - 25K - 50K words Novella
$3.99 - 50K + words Novel

What do you think? Too much, not enough? Thanks for stopping by, I'd love to hear from you!

Fezdon's Mistake is Now Available

2011-03-18T13:09:00.000-07:00

My Every Photo Tells short story "Fezson's Mistake" has been recorded and is now available! I just listened to it, and they did a bang up job again - great narration! Episode 62 of Every Photo Tells - Fezdon's Mistake is a prequal to my first submission to their podcast which was titled "Helsa's Secret Ingredient." Enjoy, and check out their podcast for more great short stories by other fine writers.

Here is their blurb for this story:

"People make mistakes every day. When you’re a wizard, mistakes can be a little more… colorful."

I highly recommend submitting a story to Every Photo Tells. It's a great experience.

My story on their site: Every Photo Tells | 62 – Fezdon’s Mistake

This story will soon be avialable as a free eBook in multiple formats. In the mean time, check out the custom cover I made for it below. I'm hoping to attract as many downloads from it as my last free short story did, which was up to 70 on the first day.

Interviewed on PodioMedia Chat

2011-02-28T09:57:00.000-08:00

On January 6th, 2011 I had a chat with Chris Moody on his awesome podcast Podio Media Chat. We talked about how I write, podcast, get ideas, and all kinds of other fun stuff. Go have a listen, and after you listen to my interview, you'll find that he's probably interviewed all of your favorite Podiobooks authors, so there's a lot of great content in his podcast.

Here is it on his site:

PMC Episode 69: Chatting with Dan Dan the Art Man

Helsa’s Secret Ingredient is Now Available

2011-02-27T08:16:00.000-08:00

My Every Photo Tells short story "Helsa's Secret Ingredient" has been recorded and is now available! I just listened to it, and they did an excellent job. It was so cool to hear someone else do a reading of my work; that's a first for me. It must be what professional authors feel like the first time they hear one of their novels as an audio book. It was an awesome experience! They also made a few little edits here and there to my story, and made it much better. They're doing great stuff, I highly recommend submitting a story to Every Photo Tells. It is too much fun, and a great experience.

My story:
Every Photo Tells | Episode 57 - Helsa's Secret Ingredient

It is also available now as an eBook in multiple formats for only .99¢

Photo Credits:
The photo used in this post is © 2010 Katharina Maimer

Wear My Art

2011-02-18T13:04:00.000-08:00

I did an illustration for Flying Island Press's debut issue of their Science Ficiton and Fantasy eZine Flagship. They have now made that artwork available on a T-shirt! It's at Zazzle, go and see here.

I Made the Cut!

2011-02-17T13:41:00.000-08:00

There is a really cool podcast called Every Photo Tells. The idea is, they post an interesting photo on their website, and people come up with short story ideas from the photo, and then submit their short stories. I've thought about doing it for a while, and I finally gave it a shot. I'm proud to say that they accepted my story. The photo my story was inspired by can be seen here on the right. The coolest part about all of this to me is that someone other than I will be recording my story. I'm going to get to hear my words spoken through someone else's voice. The other cool part is that there are two people who read for this podcast, and my story has two main characters, a husband and wife. So I'm going to get to hear two people reading my words! Those two are Katharina Maimer and Mick Bordet; excellent narrators with really cool accents. I'm so excited, I can't wait to hear it. The episode with my short story "Helsa's Secret Recipe" will be posting soon and I'll be sure to let you know. In the mean time, go and check out the site, and listen to some stories by the many great writers who've submitted to them.

UPDATE

The episode is available! Find it here.

Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan 08 - A Second Chance | Pt. 3

2011-01-26T08:09:00.000-08:00

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Find out what happens to Jerry, and how Tom deals with the death of his wife and son, in this third and final installment of "A Second Chance."

Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan 07 - A Second Chance | Pt. 2

2011-01-20T07:09:00.000-08:00

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Tom continues to try and cope with the loss of his wife and child. We catch up with him on the worst night of his life, where he has to go identify their bodies. Jerry, thier killer, is still on the run, but has run out of steam. He tries to find a place to park his truck and get some sleep without getting captured by police. Some background music was added to this episode to help capture the intense emotions of the characters. I hope you enjoy, and you may need a tissue or two for this short but powerful episode.

Promos:

Patrick E. McLean | Unkillable
http://patrickemclean.com/

Chris Moody | The Incident at Station 23
http://fiction.chrismoody.net/

My Christmas Short Story for sale as an eBook

2011-01-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

You can now buy my short story in every form of eBook your heart desires for only 99¢ on Smashwords right here:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36208

Thank you so much for your support, tell your friends. If you loved the story and want to share it with someone who isn't really an audiobook fan send them the link. Thanks, and I hope you're having a very happy new year.

My first Interview!

2011-01-03T07:26:00.000-08:00

Tim Ward, @timothycward on twitter, interviewed me on his writing podcast AudioTim.com. Though just getting off the ground, his podcast is great and I highly recommend it. I had listened to all of his episodes before being invited to go on the show; in fact I was invited to talk more about a comment I left him for one of his episodes. If you're a new writer, go check out the podcast. Tim is a great guy and I had a lot of fun talking with him about writing. During NaNoWriMo this year, he and I would often have word wars; posting our new word counts to brag that we had pulled ahead and egg eachother on towards more and more words. So go have a listen to his podcast, leave comments, and maybe you'll be interviewed next!

Here's the link for my interview on his show.

All I Want for Christmas is a V.R. Supercube (Bonus Christmas Episode)

2010-12-22T13:54:00.000-08:00

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Now available as a free eBook at Smashwords in all the formats you could want.

Alfred Thompson can't wait to get his V.R. SuperCube game system this year for Christmas, but there's a problem. He overhears the school bully talking with his mom in the game shop and comes to a realization. He may have just found a way to never be bullied again.

News & A Tradition to Join Me In

2010-12-10T10:14:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, my wife and I are going to Maui Hawaii! The bad news is, I haven't quite finished part II of my short story "A Second Chance," and we'll be gone for a week. So here's my plan: I'm going to finish the story and have it edited and ready to record by the time I get back from Hawaii. Then I can record it and get it into the feed in short order. So the week before Christmas I'll have it out to you. I might try and write a short Christmas story to put in the feed as well as a little Christmas gift to you guys for listening. In the mean time, join me in my tradition of reading Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This will be my third year in a row of reading it right before Christmas. It's a tradition I might keep for the rest of my life. It's a short read, and an excellent one. When Scrooge sees the error of his ways and wakes all joyful on Christmas day, his joy leaps from the pages, or .mp3 files, into your heart. It's a wonderful story to get you into the Christmas spirit of generosity and joy. Here it is for free in all the eBook formats you could want; and here is an excellent free audiobook version of it. Enjoy!

New Free Song "Die To Self"

2010-12-09T08:56:00.000-08:00

Introduction to the song:

The song on its own:

Download the song: .mp3

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Here are the lyrics:

Die To Self
By Euphony Meets Cacophony

In my own strength I have tried to kill you
But now I know one who has paid the price for me
Submerged in the water I lay you out
Take you down
Die to self
You will not survive this

I come up a new man

I won NaNoWriMo again!

2010-11-28T09:34:00.000-08:00

I won NaNoWriMo for the second time! This year was much different, and even though I ended up crossing the 50,000 word finish line in the same amount of days, 28, it was actually a lot easier this time around. I was usually 2 days ahead in my word count throughout the month of November. This was due to waking up early on the weekends when everyone else was asleep and cranking out around four thousand words or more. Those little boosts really helped me throughout the week. I had quite a few days where I didn't write a word, and it was only thanks to my buffer that I only fell below the line once on the 24th. I thought it was going to be much harder, because last year the only way I was able to make it was using an app on my Blackberry where I could talk into it and it would convert my words into text. This year I just recorded my voice into my phone instead and then when I had time I would write out what I had recorded. I started doing this because I no longer have internet on my phone, which the app required; but I think it ended up being much faster - I just had to find the time other than my commute to write. I could get to the 1,667 words for the day off of less than ten minutes of recorded audio. If you've never written this way and have a long commute where you can't write because you're driving, you should give it a try. If you haven't tried NaNo, look into it and give it a try next year, it's the most fun you'll ever have writing. The main reason for this is that there is a community writing along with you. It was fun this year to post my wordcount and then challenge my friends to try and catch me. It was encouraging to get back to the keyboard and write more when I saw that they had passed me up. So click on the link above, and check it out. Now to finish Part II of that short story and get it recorded so you won't all be left on a cliffhanger anymore :)

November 2010 Update

2010-11-24T08:21:00.000-08:00

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Happy holdiay wishes, why part II of the short story hasn't dropped in the feed, and what all I'm working on.

NaNoWriMo Tips & Tricks

2010-11-10T13:19:00.000-08:00

NaNoWriMo is going pretty well for me. Lately I've been getting around 1K words a day, but I'm not worried about it because I've remained a couple days ahead in my overall wordcount. I'm hoping to repeat last Saturday where I woke up at 6:30 and had a good couple hours where everyone else was asleep. I ended up writing almost 5K words! This thrilled me and I was giddy for the rest of the day. One way I've been able to crank out more words is to use my commute time to write. I know what you're going to say, "but Dan, I drive to work! I can't write while I'm driving!" What's my answer to that? "Yes you can!" I drive to work myself, and no I'm not taking my eyes off the road to write. What I'm doing is recording my voice into my phone as I drive. You should be able to do this with your hands free device, I don't want you getting pulled over for holding your phone up to your ear; "but officer, I wasn't talking on the phone, I was writing my NaNoWriMo novel." Yes you have to transcribe this when you get home, but you had to use that time to drive to work and not write as it was. Now when you get home, instead of writing off the top of your head, you're simply typing out what you already wrote; and trust me, the wordcount will fly out from your fingers much faster this way. So if you're able to try this method, I suggest you do and I hope it helps your wordcount.

Another thing I have been using is a really simple text editor called Dark Room, which you can download and begin using in seconds for free. This thing is so cool. I'm a PC guy, and I've always written using the most simple text editor out there which is Notepad. I don't care if something is spelled wrong, I don't want to see the little red squigly line; I don't even want to see extra menus or sidebars, or anything for that matter. I just want to see the text. One thing I don't like is writing on a widescreen monitor (most are these days) with Notepad maximized because then my lines of text are extremely long. So I started having my notepad window take up half the screen or less. This is no good because I can then see my desktop on the rest of the screen which is quite busy visually. Enter Dark Room. Here's what their site has to say about it: "Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text." Perfect! The screen is black and your text is green, like the Matrix. You can change these colors but I've found this to be very easy on the eyes. Also your text is in a nice neat column. You can adjust the width of this, but I've found that straight from the download it seems to be set up perfectly. There are arrows to help you scroll up and down, but other than that it's just the text on your screen; I love it!

One last tool I'll throw in here is something I don't plan on using but have seen staggering wordcounts tweeted from fellow NaNo writers for short periods of time. It's a program called Write Or Die. Basically if you're not writing bad things start to happen. Your screen starts to turn red, very annoying sounds start to come out of your speakers. There's even a kamikaze mode where if you're not hitting your goal the software starts deleting your text one word at a time! You set a wordcount goal, and a time you'd like to write those words in and you're off. Here's the software in their words: "Write or Die is a web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences."

Ok, now stop reading this, use the tools if you like, I hope they help, and get back to writing!

NaNoWriMo is here!

2010-11-02T07:15:00.000-07:00

What's NaNoWriMo? Why it's National Novel Writing Month of course! The first day of November has passed, and I am happy to report that I was able to crank out 3,978 words on my first day! The goal is to get 50K words in the 30 day month of November; which ends up rounding to 1,667 words per day; so I'm ahead of the curve as of today. I'm hoping to do some extra words while I'm still all energetic about it so that when I have those busy days where I can only manage like 400 words I'll still be on track. This is my second year doing NaNo, and you can read about the novel I'm writing a couple of posts back from this one here. It's tentative title is: The Time Musicians. I'm really excited and really determined to get the 50K words on time again this year and win NaNoWriMo for the second year in a row. Wish me luck, or even better, sign up now and become my writing buddy. That link will also bring you to my NaNoWriMo page where you can see my wordcount progress.

Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan 06 - A Second Chance | Pt. 1

2010-10-14T13:27:00.000-07:00

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Jerry has problems. A few years ago his pregnant mother died. His Dad has reduced himself to a drunk. Dad gets violent when he drinks, which is all the time. Jerry decides to run away, but ends up destroying another family by taking all of his anger towards his dad out on a stranger.

Thanks to Odin1eye over at http://www.viewfromvalhalla.com/ for the intro.

Promos

Dead Robots Society & MWS Media LLC Present "Explorers"
http://deadrobotssociety.com/anthology/

Matthew Wayne Selznick's Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights
http://www.mattselznick.com/writing/fiction/hazy-days-and-cloudy-nights/

Attributions

Thanks to Wes Kinsler for his use of the truck image from his website over at http://www.wkinsler.com/

Sound effects used come from
http://www.freesound.org/

Music used

Dying To Live (Dan's old band)

My next NaNoWriMo Novel

2010-10-01T15:13:00.000-07:00

My next NaNoWriMo novel is going to be called The Time Musicians. It is the sequel to the first novel I ever finished, which is called "The Mysterious Puddle." Last year was my first time doing NaNo and it helped me finish my second novel, which was a Science Fiction / Space Opera book called "The Trading Family." That's a working title which I am not going to keep, but it holds the spot for now. I was thinking of NaNoWriMo and remembering that you can upload an image for the book you're writing, and so I whipped up this graphic to use. The Time Musician will be kind of a genre mash up. It starts out in the near future and then goes back in time to a Medieval village where most of the first book I wrote, "The Mysterious Puddle" took place. So the setting will be SciFi for the first part, and more of a classic Fantasy setting for the second part. It will be a fun to write, and I am determined to get down 50k words during the month of November. Join me in November on the NaNoWrimo website as my writing buddy here, and lets write like the dickens! (Yes you can write like Charles or Emily if you wish)

Inspiration

2010-09-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

I recently switched from Blockbuster online back to Netflix for their free streaming of movies and TV shows. My wife and I are hooked on Gray's Anatomy right now, and it's saving us a ton! Anyways, while watching the previews before Pixar's movie Cars, my 2 1/2 year old son saw one for Disney's 1953 Peter Pan. I loved this movie, and now my son does too. He watched it as many times as we would let him. We've since mailed it back and he's currently watching the 2002 sequel Peter Pan in, Return to Neverland. Watching that movie with my son, for the first time in a decade or so, made the whole world come alive to me again. I thought about how cool the ideas were and I remembered my brother back when we were in college together say that he had read the book - and that it had rocked. So I have started reading the book, and it's great to get a deeper read of the story in novel form. From watching that cartoon movie, I wanted to know more about the world of Neverland. I wondered how it all really worked, it's origins, and the back story to all the characters. It inspired me to want to write more fantasy in my own work, as I've been focusing on Science Fiction lately. I can't wait to create my own world for characters to escape into. I know just how I'm going to do it too. The good folks over at The Dead Robots' Society Podcast and Matthew Wayne Selznick of the Podiobook Brave Men Run and many other projects, are going to publish an anthology called EXPLORERS: BEYOND THE HORIZON. I'll let you hear what it is in their words:

"A short story anthology to be published in 2011. The stories in EXPLORERS will feature characters forever changed by their discovery of lands and worlds beyond their own. Whether it’s by charting new stars, trekking across fantastical realms, sailing new oceans or traversing the wild and unknown spaces between dimensions, readers will find the unimaginable in the pages of EXPLORERS."

I had a great idea that I think will turn into a novel, but first I'm going to write out a short story for this anthology which will tell of some dudes discovering this world I'm going to create. My world will be much different than Neverland or Narnia but it will be imaginative, it will be mine, and it will start with an N. I was just kidding about that last part :)

I've been inspired. What inspires you? Do you think we would be pushed to create without inspiration? Was there one big moment of inspiration which started you down the path of creating art? Was it an individual or people rather than media that got you going? Is it still a hobby like it is for me, but you dream of it being more some day? If it's more than a hobby, when did you know it was what you wanted to do full time? Leave a comment, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how inspiration influences our creative output.

I've Been Busy!

2010-09-09T18:28:00.000-07:00

So, there is a brand spanking new short story episode I'm very happy with which dropped at the very beginning of this month, but I haven't been posting much else on here. Let me tell you why. My wife and I started doing foster care a few months ago, and have taken in 3 foster kids in that time. First we had a little 3 month old, then for 3 days his 3 year old sister, then an 8 month old. We've only had 2 at a time, but with our 2 1/2 year old son that's three kids in diapers. Yes, we're crazy :) You can hear all about it on a Foster care Podcast I started called Fostering With Love. Now we have only the 3 month old, who's now 5 months old, AND as of last night - an adopted little girl. My wife and I have been waiting for over 9 months to be placed with a baby through a local private adoption agency. Now it has happened! We're so excited. She is a beautiful 3 month old little red head. So now we have our 2 1/2 year old son, our brand new 3 month old daughter, and a 5 month old foster baby boy. Now you know why my podcast episode dropped a few days late, and why this blog has been a bit less regular than normal. As the dust settles I hope to be posting more regularly. I also hope that before too long I'll be posting the first episode of my SciFi/Space Opera novel. It has yet to go through a 2nd draft and get before beta readers, but it's getting closer. In the mean time, thank you so much for stopping by, and you can look forward to a new short story podcast every month. Until next time, this is Dan signing off.

Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan 05 - The Last Butterscotch

2010-09-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

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Henry Jr. and his family are excited about their newborn kittens, but after Mama had made sure they were doing well - Henry Jr. goes to the barn to see them, but after counting them finds that thereâs an extra one. He tells his mama, and they run back to discover there is indeed another cat she had not seen come out of the mother cat. As the weeks go on they notice this last kitten is very different from the others. Find out why by listening in to this episode!

Website: http://writingsofdan.blogspot.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/DanDanTheArtMan

Promos:

John Mierau
http://johnmierau.com/

P.C. Harring
http://www.cybrosisnovel.com/

Sound Effects used from: http://www.freesound.org/

Music used from: http://archive.org/

Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan 04 - Little Willie's Revenge

2010-07-29T15:49:00.000-07:00

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Good old Thomas, or @Trreed on Twitter, challenged me to come up with a short story based on a Little Willie poem he used in one of his bitstrips. This short story is based on this poem. Little Willie's mother passed away and now his dad has remarried. Now Willie has a sister a bit older than him. He hates her. Find out why and what he does about it by listening to this story.

Bitstrip by Thomas Reed or @Trreed:
http://bitstrips.com/user/1222/read.php?comic_id=679412&sc=1
http://thomasjreed.blogspot.com/

Promos:
Pirate Jack by Alessandro Cima
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/pirate-jack

Dead Mech by Jake Bible
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DeadMech
http://jakebible.com/

Attributions:

Jelly Roll Morton - Creepy Feeling
http://www.archive.org/details/JellyRollMorton-CreepyFeeling

Images used to create story graphic:
http://www.veggiegardeningtips.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/green-tomato-blight-soup.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/78/Paris_Green.JPG

An Update and a Song

2010-07-23T11:27:00.000-07:00

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A brief update from Dan's driod R2D3PO and the full version of a song by Dan's old band Dying To Live.

Trreed's Bitstrip webcomic:
http://www.bitstrips.com/series/127948/read.php?comic_id=679412&subsection=0

Dying To Live

Me With My Rock N' Roll Hair

Lyrics to "Redemption" by Dying To Live written by Dan Absalonson:

Who am I that you should care for me
But you do. You say you love me as you love your son

and I except that love

There's no way I could live up to deserving what you've given me

but your blood was spilt so that I

may be seen as holy in the Father's eyes

Undeserving death

you laid your life down

to save mine and so I die

to sin but I'm alive in you

Promo:

The Adventures of Indiana Jim
http://podcast.indianajim.net/

I'm a Contest Winner!

2010-07-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

Over at View From Valhalla, @odin1eye as he goes by on Twitter, reviews and interviews podiobooks authors. So right away, you know I'm a huge fan - anyone who promotes podiobooks is the man in my book. This is definitely true of Odin1eye, don't take my word for it, pop on over to his site and see the large number of great reviews he's posted. Also, for those authors looking to put your fiction into audio form, he has lots of great interviews asking Podiobook authors how they do it. He even has some of his own fiction over there.

New to podiobooks, and don't know where to start? I have a blog post recommending some of my favorites, but go over to his site for a ton of more extensive reviews to see what many of the books are all about. Also, leave comments on what you thought of his reviews. That's what I did, and it instantly entered me into a contest to win a free signed book he has reviewed of my choice! And guess what, I won! I chose to have Nina Kimberly the Merciless by Christiana Ellis sent to my doorstep, and she even threw in a Casey's Cadets pin that looks like the image to the right of this text! Click on the book title link and go listen to the entire novel yourself for free! It has a dragon it in, and the protagonist is a female, so not your average fantasy novel. If you're more a fan of Sci-Fi, then check out another book related to the image above by her called Space Casey, a really fun podiobook. Again, listen to the whole book for free! That's why I love Podiobooks.com. Thanks again to Odin and Christiana for the signed free copy of the book!

Flying Island Press | Flagship

2010-07-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

This 4th of July, celebrate our country's independence, and short story speculative fiction. Some friends of mine are starting a brand new short stories E-Zine. I had the awesome opportunity to create the cover art for their first issue, as well as the logo for the Science Fiction and Fantasy side called Flagship. The most exciting thing to me is that they're releasing the stories in every format you can think of, even audio! That's just cool. Here is a press release about their upcoming debut issue:

Flying Island Press

Press Contact - Scott Roche

sroche@flyingislandpress.com

(336) 462-9676

Enjoy Your Sci-fi and Fantasy How and Where You Want

Beginning July 4th, science fiction and fantasy fans will be given a new place where they can discover authors and stories they’ll be able to enjoy wherever they go. Flagship, the new e-zine by publisher Flying Island Press, will soon be releasing short stories every other month in formats for the Kindle, the iPad and iPhone, and other electronic readers.

Flying Island Press also recognizes the increasing popularity of podcasts and other forms of audio fiction. So, in addition to the e-zine, an audio version will be available to listen to on any MP3 player. Stories they release will be available both in text and in audio, allowing the consumer to choose their preferred version.

Zach Ricks, managing editor for Flagship, had this to say. “I wanted to hearken back to what some have called the Golden Age of Science Fiction.” It’s his hope that “FlagShip will be a place for optimistic, entertaining fiction.”

Each issue will cost $1.99 for the text version or the audio version or get both for just $2.99.

Issues will be available starting July 4th, 2010 at
http://flyingislandpress.com/flagship

I Started a New Blog & Podcast - Fostering With Love

2010-07-02T19:11:00.000-07:00

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My wife and I are very soon becoming foster parents. This is no small matter. I've decided to start a new blog and podcast about the experience. I'm hoping it can be a tool for those looking to become foster parents, or anyone else who wants a glimpse of what it is like to have foster children in your home. We are very excited, and soon a little baby will be coming into our home. The blog can be found at: http://fosteringwithlove.blogspot.com/ Wish us luck and send us your prayers. :)

Bitstripped Again! This One Leads To My Next Short Story

2010-07-02T14:04:00.000-07:00

Good old Thomas, or @Trreed on Twitter, challenged me to come up with a short story based on a Little Willie poem he used in one of his bitstrips. So my next short story will be based on this poem, I'm calling it "Little Willie's Revenge." It will drop into my feed and right here on the blog Friday July 30th. If you haven't noticed, I've been releasing my Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan episodes on the last Friday of every month. Until then, have a great 4th of July weekend!

Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan 03 - Evil Takes Flight

2010-06-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

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Jeff Klots has a problem. Every time he comes home from school, he gets dive bombed by an evil crow on the way into his parent's house. He decides to do something about it. All he needs, is a weapon that will do the job.

Promos played at the end are for these fine authors:

Justing Macumber | Dead Robots Society
http://www.justinmacumber.com/
http://deadrobotssociety.com/

Paulette Jaxton | The Empress Sword
http://paulettejaxton.com/
http://empresssword.com/

Matthew Wayne Selznick | Brave Men Run
http://www.mattselznick.com/
http://www.podiobooks.com/title/brave-men-run

Also, I mentioned Michell Plested | Get Published & Galaxy Billies
http://www.michellplested.com/
http://www.michellplested.com/category/getpublished/
http://www.michellplested.com/category/galaxybillies/

And, Scott Sigler | New York Times Best Selling Author & Podcaster
http://www.scottsigler.com/

Attributions:

Music Used: Dying To Live (My Old Band)

Sound Effects provided by The Free Sound Project here:
http://www.freesound.org/

How Podcasting Improves my Writing

2010-06-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

I've heard from many writers that one of the best ways to improve your writing is to read your work out loud. When you read your own work, your eye reads over things that are incorrect because you see what you think is there, not what is actually there. Reading it out loud forces you to perceive the words through a different sense, and by hearing the work you’re bypassing your brain’s ability to see what it wants to see. You'll catch things you wouldn't by simply reading what's on the page. In listening back to my short stories I've noticed that I make 2 huge mistakes often:

1. Show Don't Tell
2. Using adverbs (ex: quickly)

Also I've noticed I like to use the phrase "made a rush for..." Now that I've seen this, I can endeavor to edit all future writing, with these problems in mind.

I have three main reasons for starting this podcast.

1. To improve my writing.
2. Self imposed deadlines, to increase output.
3. To put content out there before releasing a full novel in podcast form for practice and exposure.

I'll be the first to tell you I have a long way to go as a writer, but I will get there. I'm going to try my hand at Scott Sigler's 3-5 year plan. Scott is the most successful podcast fiction author out there, a New York Times bestseller. He got there because he's a good writer, but also because he's put in a lot of hard work podcasting his fiction for free consistently. He was on his fifth podcast novel when he got a deal with Crown. I'd also like to point out that my favorite Podiobooks author Nathan Lowell recently received a publishing deal. Nathan's not a guy who promotes much, but he is extremely prolific, and has put out 7 books in 3 years, since he started podcasting Quarter Share back in 2007. That is a lot of content for his fans! I think there's something to this consistently thing, but back to Sigler. He suggests that instead of spending time trying to get published the traditional route, use that time to release your novels as free podcast audio books, building up a fan base that you can then use to leverage a deal with a publisher down the road. He says to expect it to take 3 to 5 years before you start to see things happening. It’s not like this is a sure bet towards publication, but he has 3 things that should help you; getting sick of my numbered lists yet?

1. Quality Content
2. Consistency
3. Promotion

So for me this means:

1. Continuing to better my writing skills so that I'm putting out quality content, and having self imposed deadlines of releasing one short story a month so I'll be writing a lot and hopefully improving a lot.

2. Finishing at least 2 books so I can start writing a third while releasing the first two, and finishing the entire audio production of the first book before even releasing the first episode to ensure a CONSISTENT weekly release of each episode.

3. Doing what I can to let people know about my stories via social media, creating promos for other podcasters to play, and anything else I can do to promote my work.

I obtained these great Scott Sigler nuggets of wisdom from listening to his interviews on podcasts, primarily The Adventures of Indiana Jim - Adventures 17 & 18, and follow those up with Adventure 37 where Jim talks about all of this stuff and how it relates to his work. @indianajim, who plans to follow Sigler’s advice, also has a similar blog post to the one you just read here.

Thanks for joining me in this quest for publication. It may be a long road, but it should prove to be a lot of fun. Watch for my next podcast short story “Evil Takes Flight” to drop this Friday.

I've Been Bitstripped!

2010-06-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

Pretty cool, eh? Thomas or @trreed as he's known on Twitter is the guy who made the Bitstrip you see above. He's a huge fan of podiobooks, his Twitter bio stating: "Podiobook and Bitstrip addict, oh yeah, and Math Teacher." Anyone who is a huge fan of podiobooks, rocks in my book; but that's not the only reason he's awesome. He's one of those cool dudes I would call a super fan. Most people, if you're lucky, will leave a tiny bit of feedback for podcast authors. Some go a little farther and leave feedback by calling into the podcast author's voice line, or sending in an mp3 file. What does this guy do? He creates Bitstrips, web comics, celebrating podcast authors and their work. How cool is that? Pretty sweet promotion he's doing for podcast novels he's enjoyed. His bitstrips are funny too, you should go check them out right now.

A Free Ringtone For Your Blackberry

2010-06-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

Download the .mp3 (Right Click, Save Target As...)

Hey guys, my service droid R2D3PO is always making fun of those little phones called droids, saying that they wish they were as cool as him. He thinks the commercials are ridiculous. I never tell him I think they look pretty cool. However I did tell him how weird it is to hear droid phones ringing all the time at work, because the ringtone is a robotronic voice saying "DROID!" I told him it reminds me of him, he didn't take kindly to that. So I thought it would be funny to set the ringtone on my Blackberry to say "BLACKBERRY!" in a robotic voice just like the droid phones, as a spoof on Droid phones for those who have a Blackberry, and for R2D3PO. I asked him to make the ringtone for me, and this is what he spit out. Feel free to download it and add it as your Blackberry's ringtone, should be a good laugh around the office when people hear your phone go off.

A Novel Released Serially On A Blog

2010-06-05T09:39:00.001-07:00

Michael Lee, or @GoldenAgeOfGeek, as he's known on Twitter.com, wrote an awesome YA Fantasy novel called The Hidden Kitchen. The cool thing is, you can read it for free in its entirety right now online. The novel can be found here: http://joshuasagehiddenkitchen.wordpress.com/

It was really fun reading it as he was releasing it, one chapter at a time online. I've experienced novels that way in the audio form, as you may well know, I'm a huge fan of podiobooks, or podcast novels. There's just something fun, exciting, and immediate about consuming something as it's being released. You could liken it to your favorite television show. You see an awesome episode, and you want more, but you have to wait until next week to see what happens next. When that fresh episode, or chapter, is out you race to consume it. It may be frustrating to not be able to just read to the end for many, but it's also really fun not knowing what's coming next and feeling like you're experiencing it at the same time as many others. I think you feel more connected with the other fans, as well as the author because of the way it's being released.

I think when I release my first novel it will be via podcast, but I'll also have an eBook version available for a few bucks. Those who can't wait to see what happens next, can buy the book for less than a frappuccino. What are your thoughts on that? Thanks for stopping by.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

UPDATE

Also, I forgot to mention, Michael in all his awesomeness, put up a small bio about me on his website: http://tweepsofinterest.blogspot.com/

Stories of Dan Episode 02 - My Last Day

2010-05-28T08:19:00.000-07:00

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It's Police Captain Matt Selznick's last day on the job, and he's going to make sure he ends his career on a high note. Rather than staying at his desk, he goes out in the field impersonating a criminal transporter to pick up a bad guy and bring him in for questioning. Sounds simple right? If only it had been.

Promos played at the end are for these fine authors:
J.R. Murdock
Nathan Lowell
Michell Plested
David J. Williams

Attributions:

Music Used was "Fresh Deep Drum and Bass Vol. 2" by DJ Krauss found here: http://www.archive.org/details/FreshDeepDrumandBassVol.2

Sound Effects provided by The Free Sound Project here: http://www.freesound.org/

A New Promo for my Short Stories Podcast

2010-05-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

Right Click Save As... mp3

I cut a new promo for my short stories podcast, have a listen. Please feel free to play it on your podcast, and let me know so I can promote you as well.

My New Twitter Hashtag #FeedbackFriday

2010-05-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to start a new #hashtag on Twitter, to get more people to leave podcasters feedback on their work. It looks like @rosewillscharms beat me to the punch in starting this hashtag, (and strangely used it for the first time the same day I came up with it) but I'm going to try and make it popular and help it be used for a specific purpose in the podisphere community. It's a lot like the hashtag #FollowFriday, and can easily go in conjunction with it. I call it #FeedbackFriday. All you do, is go and find the webpage for a podcast episode you enjoyed, and leave the podcaster a comment. Then tweet something like this

I left my feedback for @PatrickEMcLean here: http://bit.ly/aVOgNA Now you go and do the same. #FeedbackFriday

Don't forget to put the #FeedbackFriday hash tag in your tweet, and you're set. I hope you all start to leave feedback for all the comment and feedback craving creators out there, I know I'd love some :)

P.G. Holyfield's Amazon Rush

2010-05-11T10:14:00.000-07:00

I really hope you enjoyed my first podcast episode, it was a blast to write and produce. I'm already editing the audio for the next one, and you'll see it drop in the feed later this month. But right now, I'd like to point your attention once again to P.G. Holyfield. His debut novel Murder At Avedon Hill is hitting Amazon.com on Saturday, May 15th, at noon Eastern time. I would love for everyone that wants to own the print version of the book to head on over to Amazon and pick up a copy. He's hoping you'll all buy it on that day at noon in an attempt to push it up the charts by having as many people purchase it as possible, at the same time, on Amazon.com. By doing so, we can push the book up the charts and increase its exposure in the short term.

Read more about it in his blog post, "The Amazon Rush Event"

So there's a book recommendation, one which you can preview in its entirety as an audiobook on his site, and podiobooks.com

Until then, keep an eye out right here, and on twitter for my next podcast short story, "His Last Day."

Stories of Dan Episode 01 - Big Axe, Small Hands

2010-04-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

Download the mp3.
Download the promo.
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Join Halvard the Halfling as he journeys to find the way of the warrior, running into trouble along the way, and meeting races he's only heard tell of in the story told around the community fire in his small village. I would love any comments you have! Thanks for listening.

Promos played at the end are for these fine podcast authors:

P.G. Holyfield

Michell Plested

J.R. Murdock

Attributions:

Music Used:
http://www.archive.org/details/bretonse_harp

http://www.archive.org/details/CelticHarpSchroeder

http://www.archive.org/details/DjembeDrumming

http://www.archive.org/details/ViolinExperiment

http://www.archive.org/details/SoliDjembeRhythm

http://www.archive.org/details/Carl_Leth_211

http://www.archive.org/details/indian_raga

Sound Effects used:

http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=4211

http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=13900

http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=47340

I'm in a Parsec Awards promo!

2010-04-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

I was approached by my friend, Michell Plested of the Get Published & Galaxy Billies podcasts, to add my voice to a Parsec Awards promo he wrote. Not only was I really excited to finally lend my voice to a project, but his promo is really funny! Mike shows up at my door in the middle of the night, having traveled some 600 miles from Canada, just to tell me about the Parsec Awards. You've got to hear it. It can be found in the link above, or better yet in his latest episode of Get Published, Episode 29 – Nathan Lowell’s Journey to Publication. You can hear Mike interview my favorite podiobooks author, Nathan Lowell, right after the promo plays at 11:06.

UPDATE on my first podcast episode:

I have 14½ minutes produced now of my first short story, "Good Things Come in Small Packages. It's going to drop hopefully sometime later this week, so stay tuned! I thought I'd be done by now, but I've added background music and some sound effects, so it's taking longer. That said, I think it will be worth it in the end, I'm really happy with the way it's turning out.

I've chosen a new song for my first PodFic Episode!

2010-04-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

So, I've chosen a song I found on archive.org to use for the intro music, instead of what you hear in the blog post below, which was a little snippet from a band I was in when I lived in Seattle. I really like the new song I've chosen, I think it fits the mood of the story much better. Let me know what you think. I'll only be using the first part of the song for my short story podcast episode, so you won't be hearing any bag-pipe type sounds as you hear in the full song below.

Enjoy!

You can find the music audio for download here.