My latest short story "The Night the Lights Came On"

Friday, June 25, 2010

Short Stories of DanDanTheArtMan 03 - Evil Takes Flight


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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/

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

How Podcasting Improves my Writing

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.

Friday, June 11, 2010

I've Been Bitstripped!


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.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

A Free Ringtone For Your Blackberry

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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.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

A Novel Released Serially On A Blog

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/