Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for Aug 21 2015 – DDOP 18

In this episode, I answer the question of whether there will ever be more episodes of the Reality Break Podcast.

Here is the direct MP3 download for the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast, August 21 2015

Links mentioned in this episode:

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The Kindle is NOT a Closed System

I want to address one of the biggest bits of spurious push back I see on the Amazon Kindle. I see people over and over saying they don’t want one because it is a “closed system.” This is not the truth and I’ll get to that after a little prelude.

I’ve had mine for about seven months now and really enjoy it. It’s worked in to being a reasonable part of my daily life. About 80% of the non-comic book pleasure reading I’ve done in the last six months has been on this Kindle. When I do cardio at the gym I take it. When I need to be able to use Twitter or the the web in a mobile situation, I take it. When I shop the cheapo comic bins at a comic convention and need easy access to my collection inventory, I take it. This started as a luxury splurge for me, but it has become a daily tool of my life.

The counter argument I see over and over, in blog posts, in Facebook or FriendFeed comments when someone talks about the Kindle is something of the form: “I don’t want one because it is closed. I don’t want to have to buy all my books from Amazon.” I’ll give folks credit for not deliberately telling falsehoods, but that type of statement is not factual. You aren’t required to buy all your books from Amazon. You can put arbitrary documents on there from a variety of sources. I certainly do, and I’d imagine that practically every person that owns a Kindle has something on there that they didn’t purchase from Amazon.

I justified my Kindle purchase because in preparing for Reality Break interviews I get electronic copies of books. Sometimes these are prerelease manuscripts the author sends me, or electronic copies of a released book or in the case of Baen Books sometimes it is just temporary access to their Webscription catalog. Regardless of the path, I get ebook versions of a book I need to read to conduct an interview. Previously this required either reading on my laptop or printing out the book. I went to Dragon*Con 2008 with a giant stack of loose page printouts of books from Mur Lafferty and Tobias Buckell. It was a huge drag trying to read these things while standing in line or sitting in a restaurant with pages spilling everywhere. At that con, I thought “This would be so much easier with a Kindle.” Before the next year’s con, I did in fact own a Kindle.

In my seven months as a Kindle user, I have purchased exactly five books from Amazon for it: Gus Hansen’s Every Hand Revealed, Anthony Artis’ The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide, Scott Kirsner’s Fans, Friends And Followers , Paul Melko’s The Walls of the Universe and Douglas Rushkoff’s Life Inc. In each case, the purchase process was simple and downright pleasant. I bought most of those from the regular Amazon web page but the Artis book I made a point of buying it from the Kindle itself as an experiment. Both ways of purchasing were equally easy and without issue.

I’ve paid Amazon around $60 (not all of these were the $9.99 price). However, I have hundreds of books on my Kindle. How did I get them? The first day after I bought it, I downloaded my entire library from Fictionwise and transferred it to the device. Because with Fictionwise you can choose a preferred format of books, I changed mine to MOBI and in 5 minutes had every book, short story and magazine that I had ever purchased with Fictionwise on my Kindle, in native format at that. Very sweet and easy.

It doesn’t stop there. I did an experiment where I took the first page of my recommendation list from the newly revived AlexLit site (I’ve had an account on there for 12 years!) and for every book that is in the public domain, I went and downloaded it from Project Gutenberg. That put another few dozen books on there, all for no cost and without any intervention from Amazon. I put them on via USB so I’m not paying the $0.10 per document to have them transferred. Even if I had transferred them at a dime apiece, that would have been $2.50 or so.

Add to this, I keep on my Kindle two text files related to my comic book collection. I take the data dump of my collection and my wishlist from ComicBookDB, run them through a formatting program and put the resulting text file on my Kindle. At Heroes Con, Dragon*Con and XCon, when I dug through the 3/$1 bins I had my electronic wishlist at the ready. If I wasn’t sure whether I had a specific issue, I’d switch over to my collection inventory to double check. It has a geeky irony to be using an ebook reader to handle my purchasing of paper comic books but it works out well.

These are just a couple of sources of books that one can use to get books for Kindle without paying Amazon. There is no definition of a “closed system” that this fits. One can argue that if such a proportion of my reading is non-Amazon why didn’t I get a different device? Fair enough question. In my case, I fiddled with a Sony Reader and just didn’t like it that much. I considered waiting for some cheaper Korean knockoffs but if my cheapo MP3 players are any indication, the spec sheets will tell one story while the actually usability is a whole different thing. I like the wireless access and I use it a little, for mobile tweeting and yelping and the like. It’s not good enough to do that iPhone/Blackberry thing of ignoring everyone else at the table but it is good enough to use Twitter to find parties at a SF convention. That’s good enough for me. It might be enough for you too. I’m not asking people to love the Kindle – everyone makes this decision for themselves. I am asking people to use valid and factual arguments when making the case for or against the device.

And while I’m on it, let me point to a dishonorable mention in Kindle criticism, here is a piece at Suvudu by Joe Schreiber, which includes this risible line:

If you own a Sony Reader or a Kindle, and you are able to use this amazing device to read hundreds of pages while its soft blue glow exhales into your eyes, well, big ups. I’m very glad for you.

That’s a clear indicator that Joe has determined these devices won’t work for him without ever actually being in the room with one. They don’t glow. That’s kind of the whole point of e-ink, my friend. It doesn’t glow, is opaque and easier on the eyes. It’s why we pay a premium for black and white e-ink devices when LCD are easy and cheap – it uses less power and is easier on the eyes for long haul reading. It’s OK to not like the device, but you should criticize it on aspects it actually has.

Update: I forgot a few other sources of books on my Kindle, all non-Amazon. I purchased the amazing King Dog by Ursula K. Le Guin from Book View Cafe, which is another up and coming source of electronic texts. I also purchased The Definitive ANTLR Reference from Pragmatic Programmers, which was more than a standard Kindle book at $24 but also cheaper than the paper version and allows me to download in MOBI, PDF or ePub but also tells me when the book has been updated so I can get an updated copy. That’s using the low friction distribution to good effect there.

My Dragon*Con Schedule

Here are the things I’ll be doing at the upcoming Dragon*Con convention. I’m trying to get things together and have created Facebook events for them. I’m doing one live taping of Reality Break and then two of the three other panels are ones I suggested and am moderating. That’s a little heavier responsibility load in terms of making the wheels go so I’m trying to get it together up front. For those 98% of you already on Facebook, feel free to RSVP via the events and spread them around, especially to your Dragon*Con goer friends.

Podcasting Track Kick Off!

Friday, September 4 at 1 PM, Hilton 204

Panelists: Dave Slusher, Scott Sigler, Len Peralta, Veronica Belmont, George Hrab and moderated by Swoopy

Join some of your favorite podcasters as we take the temperature of the Podcasting world, and talk about some of our best moments of the past year.

Facebook Event for this panel


Podcasting Tips for Working Writers

Saturday, September 5 at 2:30 PM, Hilton 204

Panelists: Mur Lafferty, Dave Slusher, Michael Stackpole, Scott Sigler, Christiana Ellis, P.G. Holyfield

A discussion with authors and podcasters who have turned the art of the podcast novel into a formula for publishing success.   

Facebook Event for this panel


Reality Break – LIVE!

Sunday, September 6 at 10 PM, Hilton 204

Panelists: Dave Slusher, Keith R. A DeCandido

Come be in the audience for a live taping of the Reality Break podcast with author Keith R. A. DeCandido. He is currently the author of the Farscape comic books from Boom Studios. Keith has a bibliography longer than a yeti’s arm and there is a good chance than everyone at Dragon*Con has read something he has written.

Facebook Event for this panel   


Social Media Overload

Monday, September 7 at 1 PM, Hilton 204

Panelists: Dave Slusher (What? I’ll have to dragoon people to joine me if there are no others.)

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr – Are we still creating content or just floating along on the stream? Discuss the pros and cons of social networking as it pertains to podcasting.

Facebook Event for this panel

All in all, that’s a highly reasonable schedule. I’ve certainly done many more panels in a single convention. The biggest bummer about the way Dragon*Con is organized now is that there seems to be little or no overlap between programming tracks. I attended Dragon*Con as a science fiction guest every year from 1993 to 2000 and would love to be back on some of the SF panels again, but once I got slotted in as a Podcaster track guest that seemed to be it. I’m not a big enough fish to catch anyone’s attention across tracks, I guess. I’m just happy to be going and doing this one more time.

At Heroes Convention

I’m here in Charlotte a few blocks from the convention center. I’m looking forward to attending Heroes Convention tomorrow. They just had a piece on the con on the 11 PM local news that makes me even more anxious to get there. I brought my full want list of comics I’m looking for, a few issues of things to get signed, and a bunch of stickers and fliers for my various projects. I had considered bringing my Marantz but opted not to because I’m here for fun, not to work it. I do have many of my Reality Break business card and will be handing them out freely.

I know for sure that my friends Andre Pope, Kreg Steppe and Derek Coward will be attending tomorrow. I don’t know how many if any of my friends from Atlanta and Augusta comics fandom (many of whom I haven’t seen for 20+ years) will be there. If you will be there, say hi. I’m leaning my balance of convention travel more towards things like this than Podcast Expo type conferences. I’ll go to the comic podcaster panel tomorrow, get some comics signed, shop for comics until I can’t take it anymore and generally try to have a big time. I think we’ll pull it off too.

A Heroes Con Publicity Offer to All

I’m going to attend Heroes Con in Charlotte in 2 weeks. I’m willing to make this offer to any podcaster or anyone with stuff to promote. Send me your flyers, stickers, postcards or whatever promotional material you have. I’ll take it to the convention and put it on the freebies table there. If there are any left over, I’ll take them to Dragon*Con in September and again, if there are leftovers I’ll take them to XCon Myrtle Beach in October. This offer will remain open until I get too much stuff to carry, if that ever happens.

If you are interested in having your stuff toted around, drop me an email to dslusher at gmail.com and I’ll hook you up with shipping information. The only thing I ask of people who want to take me up on this deal is to get going on it sooner than later. The two days before the con I’ll have plenty of my own details to deal with. I need to get everything I’m going to take with me in hand by Wednesday June 17th.

This whole deal is in honor of Kreg Steppe of Technorama, who last year was good enough to go to a Kinkos near the convention center, pick up my Reality Break flyers and then distribute them around. Thanks, Kreg. I’m just trying to spread that kind of love around.

New Reality Break Episode is Live

After a long drought, a new episode of Reality Break Podcast has been posted, this one with science fiction author and memoirist William Shunn. He was game enough to do this interview long before the series was going again and this conversation has sat in the can for a very long time. As he returns to podcasting his memoir The Accidental Terrorist, this interview gets a new shot at relevance.

I’ve been a fan of William Shunn’s writing for approaching two decades now, and really enjoyed the original podcast version of his memoir. Check out the interview and let me know what you think.

Off to Balticon

I’m heading out the door for Baltimore. I’m ahead of schedule, let’s hope that’s a good omen. I’m doing a Reality Break interview at 7 PM and then I’m giving my talk at 10 PM tonight. There is some talk that all programming in the room its in will be live streamed. If that’s the case, I’ll post the information about the stream to the blog with as much warning as I can.

I’ll have stuff packages in Baltimore. It might be an exercise in useless optimism but I’m bringing them anyway. If you always wanted one but didn’t get one and will be at Balticon, now is the time, citizens! See you there.

Balticon Is Nearly Here

Next weekend, I’ll be a guest at Balticon in Hunt Valley, Maryland. I’ve never actually been to Maryland so this will be a big adventure to me. If you are wondering what to expect from the con, this promo should give you some idea.

I’ve got my first science fiction interview for Reality Break lined up and I hope to get a few more. I’m gearing up for my Friday night talk “Amateur Means You Do It For Love” (10 PM Friday night in the Chesapeake Suite). It’s kind of a reworking of the talk I gave at the Podcast Expo/New Media Expo in 2006. Back then, we were in the thick of the new media gold rush. I was trying to play Cassandra to warn that hitching your financial wagons to the podcast horse was not only a bad idea financially, it was a bad idea artistically. I tried to provide a framework for people to do their work without the “get rich quick” mentality that so pervaded the medium at that time.

Nowadays, the persuasive part of that talk is no longer necessary. History has born out what I was saying, so now the talk shifts to the idea of how we can do our work and find it valuable even if we know for certain we will never ever make a nickel off of it. This is why I like to focus inside out in this talks. The whole idea is to find a way that you are have succeeded in what you want to do by sitting at the microphone, and you’ve succeeded even better when you publish. Listeners and feedback and enthusiasm after the fact is great, but it is possible to consider yourself the victor before you get there. Take out the “have one million listeners and make a plush living at this” from the equation because if that’s what it takes to make you happy, you are pretty much doomed to sadness. There is no reason we can’t do what we do in podcasting, in videoblogging entirely for the fun of it and my talk is a celebration of that. Come celebrate with me!

A Decade of Ebook Arguments

In 1998, I left my job at Intel for a job with an ebook startup called JStream. It was in many ways my dream job, and of every one I’ve held it was the one I’d get excited on Sunday night because I got to go back in on Monday morning. It was a good fit for me because I’m a software developer and also a very avid bibliophile. At the time I took that job, I was in the final few months of producing the original Reality Break radio show. It was also at the point where a number of science fiction publishers were sending me every book they published every month, which sounds fantastic at first until you have to find a place to put them all. Ultimately, I realized there was no way to possibly keep them all, so a number of them were sold back to the Powells Books in Beaverton OR. It was around this time that I noticed that the arguments were confused by conflating two points – the love of reading and the fetishization of physical books. I split the difference in that I loved the reading but I also really love having and touching and owning physical books. Remember that point, we’ll come back to it.

Early on in my JStream days, I had to have the argument over and over and over about how impossible ebooks were to read. If you think back to the state of the art then in handheld devices, were were in the first few years of Palm dominance. The primary argument was screen size and resolution. Back then, I argued against that even when we were talking about 160X160 pixel 2.5″ screens. I read a number of full novels on my Handspring Visor and I found the experience completely pleasant. That was a full decade ago.

Now, I’m in the market for a Kindle in the near future. I’ve been reading up on reviews and criticisms of the device and it’s amusing to me how much of the pushback on the device is basically a retread on all the arguments that weren’t correct 10 years ago and are far less compelling today. “The screen is too small”, for a device with a viewable window that is about the size of a paperback book. “I can’t read it in the bathtub”, which was perhaps the single most common counter argument I heard in the 90s while also being the most nonsensical. You’d think from the fervor this came up that there was no dry reading happening in America. I can’t understand the bathtub use case that would ruin an electronic device but not ruin a paper book. Do people regularly dunk their paperbacks in the bath water?

I ran across this article with the advertising manager of DC Comics warning dire consequences for comcis if mindshare shifts to reading on the Kindle. What amuses me about that is that it’s cast in a “threat or menace” style fear-mongering way with zero mention of getting out in front of this parade. I see no downside in any comics company offering black and white versions of their comics to the Kindle for a reduced price. For any comic that is already in black and white (these tend to be indie books) there is no problem whatsoever. DC could easily take every book they currently publish, create an electronic copy from the inked pages before they are colored and just publish them. Of course they will not be as good an experience as buying the paper copies, but for some audience that is enough. You’d make money from a market that currently does not exist and which you already fear will eat away at sales. Modern day comic sales are already off 50% from mid 90’s. Did it occur to anyone that this might actually be a mechanism for rebuilding the audience that has mostly drifted away? Consider the electronic versions loss leaders in getting kids reading comics once again, and maybe they’ll come back again. Either way, it would cost a few hours of some staffers time per published issue to create an electronic version. The costs of this gamble are so freakishly low, I see no reason why any sensible business wouldn’t just go for it.

As I said up top, I’m a reading lover and I’m a book lover. I have far more books in my house than anyone needs and I’m willing to admit that I’ll probably go to my grave with some of these unread. And yet, I still want a Kindle. I have no problem reconciling the notion of “reading copies” with “collecting copies”, and realizing this Venn diagram is of two non-identical sets. I have hardback copies of all of George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” novels. No way am I buying the final volume in the series in Kindle only. This is clearly a book that I want to own going forward.

However, any book that I would read and then consider releasing via BookCrossing or giving away to my local library sale, that’s a book I could have easily read via the Kindle without a paper copy to deal with later. I enjoy reading Max Allan Collins’ mystery novels and I own many but in general I’m not a collector of them. I’d buy them for the Kindle. I picked up a copy of Mike Grell’s novelization of his Jon Sable character at a dollar store and read it as my beach reading last year. That could have been a Kindle book. At last year’s Dragon*Con, I had interviews for Reality Break scheduled with Mur Lafferty and Tobias Buckell and electronic copies of both of their books. That meant either carrying the laptop or printing them out, which is what I opted to do and was a very large pain in the butt. I’d much rather have had both on a Kindle.

I have over 150 different stories, novels and magazines that I’ve already purchased via Fictionwise, including several years where that’s how I subscribed to both Asimov’s and Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Again, I found that an entirely pleasant experience. When I get my Kindle, one of my first actions will be to redownload that entire library of books I’ve bought in Mobipocket format, which can be read by the Kindle natively. Right out of the gate, I’ll have that library to draw on. Between those, the books I am going to download from Project Gutenberg and the electronic review copies people send me, I’ll have a lot of reading on there before I pay the first cent to Amazon to buy a book. I will not cease to buy paper copies of books, I’ll just refine the choices to the ones I know I want to keep continuing to own for a long time.

I love books and I always will. I love reading and I always will. I don’t understand why more people can’t understand the difference between the two and discuss the pros and cons of electronic books more sensibly. The Kindle is a reading device, not a collecting device, and if your counterarguments against it are from the book fetishization perspective, they are not applicable and will be ignored by me. Yes, I wish the Kindle was in color. Yes, I wish it was cheaper. I’m going to buy one as my vote of confidence in this direction. One day in the future I’d love to have the color e-ink device that can read comics and books comfortably. For now, I’m going with what we have and helping to underwrite the future I want.

New Reality Break Episode featuring Tobias S. Buckell

I’ve recently published the most recent episode of the Reality Break Podcast, and this one is an interview I particularly liked, my chat with hard science fiction author Tobias S. Buckell. We sat down in a bar in a noisy hotel lobby at Dragon*Con and it actually sounds pretty decent. I’ve certainly gotten much worse field recordings from science fiction conventions.

I got to work in a few of my perennial favorite topics like J. G. Ballard and the Strauss and Howe book Generations. We also talked a lot about things that were in his book too, like the tech of floating cities, the steampunk in space opera settings and the unspoken colonialist assumptions in American science fiction. As always, check it out and let me know what you think.

New Reality Break Episode: Mur Lafferty

For those of you who don’t subscribe to my other podcast project, this is just a heads up. My interview with podiobook favorite Mur Lafferty that we recorded at this year’s Dragon*con has been posted at the Reality Break podcast site. If you are one of her many fans, you should check it out. It has a lot of in depth discussion of her novel Playing For Keeps in specific and the philosophy behind superheroics in general. Friends, I wasted most of my teen years doing the background reading for this here interview. It has all built to this point, so you should listen and be a part of it.

Dragon*Con Wrapup Part 1

Here’s my wrapup of this year’s trip to Dragon*Con. This is probably about the latest I can do it and have my friend brain cells intact enough to remember things. It might should go without saying that there is a looooong post warning, but I’ll try to spice it up with enough pictures to keep some visual interest. [On second thought, it’s out of control and I’m still on Friday so let’s break this down into parts.]

I left work shortly after lunchtime on Thursday. I needed to get going before 4 PM if I wanted to make it to the registration that night and avoid it on Friday. Although I had mostly packed the night before, there were just enough little details to handle that I kept failing to finish packing. It got to be around 3:45 PM and I was still fiddling around gathering minor things. I finally hit the point that I was willing to leave whether or not I had everything, just as long as the car was moving towards Atlanta.

Registration Line Around the Hyatt

I drove pretty solidly through from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta, other than a gas stop in Florence that inexplicably took freaking forever. I got to Atlanta around 9:30 PM, checked in to the Days Inn so that I could park there, and trotted directly over to the Hyatt for registration. Because there was a mixup with my guest status, I ended up buying a registration. That was less painful than you might expect, as the pre-registration was really the zoo.

After getting my badge, I went over the Hilton to see Derek and Swoopy setting up the podcasting and skeptic tracks room. I was willing to help but there really wasn’t much for me to do. Anything beyond one person trying to cable mixers is a complete mess. I did help Derek sound check a little and fix some feedback by walking around the skeptic room on the handheld mike while reprising the Casey Kasem routine.

I needed to find a Kinko’s to run off and cut some flyers, and both the Hilton and Marriott are supposed to have ones that are open until 11 PM. At 10 PM both were closed. Thanks FedEx, for buying Kinkos and screwing it all up. I went back to the hotel room, unloaded the car and found that there was a Kinkos at 100 Peachtree so I drove over there. Now, I used to drive an ice truck in Atlanta and I thought I knew the Five Points area acceptably. I had the hardest time getting to this damn joint because of all the one way streets. I ended up on Peachtree going south past it at one point, which ain’t the best part of ATL to be driving your Honda Civic around at midnight. At least I knew I was doing it wrong, and eventually got back to the Kinkos. Everyone was grumpy and it was much slower than I thought it should be, but thank you Kinkos lady for fixing the cuts of my flyers. I thought they were perfectly lined up so that a single cut down the center would be perfect, but they were a full 1/4″ off. WTF, Dave? She made extra cuts to make them perfect and didn’t even charge me, so that was very kind.

I walked across the street to the Landmark Diner and got a burger after that, mainly because it was right there and open. I had thought about heading to other better late night restaurants but the proximity and ease sold me. It was OK. The dude sitting across from my table appeared to be a big time rapper or music mogul. He was highly blinged up with rings and medallions, and at least a dozen dudes came by to give him their obeisance. I didn’t recognize him but then I wouldn’t. In retrospect I should have snapped a phone cam picture of him just to identify who he was. He must have been somebody. After this, bed.

Friday morning, I got up and read some books for a while. Sad to admit, although I had two book interviews to conduct I didn’t have either of them significantly read. It was a lot like cramming for finals. I read a big chunk of Playing For Keeps, got ready and headed over to the convention. I made the executive call to leave the “Do Not Disturb” sign all weekend because I didn’t want maids farting with my equipment. That turns out to have been the right call, although by Monday morning it was a disaster area.

I’ve spent 14 years of my life in Georgia, the bulk of that in Atlanta and that whole time I’ve been active in science fiction and comic book fandom. Despite that, the very first person I ran into was Ryan Karetas – my coworker and the guy who sat the next desk over from me at the office in Myrtle Beach for a long time. For all of the weekend, I spent a fair bit of time fiddling around with leaving flyers on tables, putting out stickers and such. Anytime you have an agenda of doing this, there is a lot of jockeying at the table. I try to be ethical about it, but when some guy has 17 stacks of the same flyer at 8 inch intervals, I tend to combine them and using the extra space for myself. By the last day, it’s a free for all of Lord of the Flies proportions.

I attended the first two sessions of the podcasting track and shot a little video of each with my very first camcorder. The second one was on shooting video, which I was obviously newly interested in. I asked a question about using some of this info towards indie documentaries. After the panel, Rhett Aultman caught up to me and was interested in talking to me more about what I want to do. He was meeting friends at the Marriott anyway, so I and his wife (parter?) Amy and him all went an hung out for a long time talking about the ins and outs of making documentaries. It was highly useful and I was very glad of it. The con was off to a great and roaring start.

I forget what I did for the rest of the afternoon. Surely it involved fliers of some sort, and back to the hotel room for reading and probably some basic scoping out of dealers rooms and such. At 10 PM I had a session on the podcasting track at the Hilton where I’d do a live interview of Mur Lafferty. However, Evo Terra was throwing a podcaster party in their suite in the Hyatt at the same time. Mur and I decided to go over to the party before, hang out for a while and then come back. There were several potentials for mishaps here, involving pre-interview cocktails and elevator rides. We actually got to the party relatively easily, partly through the efforts of one of Mur’s hometown friends who completely big balled his way onto a service elevator with us trailing behind. We hung out for a while and I left to go back to the Hilton around 9:20 PM since I had a camcorder to set up, equipment to check out and such. I walked into the elevator area as the bell rung. I hopped on a half-empty car with zero wait, and there were no stops between us and the ground floor lobby. In 20+ years of Atlanta SF conventions, I’ve never had a ride like that at 9 PM during a con night.

Me and Mur Share A Laugh

I went over to the Hilton, set up and got everything ready. It got to be close to time, and maybe 5 minutes until 10 PM I got a text message from Mur that said only “Elevator hell”. Uh oh. I had everything ready to go and we had a small audience – about as small as you can get and still have an audience – but I told a few stories and basically vamped for a few minutes until Mur got there. We took a minute for composure as we had a whole hour to get a 30-45 minute interview done. Then we turned on the machines and the magic happened. The interview was great and I have it on both audio and video. It will be posted to the Reality Break Podcast feed this weekend.

After the interview, I schlepped all of my stuff back to the Days Inn and unloaded it all, called home and then went back to the podcaster party. Because I had no function booked on Saturday but an interview at 10:30 AM on Sunday, I had already prepared for Friday as a party night and Saturday as a relatively well behaved quiet evening. With that in mind, I settled in for an evening of revelry. I ended up running into Jason and Randy from Beatnik Turtle on the balcony of the party. They are also the authors of the The Indie Band Survival Guide: The Complete Manual for the Do-It-Yourself Musician, a book about which I had been getting emails from their publicist anyway. I had been planning on replying after the convention when I was less busy, and now here were the dudes right in front of me! We set up an interview for Sunday at noon right after the other one I had scheduled in the same spot, so I was able to knock out two without moving my equipment. Sweet luck!

As we hung out and had a few drinks, a hilarious incident occurred. I’m not going to talk about it here in specifics, because it led to me writing a song that Beatnik Turtle will record and that Ewan Spence kindly sanity checked for Scotsman correctness. Keep watching the skies, maybe we’ll have a podosphere premiere of the song on an upcoming episode of the podcast. The evening was fun and I talked to a number of people that I already knew and people that were new to me. I kept drinking and hanging out and chatting with people so long that I literally closed down the party. I helped Evo and Sheila clean up a little and then it was off to my little room for sleep.

Part 2 coming soon …

New Reality Break Episode is Live: Bruce Sterling!

It is belated, but Reality Break #5 with Bruce Sterling is up and live. In order to make up ground and repay listener patience, I’m going to accelerate the timetable for the next few episodes. I aim to put up the interview with Mur Lafferty this weekend and the one with Tobias Buckell the weekend after, following which I’ll return to an every other weekend schedule. The month of August really took it out of me in many ways, but things are back in the groove. It was great to go to Dragon*Con and sit down to do some interviews in person. I always prefer looking at people’s faces and body language when I talk to them, so doing interviews at conventions where I can talk to several people in person is my best case.

Please, link to the Reality Break stuff, tell your friends, spread the love! Suggest people you want to hear interviewed and generally participate. After all, I’m here for you so feel the love.

Dragon*Con Wrapup Coming

I really need to do a big wrapup of my Dragon*Con experience really soon, or else I’ll start forgetting details. I had much fun this year, my first since 2002, and would like to capture some of that in a permanent form on here. I plan on making a big linky, photo-riddled post but that takes time. I also have a backlog of new media to create and for a variety of reasons, mostly related to exhaustion and my inability to keep my eyes open, I FAILED to do this weekend.

I have interviews galore, for both the EGC podcast and for Reality Break. I’m also way overdue for making a blogger roundup post at Grand Strand Bloggers and I need to start working on next spring’s CREATE South. I’m not sure how it is that my hobbies can lead to being so incredibly busy but they do. I just had a vacation and I need another! Keep watching this space, netizens, and I’ll try to get all of that out very soon.

Off To Dragon*Con

This afternoon I’ll be making the drive from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta for Dragon*Con. My deep hope is to get registered tonight so that I do not have to mess with that at all on Friday. I have a live taping of Reality Break with Mur Lafferty at 10 PM Friday night and my talk on “Why Podcasting Matters” at 8:30 PM on Sunday night. Right now it looks like Saturday will be my “me” day, the day where I take my want lists and dig through long boxes looking for elusive back issues. I have learned that even when I have a professional agenda, it is nice to carve out a little chunk of time to be a fanboy. It’s why I got involved in all this in the first place.

I have a few Reality Break interviews scheduled through the con. I might also be doing some pickup interviews, either for Reality Break or EGC podcast. I’ll have my trusty Marantz with me most of the time. It’s possible I’ll be doing some stuff for the offical Dragon*Con podcast but I’m not sure on that. I’m up for anything.

One of the things that just happened yesterday is that I volunteered to be Darusha Wehm’s proxy at the Parsec awards. If her podcast of Beautiful Red wins, I’ll accept her award and either read her statement or put her on speakerphone at the mic. The latter is of course preferred.

All in all it should be a fun time. If you are at the con, come to one of my program events or catch me in the hall or pick up some of my swag from the groaning giveaway table. It’ll be a fun time and I hope to see you there, all of you.

Mur Lafferty Live Interview at Dragon*Con

I have an hour slot to record at Dragon*Con, which will be Friday at 10 PM. I just posted over on the Reality Break site that I’ve booked Mur Lafferty to be the guest for the live Reality Break episode. The plan is to do both a Reality Break and an EGC clambake episode in the allotted time. First priority is to get the Mur interview conducted and in the can. With whatever time remains, I plan to record EGC. If you’ll be at Dragon*Con, come and hang out with us. I’ll be taking a few questions from the floor so you too can participate. It will be a party, kids. I’ll be giving away a couple of EGC stuff packages, stickers and what have you. I’m not sure if Mur will be bringing swag, but it will be a fun geeky time at this fun geeky convention.

Convention Season

I’m thinking a lot about conventions lately. This is the first year where not only am I not going to Podcast Expo but I never for a second even considered going. I was scheduled to speak last year but when it came down not only was my day job so crushing at the time but it had been for months and I just couldn’t do it. I had to cancel a few weeks before the show, which was a crappy way to go about it and made me feel bad. However when it came to the actual missing of the show other than not being able to hang out with my friends, I was OK with not going. The extended to this year when I just never considered going at all. Nothing against the event but a combination of losing the scruffy charm of the Ontario CA conference center and just not having much interest in the “podcast industry” as a goal left me uninterested this year.

In contrast, since I have a reborn Reality Break on my hands, I’m trying to increase my attendance at science fiction and comic book conventions. That’s where I choose to put my energy and travel budget now rather than Podcast Expo. I’d rather go where my potential listeners and fans are. People generally have this idea of promoting their show at Podcast Expo but really that’s not a great place for promotion unless your goal is to get the attention primarily of other podcasters.

However because I’m ever less enthralled with getting on airplanes the cons I attend will skew heavily towards the southeast where I can drive to them. I missed Heroes Con but I will be attending Dragon*Con where I will be participating in the podcasting track and also doing interviews. I hope to make it to Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland this fall and do some interviews there too. I have an invitation to OryCon in Portland OR that I’m thinking hard about but is low probability. I’d love to do it as I have lots of friends out there but it’s just such a shlep to get there and back. When I went in 2006 I ended up losing most of one of my days with friends and sleeping in Ohare airport.

There is a new comic convention called XCon that will be starting up in Myrtle Beach this Halloween season. I’ll obviously go to that one. If people have suggestions of good cons for both promoting my work and getting new interview material recorded, let me know. The probability that I can go decreases with the square of the distance from the South Carolina coast but I’d love to know about them.

EGC Clambake for June 29, 2008 – “Reality Break Lives”

Here is the direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for June 29, 2008. I play a song from Chris Christensen and Mark Schultz; I talk about the Reality Break podcast and tell some tales from the radio show that preceded it; I mention a little bit about the class I taught and what the proceeds are going to buy; I play a song from the incredible Gentle Readers and then gamble into the sunset.

You can subscribe to this podcast feed via RSS. To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5. Bandwidth for this episode is provided by Cachefly.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Super Secret Project X is Live!

So I’ve been hinting about Super Secret Project X for a very long time. At this point it has been over a year. The delays were many and for reasons too boring to think about but now everything is straightened out and ready to be revealed. SSPX is actually the return in podcast form of my radio show Reality Break. In order to make kind of a splash and get some attention here at the beginning, I opted to go straight for a big guest for the first episode so I am starting off with my 1998 interview with Will Eisner. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Rather than the freeform chaos of EGC, the whole Reality Break program is designed to run like a machine. Every two weeks on Saturday night I will post new episodes, beginning on June 29th. It is more sponsorship friendly than EGC, so if you want to sponsor the show or may know someone that does, drop me a line. This should be a lot of fun. I have over 200 interviews on tape from the 1992 – 1998 time frame with science fiction writers, fantasy writers, comic book writers and artists and more. My plan is to alternate newly produced episodes with ones from the archives although that may not be a hard and fast rule. The mix may change but there is a huge boatload of material I want to get back in the public sphere.

Many thanks to a few people behind the scenes who helped out. One is actor, writer and musician Bill Mumy, who was kind enough to license me the Reality Break theme music. That’s another reason to sponsor the show – Bill has a piece of the action too so help some brothers out! Bill is a great musician and songwriter, and from the first moment I heard the Reality Break song at the Heroes Convention in 1991 where Seduction of the Innocent played, I knew I one day wanted that as a theme for a show. It sets a fun happy tone that just makes everything great.

Another person I must thank is my long time friend Mike Fisher, who did the CGI logo. I’ve known Mike since I was a teenager working in a comic shop in Augusta GA. Mike did the original Reality Break logo and as the state of the art advances, he did another fantastic updated one for this incarnation of the show. Mike does great videos so I really encourage you to go to his site and get his comics or his DVD. I have it and it is a real hoot, fun for the whole family.

I’m very excited and very nervous to finally unveil this project. Everything is not perfect yet and the timing could be better but I’ve been delaying so long for so many different details that I just opted to go with it. It’s now or never, so let’s make it now! I have an audio promo available for the show, and I’d really appreciate if you would play it in your programs. Whatever karma I may have built up in this world so far, I need to draw on some of it now. I’ve been involved in this project in one way or another for the last 15 years and I’m delighted to be able to give this material a new airing and to get back in the studio and do new interviews with my favorite people. As I always said on the show, “Who can’t use a Reality Break now and then?” Come take one with me.