Episode 54 – Writing The Dreaded Sequel with Steven Savile

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Dave is flying solo this week. He starts off talking about the new discoveries he’s made in Scrivener.

Two of his books, Into The Woods and Keeper Of The Mists, are now available on audio book at Audible.

Next up is a follow-up to the chat Alan and Dave had about the “restoration” of the fresco in Spain.

Dave talks about the possibility of a new Indiana Jones movie.

Espresso Book Machine – the rise of the modern method to get any book you want while you wait.

Promo- Quest by David Wood

Dave interviews thriller author Steven Savile.

Steven talks about a strange situation with a member of thePirate Party, Julia Schram, who has a rather ironic view of intellectualproperty.

Steven goes on to talk about his views on piracy of content.

Steven talks about all the different things he’s done in writing and publishing.

How did Steven get his start in writing.

Steven goes on to talk about his thriller books and the joy of research.

Why didn’t Steven return to thrillers for so long?

Steven talks about working with Sean Ellis and Rick Chesler, and the pleasures of collaboration.

Steven talks about his forthcoming publications.

As a writer, how do you really immerse yourself in a series and Steven’s writing advice.

Find Steven at www.stevensavile.com or on Facebook and Goodreads.

Episode 53 - Kickstart Your Writing with Matt Forbeck

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Alan talks about his most recent short fiction sale to Dark Prints Press.

Dave talks about his work on Dane Maddock #5 and some forthcoming audiobooks, which leads him to discuss reviews and why we shouldn’t read them.

This leads us to talk about how different people read the same book or story so differently, and how that colours the type of review they might write.

We go on to talk about the LendInk situation.

Prior to chatting with Matt Forbeck, we talk briefly about the assumption that fast writing equals low-quality writing.

We digress into a conversation about Scrivener as a writing tool. Alan talks about resisting change.

Promo: Scrolls by Paul Elard Cooley

Then we have a chat with Matt Forbeck.

Matt talks a little bit about his work history. He’s currently up to 20 novels, comics for IDW, roleplaying games, non-fiction books, the Marvel Encyclodpedia... I’m getting tired just listing all this stuff.

Matt talks about the division of labour when you’re a stay-at-home creative and you have a family. Matt has five kids, including quadruplets.

Matt talks about Twelve For Twelve – a project to write twelve 50,000 word novels in twelve months, which he funded through Kickstarter.

Matt talks about what he thinks is involved in making a successful Kickstarter campaign.

We ask Matt to tell us about his Monster Academy books, where young monsters go to reform school to try to fit into society.

Then Matt tells us about his Dangerous Games books.

We ask Matt for his advice on becoming a game writer. Matt has some great advice and talks about his own journey.

Matt talks about his incredible levels of productivity and what drives him. This leads him to talk about his outlining process as a writer, where he strikes a great balance between planning and pantsing.

We finish by asking Matt for his advice for other writers.

www.forbeck.com

Episode 52 – Massive Hubris

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Apologies again for the slightly annoying sound in this episode. Recording issues again. This happens when the two hosts have a planet between them. The sound does improve as the podcast progresses.

We start off by talking about the constant process of ruminating on ideas for our writing during everyday life and how we grab those ideas before they’re lost.

We go on to talk about the nature of lowest common denominator publishing.

Anything He Wants (Dominated by the Billionaire) series 

This leads us to talk about the healthy or unhealthy nature of the role models these books encourage.

We move on to the poor woman who tried to restore a painting in a church in Spain.

The terrible painting restoration

We talk about this self-delusion of skills as it relates to writing.

We talk about working at your craft to get good at it.

 We then discuss the strange goings-on recently with Weird Tales magazine in connection with the book, Save The Pearls.

This is how you destroy something beautiful – N K Jemisin’s post on Weird Tales -

Google cache of Marvin Kaye’s post, A Thoroughly Non-Racist Book -

And more from Jeff Vandemeer on the whole situation -

We talk about the effect things like this have on how writers submit their work.

Three, count 'em, three outtakes at the end!

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Episode 51- The Traveling Writer with A.J. Hartley

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 We discuss the dangers of our relative countries of residence and chat briefly about our current writing projects.
We talk about the “sagging middle” of a novel – the difficulty of writing that tricky middle section.
We chat about interviewing characters as if they were really people and how some writers have Twitter accounts for their characters.
Alan’s dog is on Twitter: @ImAlsDog
Our listener gave us more details on the Harlan Ellison audiobook records and more. Here’s the comment in full:
Here is a link to what remains of the Harlan Ellison Record Collection (scroll to the bottom). I think they may have converted some/all to CDs ... http://harlanellison.com/herc.htm
Here is a link to many of Harlan's "spoken word" recordings:
http://www.islets.net/audio/audiolist.html
(Thanks Greg!)
We then go on to talk about the recent blow-up about paid positive reviews and the news about John Locke’s untold secret to success.
Here’s the blog post Alan mentions: http://www.alanbaxteronline.com/paid-reviews-hurt-paid/
We discuss the moral minefield around the ideas of reviewing and the different methods of getting reviews.
We have a chat with A J Hartley.
There’s some discussion of various football codes.
Then AJ catches us up on what’s been happening for him.
AJ goes on to talk about his latest foray back into the thriller genre, his new book “Tears Of The Jaguar”:
http://ajhartley.net/books-and-projects/thrillers/tears-of-the-jaguar/
AJ discusses his choice of location and the joys and methodology of his research. This leads to a discussion of ideas and what certain books are actually about.
AJ chats about one aspect of the novel, the Lancashire witch trials, which happened four hundred years ago this year.
What is it about this type of thriller that makes the genre so enduring?
We talk about the nature of traveling to inform your writing and understanding cultural variation.
AJ gives his traveling advice for writers.
Visit AJ at www.ajhartley.net