Back Online

My website has been moved. After register.com disabled my PHP interpreter due to some unspecified PHP code they said was insecure on my site, I moved to bluehost. I'm pretty happy with what I've got there, and I'm paid through 2 years. I also just migrated my blog to the new blogger interface. It's tied to my gmail account. Very cool.

Enough of that, though. I've posted the last 3 chapters of The Worldwrights to podiobooks.com, and hope they will appear soon. This frees me up to work on other stories and stuff. I'm especially keen to finish the prequel to The Worldwrights, called The Overseer, a story that is now turning into a novella about the Ghala and his origins. I expect it to come in around 70-100 pages.

Finally I'm working on Prodigal Earth, and hoping to finish that up as well. In the meantime, I will be finishing up the pictures of my China-Korea trip and working on posting some other stuff about my life. Fear the video.

A review -- And my Website is hosed

I have my very first review from my podcasting adventure.

I'm so pleased I'm linking it. I'm self-promoting.

I haven't kept the ol' website or blog up to date recently, so here's where I am: The website is currently screwed up. Register.com must have changed the location of the php interpreter or how paths are redirected on the site. I'm going to have to figure out what they changed and if they don't quit doing this (this is the second time I've had to re-code my site to their ever-shifting infrastructure) I will probably dump them for someone else at the end of the year. I'm not terribly impressed with their service so far as it costs about $5 per month more than the competition and offers half as much.

At any rate, Chapter 11 of the podcast is up and I have 384 active subscribers. I would like to think I'm gradually gaining an audience. The evolving plan is to get enough of a critical mass that I can then go to a publisher who will market me and say: look, xxxx number of people like my book. They might like the next one, too. What say you?

That's where it stands. More to come shortly.

Podcast Charting - Chapter 6 should be there soon

Well, I have been a little underwhelmed so far by the experience of self-publishing, but today I saw something that re-affirmed my self-image: I appear now on the top ten of the Podiobooks.com titles downloaded in the last 30 days. Admittedly, I'm just at #10, but it still gives me quite a thrill to see that out of some 60 titles, people are choosing mine with some frequency. I have also gotten two sets of positive reviews, and no family member or friend of mine has openly fessed up to giving me those ratings, so I'm very happy about that. (note: I've asked all of the relevant people and I'm trusting that they aren't going around spamming my ratings).

To celebrate, I've uploaded Chapter 6 and notified the ever-helpful Evo Terra with a chapter description. I have Chapter 7 and 9 produced (for some reason, I still have to edit Chapter 8). I am very very busy for the next two weeks testing for my 2nd dan in Tae Kwon Do, but after that I plan to resume recording the final 9 episodes of The Worldwrights and I'll be putting up the other chapters to keep the interest going as I finish those. So about every one to two weeks a new chapter ought to appear if I'm lucky here.

Podcast At Last - Back in the U.S.

Well, thanks to Evo at Podiobooks, I now have a podcast. Listen here for the first five chapters. I'm also back in the U.S. after a really intense trip to China and South Korea. I will be describing that in more detail later on. For now, it looks like things are moving forward again.

Also, I've discovered that the advanced distribution services for Lulu are now released under a much less expensive price so I'm going to be putting my book back on Amazon. The future's so bright . . . too bad I lost my shades in South Korea. Have to get some new ones.

Leaving on a jet plane -- No joy on Podcast

I'm leaving in just eight hours for Chicago. From there, I will layover for about four hours, and then take a 13-hour flight to Seoul, South Korea. I will spend the night in Seoul and then fly to Tianjin, China, to take a bus to Beijing. I'm going to be traveling for the better part of two days.

I won't be able to blog from over there, very likely, so for my very small audience this is my last post for some time. I have yet to see any sign that they've recieved my first five episodes of The Worldwrights over at www.podiobooks.com. So I likely will not be the first person to take it for a test drive when it does appear.

So until next time . . .

Podcast -- China, South Korea

Very shortly here, I expect in the next day or two, you will be able to tune in for free to a podcast of The Worldwrights. I am reading the entire novel out loud and composing some background music to go with it for www.podiobooks.com. I have just finished submitting the first five chapters and am awating word that they're released and ready to go.

I've read the first nine chapters and I'm in the midst of post-production on all of them. There will be a gap of about two weeks coming up here, however, as my long-anticipated trip to China and South Korea is about to begin. I hope to be able to blog about it from Korea at least (they are very Internet-connected there, I'm told) and post pictures and the like. If not, I plan on having a huge section both here and on my website hosting a photo diary.

I've put in some time with the Pimsleur tapes for Mandarin Chinese which I found at the local library and I'm feeling very confident that I will at the very least be able to follow the gist of most of the conversations I hear. I don't know how much opportunity I'll have to ask for directions to Long Peace Street, but I'll certainly be asking where I can find a good fan dien (restraunt) or where the shee shou chien (bathroom) is. And I don't think I'll be sorry I learned to say do shou chien (how much money is it) or tai dou-la (it's too much)!

Anyway, as this pertains to my writing it's been fascinating. Four weeks ago I knew not a word of Chinese except maybe "ni-hau" and "kung-fu." Now I can identify myself and talk about my family and count money and tell the time and all kinds of cool things. Language is very interesting as it reveals so much about how a culture thinks.

I'm also very jazzed about visiting the site of some of the world's older civilizations, and in particular the country where printing appears to have been invented for the first time. I will also be spending a good chunk of time in South Korea . . . I have somewhat worked aspects of Korean culture into the backstory of my current in-progress novel, Prodigal Earth, so it's going to be interesting to actually experience the real thing.

At any rate, keep an eye on this space for further developments.

Amazon Issues

Well, the "Amazon Bug" on Lulu has caught me. Apparently in the process of making my book listed internationally, it has somehow been deleted from the US site. If you're here from the UK you can now buy the book here for a little over eight pounds. I guess that works out just so. Anyway, I've complained and recieved a prompt automated response. Hopefully it will be worked out shortly, as I've spent a lot of time uploading my author blog page and other stuff like the internal preview.