Doc Coleman's Blog, page 10

Show me the money

It seems a very strange thing to talk about money in a #WriterWednesday post. It seems even stranger to think that I’m talking about me receiving money. Let’s be realistic for a moment here: for all the talk about improving one’s craft and telling stories, and expressing the ideas in your head, the real reason that we write and keep writing is to make money. Ben Bova said that the only reason for writing was the expectation of being paid for it. To a lessor or a greater extent, this is true....

Balticon 47 Wrap up – Part 9, Narrating Podcast Fiction

Swimming Cat Studios is proud to welcome you back for episode 9 of the Balticon 47 Wrap up. This week’s offering is a presentation by Renée Chambliss on Narrating Podcast Fiction. Renée started as a novelist who podcast her novel on Podiobooks.com. This led to an unexpected career as a narrator when listeners began contacting her to read their fiction. In this panel, Renée attempts to share what she’s learned about narration.

There were a few problems at the beginning of the presentation as th...

While I was making other plans…

A lot can change in a year, and yet, a year can speed by you so fast, leaving so much undone.

This time last year, I was looking back at what I had done since my last birthday, and making plans for how I was going to move forward over the next year. Looking at it now, it sure seems like a lot of the things I had planned out last year didn’t end up happening. At least, the way things developed certainly was not what I originally planned. Whether that will turn out to be for good or for ill, tim...

Edits, again.

This is going to be a short, and somewhat late, #WriterWednesday post. Work has kicked my ass of late, and while I was Posty McPosterson last week, a few things have happened that are going to take up a bit of my time. So it may be a little tough to keep the posts coming on time. Part of this is because I am dealing with edits, again.

The difference is that this time I am not doing the edits. At long last, I got back the edits from my Way of the Gun story. This is the first time I have had to...

Balticon 47 Wrap-up – Part 8, Live reading by PJ Schnyder, Grig Larsen, and Doc Coleman

Welcome back to the eighth episode of the Balticon 47 Wrap up, proudly brought to you by Swimming Cat Studios. This week features the first to two readings that I was able to take part in at Balticon 47. Unlike last year, we’ve decided to publish the full reading and release it as a single episode. This year I was joined at the microphone by two excellent writers, PJ Schnyder, and Grig “Punkie” Larsen.This reading had been billed as a steampunk reading in the Balticon program, but didn’t exac...

2013 Parsec Finalists Announced!

For podcasters, the Parsec Awards aren’t the only awards around, but they are one of the most prestigious. The Parsecs recognize excellence in speculative fiction podcasting, and include categories for best story in a several formats, best behind the scenes podcast, and best fan podcast. The actual categories vary somewhat each year. Nominations for the Parsec Awards begin each year on April 1st and conclude on Memorial Day, although this year the nominations were extended to June 1st. Eligib...

The Hand of the Mandarin Quong

Sometimes, it seems like no one tells me anything. In 2012, I narrated a story for the Protecting Project Pulp podcast. Yes, they seem fond of alliteration. Anywho, I recorded The Hand of the Mandarin Quong by Sax Rohmer early in the year and sent them the raw audio, which I thought was what we had agreed upon. After several months of not hearing back from them, I contacted them to ask when I could expect the story to go live. It turns out that they hadn’t scheduled it because they didn’t hav...

Taking the day off?

Some days, you burn the candle at both ends. And some days, you add a blow torch to burn the middle as well. My dayjob has been increasingly intense since the beginning of May this year, and that has stretched a lot of my available energy very to the very breaking point. My last writing chain ended because of this back in the end of May. Between work and writing, I went to my breaking point, and I broke. And my writing chain went as well.

So now, I’m reaching a new high point for my writing ch...

Against Obscurity

Time for a little mid-summer ramble.

Sometimes, when you’re a writer among a group of writers, it seems like you have the most fantastic community of like minds to draw upon. Other times, it seems like everyone is totally ignoring you. The oddest part is that, on the average, both of these extremes are true. We are writers, so we are a community of like minds. We support each other. We will promote each other’s projects. We’ll give up our blog space to guest posts and promotional opportunities...

Balticon 47 Wrap-up – Part 7, The Shrinking Man Project, Special Episode 5 – Balticon 47 Live!

Welcome to part seven of the Balticon 47 Wrap up. This week’s episode is from my other podcast, The Shrinking Man Project. It is a live Special episode featuring the return of threeof last year’s guests,Starla Huchton,Lauren “Scribe” Harris, andVeronica Giguere.Justin Macumberwas also scheduled to attend, but he was called home for an emergency, and unfortunately we didn’t find out that he’d left the con until after the recording. Like last year, This episode is a simultaneous release with Th...