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The collected ramblings of a byte banger from the Valley of the Sun

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Podcasting for Authors - Part 3: Recording Interviews
By Dan Shaurette

In this continuing series of articles about podcasting, my goal is to help my fellow authors get familiar with getting the most out of your web presence. As an author, a blog is a great vehicle for sharing your thoughts with your readers, and since it is the written word, it shows off your talent as a writer. Even still, verbal communication is valuable and a podcast allows your fans to hear your wit as well.

On my podcast, I talk about everything and anything. I do talk about my writing and web projects, but it's more about sharing my interests than promotion. Yet, it is promotion, and that cannot be denied. It's one more medium where you have a chance to connect to a reader.

In the last article, I wrote about the technical side of podcasts and explained how you can create a podcast of your own. I covered a lot of ground detailing various hardware and software requirements and best practices.

In this article, I will focus on some ways to record yourself and others for a podcast. Not only will this help you if you plan to conduct phone interviews of other authors, for example, but if you simply want to be able to do a podcast with a co-host without expensive audio equipment.

As I mentioned in the last article, you will need software for recording and editing your audio. I highly recommend Audacity, which you can download for free from: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Audacity is a fully featured, multi-track recording and editing program, which is offered for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Since it works on most computers and is free, it really is all you need for recording, saving and editing most of your audio.

If you are going to be the only person ever speaking on your podcast, then you just need a computer, a microphone, and Audacity. However, most podcats that I enjoy listening to either have co-hosts, "in-studio guests", or recorded interviews. Audacity can still make this possible.

What you need is a way to get everyone's voices onto one computer that will record them. One of the technologies which has come along in the last couple of years and has greatly contributed to podcasting is voice chat and Voice-over-IP (or VoIP) telephone services.

These programs have made it possible to not only speak with many people at once online, but also provide a bridge to standard landline telephone services. The ability to call out or receive incoming phone calls usually cost some money, but at decent per minute fees.

Many services exist to provide the software and channels to do this. The heaviest hitters are Yahoo, Google, AIM, MSN, Skype and Gizmo. All of these programs are free to download and use, and allow free calling between users of their respective networks.

Voice chat is done by using a chat or instant messaging program on two or more computers connected over the internet. This works very well if you and the people you want to chat with all have computers running the same chat program and have a microphone and headphones to hear. Headset microphones work the best. If you or the other people only have speakers instead of headphones, then the microphone will pick up what comes from the speakers and you'll have an echo.

However, if the people you want to talk with do not have their own computer with this minimum setup, there is still the option of VoIP incoming or outgoing PC-to-Phone service. With one of these services, your guests can either use their phone to call your computer, or you could call their phone from your computer. Once the call is made, you are hearing and speaking with your computer and you can begin recording.

Here is a list of the details of the more popular voice chat programs, most of which also have VoIP phone features.

Gizmo: http://www.gizmoproject.com/
- Windows XP/2000 - Mac OSX - Linux - Nokia 770 Tablet
- Built-in recorder
- Phone out - $0.01/minute within US. Other rates Intl.
- Phone in - $12.00/3 months

Skype: http://www.skype.com/
- Windows XP - Mac OSX - Linux - even mobile devices
- Phone out - Free Long-distance outgoing within the US! Other rates Intl.
- Phone in - 10 Euros/3 months

Yahoo: http://messenger.yahoo.com/
- Windows XP - Mac OSX
- Phone out - $0.02/minute within US. Other rates Intl.
- Phone in - $2.49/month

AIM Triton+Phoneline: http://www.aimphoneline.com/
- Windows XP/2000
- Phone in - FREE
- Phone out - $9.95/mo to anywhere.

MSN/Live Messenger: http://get.live.com/messenger/overview
- Windows XP only
- Phone out - $0.019 within US. Other rates Intl.
- Phone in - Not available

AIM 5.9: http://www.aim.com/get_aim/win/other_win.adp
- Windows 98/ME, WinNT4/2000/XP
- Voice Chat only - no phone service

Google Talk: http://www.google.com/talk/
- Windows XP/2000 - Jabber/XMPP clients on Max OSX/Linux
- Voice Chat only - no phone service

Note that I put Gizmo right at the top of the list. It runs on most computers, has a built-in call recorder, and also has competitive phone rates. Gizmo saves recorded phone calls in regular .WAV audio files that you can use Audacity to convert into MP3 for you.

Even if you chose to use another program to have the conversation, you can still record the audio. You might choose to use Skype since SkypeOut calls to telphones within the USA and Canada are free until 2007. This is a great deal and the service works very well. So how do you record that call?

Well, you have two ways. The method I used once upon a time was to connect the line-out from my sound card into the line-in with an audio patch cable. These are relatively inexpensive and can be bought at most Radio Shack and similar electronics stores. You must then set Audacity to record from the "Stereo Mix" or "What U Hear" channel. This routes all incoming and outgoing audio into the Mix for Audacity to record.

This option is doomed to fail for most people because their sound cards do not have a line-in and line-out. Moreover, not all sound cards have the "Stereo Mix" channel, and therefore you could try "Line-In" since you've directed all output back in to that source. Again, this only works if you have a Line-in jack. (Trying to route speaker out into the mic jack is just a recipe for audio disaster.)

There are software solutions that make this more feasible, but they are not free. Many are fairly inexpensive. One option called Virtual Audio Cable (VAC), enables you to record any audio much like the audio patch cables do. You can check it out at: http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.html

VAC allows you to do the same patching of audio output to the input for the purposes of recording them with a program like Audacity. VAC is only for Windows XP/2000 and sells for $30.00. It's a nice program that can have uses outside of recording audio. You can, for example, use it to pipe audio into a voice chat so that you have a live teleconference.

Beware that when you are using the methods above to mix various audio channels, you need to pay very close attention to the volume of the channels. You will most likely not be able to separate the voices after the fact.

Beyond this lies probably the best choice for recording voice chat calls, a program called HotRecorder: http://hotrecorder.com/

HotRecorder can record conversations using Skype, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger 7, AIM, Net2Phone, and FireFly. It costs $14.95 and does the job perfectly.Moreover, calls recorded with HotRecorder have your local audio on one channel and the audio from your guest on the other channel. This makes post-production editing of the chat very easy.

Most people I know use Skype, so recording chats with them is made easy with HotRecorder. However, I have used Gizmo and I personally favor that over the Skype/HotRecorder solution. The audio tends to be a little cleaner and I don't need to use HotRecorder with it.

Just remember, that no matter which software you use to record your conversations, there are laws in many countries that forbid the recording people without their permission. If you are interviewing someone, be sure to let them know you are going to record them and all should be well.
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Copyright © 2006 Dan Shaurette.
Besides being the editor of the newsletter for http://selfpublishedauthors.com/, Dan is the author of LILITH'S LOVE, a modern vampire romance novel, which you can learn more about at http://liliths-love.com/. He also hosts "Is This Thing On?", an eclectic podcast featuring chat, interviews, and independent music at http://is-this-thing-on.net/. You can find out more on his blog at http://danshaurette.com/.

Podcasting for Authors - Part 2: The Tech of Podcasting
By Dan Shaurette

In part one of this series I wrote about podcasting, explaining that it is the next step above having your own blog. As an author, a blog is a great vehicle for sharing your thoughts with your readers, and since it is the written word, it shows off your talent as a writer. Even still, verbal communication is valuable and a podcast allows your fans to hear your wit as well.

In this article, I want to talk about the technical side of podcasts and explain how you can create a podcast of your own. Please note that there is more than one way to make a podcast. If there is interest in this, I will devote future articles to different methods.

This is the process that I have used for nearly a year. Various things have changed in how I go about producing a podcast. The recommendations I give below for software, hardware, and websites are from my own experiences. Whichever products and services you choose to use instead is of little difference, but the steps involved are virtually the same.

High-level guts of a podcast
As I explained in the last article, a podcast is nothing more than a text file. For those of you that like acronyms, it is an XML marked up file (a cousin of HTML that you might have seen which make up websites). This file is usually in a format called RSS 2.0, aka Real Simple Syndication.

However, a podcast's RSS file needs one extra feature, called enclosures, which give direct links to audio files that live on a web server. Except for uber-geeks like me, most people do not want to create these RSS files from scratch, so they look for other ways to make them.

By far the easiest method is with a blog. Most blog servers and software today provide the ability to generate an RSS file from a blog. Some of the blogs have the ability built in to include enclosures in their RSS, but not all. There is a website known as Feedburner.com which comes to the rescue to help with enclosures. I'll discuss their website later.

If you have your own blog, you have discovered how easy it is to share your wit and wisdom with your fans. The savvy fans probably subscribe to your blog with an RSS aggregator. Turning your blog into a podcast is simple enough.

All you need to do is record yourself talking about various topics close to your heart, and then upload your audio file to a web server. Perhaps even the server your blog lives at. Then, you include a link in your next blog post to that audio file.

Technically, that now makes it an audioblog. However, if the RSS feed from your blog has enclosures, that feed is your podcast. If it doesn't link to enclosures directly, the free Feedburner service can repackage your RSS feed into a version with enclosures. Voila!

That sounds easy, right? Yes, in concept it is that easy. It's the execution of the steps that can get tricky. Especially if you don't have a blog. Or worse, if you don't know how to go about recording yourself.

What follows is a list of software and hardware and some high-level steps you could follow in order to bring your words to life as a podcast.

It is beyond the scope of this article to walk you through setting up accounts with these services or downloading and using the software. Future articles can delve deeper if interest warrants it.

Each of these services has excellent documentation and support. Everything listed below is free to use or download. Sure there are pay/pro versions of each. But as far as I'm concerned, the only thing you may need to buy in order to produce a podcast is a microphone.

Software and Services
Here are the websites you need accounts on, and software you should download and install.

1. You need audio editing software. I recommend Audacity, which you can download from: http://audacity.sourceforge.net
2. You need a blog with an RSS feed and enclosures support. I recommend WordPress. You can create a free blog at http://WordPress.com or, if you have your own website, you can download the WordPress software from http://WordPress.org and install it.
3. You need a server for your audio files, which 99% of the time should be different than your blog server. I recommend creating an account at http://archive.org and using it to host your audio.
4. Even with WordPress, or any blog that has enclosure support, you may want to create an account on http://FeedBurner.com as it can make the process easier, ensure widest compatibility for your listeners, let you see how many subscribers you have, and more.

Audio editing software
Audacity is a free, open-source program that will work on computers running Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It will record for you and save the audio for later editing. Yes, most computers come with software for recording audio, but they are very limited.

Audacity on the other hand is a fully featured, multi-track recording and editing program. It can do just about anything you need to do for mixing tracks, etc. Are there audio programs that are better? Yes, but they are expensive, and often, more complicated to use. Mac users who have worked with GarageBand swear by it, but it sells for $79 as part of iLife. Feel free to investigate different programs, but know podcasting can be done well even on a budget and with any computer.

Blog services or software
WordPress blog software automatically generates the enclosure tags you need to create a podcast. So, if you have a blog hosted on WordPress.com, or if you download their software to run on your own web host, you will have the core foundation at your disposal. You can read more details at this link: http://codex.wordpress.org/Podcasting

If you are already using another blog, most offer plug-ins that can create the podcast enclosures from your posts. However, if you have a blog which can at least offer an RSS or Atom feed, you can still use the Feedburner.com service.

Burning your feed
Feedburner.com is a necessity if you use a blog other than WordPress. What their service does is search the posts of your RSS feed for regular HTML links to media files. When it finds them, it generates the enclosure tag for you.

Even if you do use WordPress and have the right links to your audio files (see below), you may still want to use Feedburner. Sure, it's an extra step, but one that puts a little bow onto the whole package. I highly recommend you check out the service to see everything they provide, all for free.

Audio file hosting
Besides recording your audio, another next tricky part is finding a web server to serve the audio from. You will probably not be able to host your audio files on the same server as your blog, so they will need to live somewhere else.

Why? Well, for one, they can be quite large. For an average hour long podcast you will have an MP3 file that is over 30 MB in size. If you post a new podcast regularly, you may fill up what server space you have fairly quickly.

Secondly, hopefully, your podcast will become quite popular, and when it does, the audio will be downloaded a lot. As such, your bandwidth usage may get maxed out. Some web hosts cap how much can be downloaded from your server, so you might get cut off at some point.

Finally, some hosts don't want the legal hassle with letting people host their audio files on their servers. For these three reasons, for example, you cannot upload your audio to your blog at WordPress.com. Even if you run the WordPress software on your own server, make sure they have no such restrictions.

So as an alternative, you can find a web host just for your audio content. One such host is archive.org. Archive.org is a free website whose sole purpose is to provide massive amounts of web space for archiving websites around the world. Recently, they began providing a service called OpenSource Audio. http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_audio

With this service, you can create a free account and upload your podcast audio files. There are no limits on size or bandwidth usage. They only ask that you set a Creative Commons License for your audio so that people know how they can listen and use your audio. For files of a large size (10 MB or larger, which most podcasts are often larger) they provide a program to run on your PC for uploading to their service.

After they are uploaded, you are given a web link to the audio file. That link is what you would paste in you blog entry to include your audio file. Well, almost.

Archive.org uses redirects to provide a nice URL that they can track downloads with. But WordPress doesn't like the redirect and won't make the enclosure with it. The easiest thing to do is open the URL that archive.org gives you then see what URL is redirected to. That URL will be a version that WordPress likes.

For example, for my podcast, the following URL:

http://www.archive.org/download/DanShauretteIsThisThingOn23/ison20060621.mp3

Is redirected to:

http://ia301130.us.archive.org/0/items/DanShauretteIsThisThingOn23/ison20060621.mp3

If you place that "uglier" link into your WordPress post, you will be all set for it to make the right enclosure for you. As mentioned before, if you use Feedburner, it will make the enclosure from either type of link.

Hardware Setup
On to the hardware side of things. You need a way to record audio and get it onto your computer to edit and upload to the web. If you have a computer that you can plug a microphone into, and speakers or headphones to listen, then you have all you need. Most of you should have this minimum equipment, and many podcasts use this very setup. I did for about nine months.

You can spend anywhere from $20 for a headset with a mic, to $100 for a quality microphone and even more for mixing boards and equipment. This all boils down to what level of quality and professional control you want over your podcast. Beginners should start simple. With enough demand, you can always improve.

What I can personally endorse is M-Audio's Podcast Factory setup which retails for $179.95 USD. This is what I have invested in within just the last couple months. This kit comes with a high-quality studio microphone, a small mic stand, a USB audio interface, and has all of the necessary software and cabling. It's the best deal for someone who wants the step above simple microphones, but does not have the resources or experience to get a professional studio setup.
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/PodcastFactory-main.html

It should also be noted that you can certainly use a portable voice recorder. In fact, the iRiver media player has a good recorder for portable recording sessions. Myself, I have used the Voice Memo feature of my Palm Zire 72s PDA. As long as the quality is good and there is a conduit to your computer for later editing, then by all means give it a try.

Audio Quality
The only major requirement is that your audio be saved into MP3 format, or be saved and then converted into MP3 format. The MP3 format allows for high quality even with a high compression of the audio data.

When it comes to a podcast, since the audio will predominately be voice and not hi-fi music, you can even tweak the quality levels down to make the audio files even smaller. Here are what I have found to be the "magic numbers" of podcasting.

Sample rate/Frequency: 22050 Hz (AM radio quality)
Bit rate: 64 Kbps (in between the quality of AM and FM radio)

This combination yields a compression of roughly 2 minutes of audio saved as 1 MB of data.

What do these numbers mean? The sample rate is how often your voice will be sampled to record digitally. 22050 Hz is literally sampled 22,050 times per second! As impressive as that is, that is "only" AM radio quality of audio. Double that at 44100 Hz is audio CD quality. So while you might be tempted to record your podcast at that level of quality, remember it is sampled twice as much data and therefore the file size will double, bringing you to one minute of audio being 1 MB of data.

Bit rate is a similar metric. This is the measure of the amount of data it samples per second. Kbps is kilobits per second. Again, the more data it records, the higher the quality, and larger the resulting file.

It took me a while with some trial and error to find these magic numbers, including some wisdom from Evo Terra (co-author of PODCASTING FOR DUMMIES) about ensuring all of my samples were at 64 Kbps, lest I discover my audio sounds like the latest Chipmunks album. You can feel free to experiment as well. But I have found that even music sounds good at these levels.

So, in the end, this means that an hour-long podcast becomes a 30 MB file for you to upload, and your listeners to download. That's not a tiny file by any means, but one that most listeners seem to be willing to handle. As mentioned before, the brilliance of podcasting is in the catching of files, which can be done in the background. Yet as cable modems and DSL become the more common form of internet connection, a 30 MB file downloads very swiftly.

Besides MP3, there are many other formats, Ogg Vorbis and MP4 files being then next popular. Some podcasts carry more than one format, and a few carry Hi-fi and Lo-fi versions of their podcasts, for users of different bandwidths of download. However, MP3 is the de facto podcast audio standard.

Having said that, you may find MP4 files are relatively common. These may alternatively have an M4A extension. These are MPEG-4 files with audio encoded in AAC format, which provides digital rights management favored by iTunes. This is a format made popular by Apple, and these files cannot be played without iTunes, an iPod, or Apple QuickTime on your computer.

Why use them then? They offer a certain level of copy protection in some cases. It is the format used by audio for sale on iTunes. If you intend to sell your podcasts, this is the media for you. For example, you might prefer to record a podcast of your novel and provide it in the MP4/AAC format. Just remember, the software to make them is not free and it may cost more for the rights to sell them.

My advice is to stick with MP3. It's free for you to create and can be played by everyone. After your podcast becomes popular, you might consider switching to a secured format.

The Politics of Dancing
Speaking of copy protection, what devices can play what audio, and who owns rights to do what, let's discuss copyrights. There is a term that you may have heard regarding podcasts, music primarily, known as "podsafe".

Podsafe music refers to the license under which the music was released. If a song is podsafe, then anyone is free to include that song on a podcast without paying a royalty.

This does not mean the music is in the public domain, however. It means that the copyright owner has granted the public specific permissions to use it.

To make this easier for the legal playing of such audio, some artists use a Creative Commons license with explicit permission to share the music.

Even if you don't intend your podcast to showcase podsafe music, if you want to have theme music, segment bridge music, sound clips, etc., you need to know what rights you have for using it.

Ultimately, I mention this because, even if you have no intention to use music of any kind, you need to decide what kind of license you intend to release your podcast under. As the creator of your podcast, you do own the copyright to it. Yet, because of the inherent nature to share your audio with others, the license with which you podcast it will determine how broadly it can be distributed. For example, here is a link to the license that I use for my podcast: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/

Visit CreativeCommons.org for more details about their licenses, and for more about podsafe audio and music, read more at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podsafe

Recap of Producing a Typical Podcast
1. Record your audio.
2. Edit and mix your audio.
3. Upload to your web server.
4. Post an entry in your blog with a link to your audio file.

For the next article in this series, I will focus on recording interviews with Skype and HotRecorder. Not only will this help you if you plan to conduct phone interviews of other authors, for example, but if you simply want to be able to do a podcast with a co-host and don't have the resources to buy a mixing board.
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Podcasting for Authors - Part 1: What is podcasting?
By Dan Shaurette

I recently wrote an article explaining why authors today should have a blog, or journal website. The next step is to consider whether or not, as an author, you want to share more than text with your readers -- and record your voice for an audio blog or a podcast.

In this new series of articles, I'm hoping to help authors understand what a podcast is and how to make one.

What is podcasting? Podcasting became a big craze in 2005, but most people believe this is more than a passing fad.

A "podcast" as it is today did not exist until about September of 2004. This is when various technologies came together for the first time to allow automatic delivery of syndicated audio content on the internet.

Instead of streamed audio that can be found on many internet radio stations, like SecondShifters.com, podcasting allows for the automatic download of whole MP3 audio files via a sub- scription.

It started as web journalers (aka bloggers) found ways to distribute their journals and put audio in them. This is known as audioblogging.

The internet is not just a text based place. Audio and video are as key to information as text is. So it did not take long before people were placing graphics, speech, music, and video on their blogs. Thus audioblogging and videoblogging (aka vlogging) were born.

When "real simple syndication" (RSS) was added to the programs that made blogging possible, it meant anyone could subscribe to a blog that caught their fancy. A news reader or aggregator program is all that is needed to subscribe to these syndicated feeds.

Dave Winer added the idea of "enclosures" to RSS. This added the ability to know exactly where an audio or video file could be found and downloaded from. As soon as news aggregators were programmed to automatically download the enclosed files and save them on the reader's computer, or perhaps to a portable media player, podcasting was born.

Adam Curry is credited with being one of the first to marry all of the technologies together. He had an audio blog and wanted a way to get the sound files directly onto his iPod player. He wrote a script to do this from his RSS feed and started a revolution. He's also credited with coining the term "podcast" as a hybrid of iPod and broadcast.

However, though iPods are the hip trend in media players, you do not need to have an iPod to listen to a podcast. Most podcasts are MP3 audio files, so as long as your computer can play MP3, or if you have any type of portable MP3 player, you can listen to a podcast. In fact, you don't even need a news aggregator, nor do you need iTunes. These programs, often called "podcatchers", just make getting podcasts easier.

Today, a podcast can be created many different ways. From the deepest magicks of low level XML file creation to the highest level of upload-and-go. This series won't cover them all, but I will touch on some popular methods in the next issue.

Moreover, people are making podcasts about anything. There are podcasts covering news, talk, music, technology, comedy, audio books, storytelling, and every type of hobby. There are many reasons for this, just as there are many types of blogs. As more people learn about podcasting, it will become more diverse and even easier to subscribe.

As an auuthor, should you have a podcast? Well, the answer to this is not as resounding as it is for having a website or blog. However, if you've found the benefits of having a blog to be rewarding, I think you may indeed find the same with podcasting.

What about the shy writers many of us consider ourselves to be? I'd love to know C. Hope Clark's take on this, but as I myself am a shy writer who has a podcast, I think a balance can still be struck. Why? It's still a passive sharing experience, like writing. I don't know if I could do a live radio show. Yet, sharing my words with a microphone which is recording has the same control as does wrting an article. I can edit both media before I release them.

On my podcast, I talk about everything and anything. I do talk about my writing and web projects, but it's more about sharing my interests than promotion. Yet, it is promotion, and that cannot be denied. Therein lies the reason an author should consider podcasting.

If you can share your interests and work in a plug, like you might with a blog, then a podcast has even more potential. That's one more medium where you have a chance to connect to a reader.

In addition, authors may find that recording short stories or novels in an effort to promote new ones can be a very effective marketing tool. That is in addition to just being plain fun. Podiobooks.com is a place where listeners can find a large number of audio books that can be subscribed to as podcasts so that you can listen to a chapter at a time on your schedule.

What do you need in order to listen to a podcast?
- A computer, either a PC or a Mac. - Windows XP preferred on PCs, OS X for a Mac. - A program for listening to MP3 audio files. - A portable player (like an iPod) is not necessary, but handy. - An internet connection. Cable or DSL preferred. - Podcatching or news reader software.

There are many different programs for podcatching, for both computers. Personally, I use NewsGator, which is a free website (http://www.newsgator.com) that also requires a program called FeedDemon which downloads your queued audio files. Newsgator lets you subscribe to RSS feeds, whether straight text or podcasts, and organizes them all for you.

If any podcasts have new episodes, Newsgator and FeedDemon do not automatically download the files for you. You have to mark the audio files you want. FeedDemon will then automatically download the ones you marked. I prefer this intermediate step because I subscribe to so many feeds; news, blogs, and podcasts of many kinds. If it downloaded every new audio file without me selecting, I would drown in digital discourse.

There are many other web-based readers out there, most of them are setup for podcasts, like Odeo.com. Even AOL and Yahoo have podcast channel sites. These also let you listen online.

However, if you want a program that will download all audio from all feeds you subscribe to, there are a lot to choose from. None however are as flexible and easy to use as iTunes. No, you don't have to have an iPod or even a Mac to use iTunes. There is a Windows version for download. It will also update playlists for any music player you prefer to use. For set-it-and-forget-it ease of use, iTunes is the best and it's free.

The Future of Podcasting
Podcasting really is very much the next generation of audio broadcasting. It will never replace radio stations. I don't think that's it's goal. However, it is fair to say it is intended for a different audience than radio. Radio does not appear to be getting loose from the tight grip of the FCC. Satellite radio providers took the concept of radio as far as they could in order to break away from the FCC rules. They are often compared to what cable TV has done versus tradional broadcast television.

Podcasting is in turn often compared to PVRs, like TiVo, which allow what is known as "time-shifting" what you are watching. TiVo allows you to pick TV shows you like, set it to record, and then watch anytime you want after it has recorded the episodes. VCRs gave this ability but not with the level of flexibility and ease of use of PVRs.

In the same way, podcasts allow time-shifting of audio. After you subscribe to a podcast, the podcatchers download new episodes for you to listen whenever you want. Thanks to portable players, that now also means wherever you want. Most people can listen while they exercise, while they drive, and even at work.

Just as blogs were a great way of writing about what you love and getting some attention for your other projects, podcasting has taken this to the audible level.

In my next article, I will talk about the technical side of podcasts and explain how you can create a podcast of your own. If you want some references right now, I highly recommend PODCASTING FOR DUMMIES by Tee Morris and Evo Terra. It covers everything in depth, but you won't drown in tech manuals to learn it all.
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I had the pleasure of interviewing Evo Terra of podiobooks.com and dragonpage.com, among others. Most recently he wrote PODCASTING FOR DUMMIES with Tee Morris. Click here to listen to or read the interview.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of "Is This Thing On?"

(Download MP3 or listen to the stream)

* On my last podcast, I talked a bit about podiobooks.com and how I'm planning to make a podiobook out of my novel.

- I also mentioned that I'd love to interview its founder, Evo Terra, on our podcast.

- Well he left me a kind note on the blog with some tips and let me know he'd be happy to join me on the cast!

- So, I'm happy to announce this podcast features that interview with him.

* Evo was in a band here in Phoenix a few years back called Serpent of Eve.

- It turns out that they just made some of their tunes available on the Podsafe Music Network.

- There were so many different styles of music, I had a hard time picking two for the show. But I think I chose two cool ones.

* The first song I played was a funky song called "Ride" by Serpent of Eve.

DS: Thank you very much for finding the time in your busy schedule to talk with me tonight.

ET: Yeah, you know my wife and I were just talking about time earlier. She said she wanted to go and find time to join an athletic club. I had to explain to her, "Honey, you don't make time. There's an exact amount of time between the time you get up and the time you go to bed. There's no more. Unless you can orbit the earth really quickly and somehow slow it down for you. It doesn't work that way. You can't do it, you just have to move other stuff out of the way." So, I'm happy to do it for you.

DS: Thank you very much. So I wanted to quickly run through some of your credits that at least I know of to get this started. You're the co-host of three different podcasts. Slice of Sci-Fi, Dragon Page Cover-to-Cover and Wingin' It. You are also the co-creator of Podiobooks.com. If that wasn't enough, you teamed up with Tee Morris, also from Podiobooks, to create a wonderful book called PODCASTING FOR DUMMIES, which was just released in November of 2005, right.

ET: That is correct.

DS: How many other projects are you working on and are they all podcasting-related? Or do you actually have time for other things?

ET: Oh well, believe it or not, you have to make time for other things as well. Oh, now I said it. "Make time." There's actually one podcast you didn't mention; that's my CultCast.

DS: Oh, you know I just found that one, too. So forgive me for that. That's your herbal 'cast, right?

ET: Well, no, that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I am a practicing herbalist. I am an herbalist, and I still say practicing because I have a handful of clients. But realistically, there is a lot more time I'd like to spend being an herbalist than I actually can. That's obviously not where the universe wants me to be right now.

So, no the CultCast, while it's housed on my herbal website right now has nothing to do with herbalism. It's really all about my philosophies on life, and they're fairly heavy. We try to divorce them from the sci-fi stuff. Lots of people said, "Oh I can't wait to see what a sci-fi geek's outlook on life is."

I gotta tell ya, it's not a sci-fi geek's outlook on life is. I'm not really that much of a sci-fi geek. I enjoy it, and I have a lot of fun doing the shows, but here's a chance for me to really, you know, speak some honest-to-goodness what I consider "truth" about the way the world works and how screwed up things tend to be sometimes.

It's interesting. I put a show out once every three to four weeks and it's not my main focus. When something strikes me as "I must speak about this now" I sit down, crank out a five-minute essay, and sit down and record it and push it out.

DS: Cool. I'll definitely have to add that one to my list then.

ET: Well, yes it is different than everything else that I do. That's for sure, so. But, yeah, I do tend to stay rather busy because outside of all of those things, I've got a full time job, I have a family, I've got a son who plays hockey 100 miles away. So, yeah, there's rarely a time when I'm not sitting in front of a computer doing something. But I'm always thinking about podcasting and what's the next thing we can do with that. That's really struck my fancy the most of anything in a long time.

DS: OK, so when did you start podcasting?

ET: Well, officially, we started podcasting on October 14, 2004. My partner, Michael R. Mennega, had sent me an email about this new thing called podcasting on October the 12th. Two days later I finally looked at his email and said, "Heck, we can do this." We were already doing our show, as an internet radio show -- The Dragon Page Cover to Cover - which was on internet radio as well as several terrestrial radio stations around the country and most of them, if not all, were taking our show on MP3.

We already had it up on a secured area. I had an RSS feed, because I'm using a blog to maintain this site. So, I had those two things. All I had to do was figure out how to somehow magically stick the MP3 file inside of there. I was using MovableType, and there's a great plug-in called MTenclosures, and literally it took me two days to do it but realistically it took about half an hour to get it ready.

So, we were podcasting out of the gate. But, we were cheating right, because we already had all of the heavy lifting done. It was just a matter of me making one connection between two points and we were there.

DS: That's sort of what happened with podcasting in general though, isn't it? It was sort of a "Hey, we can do this, and we have that, so if we just do this here, and Boom!"

ET: Oh, exactly.

DS: A whole media just sprang up out of nowhere.

ET: Well, there were a lot of nay-sayers out there, and you can still find them, about podcasting. You know, the big complaint they say is that podcasting is nothing new. You're right, this is nothing new.

People have been putting audio files, either as we were doing with our show, or as an audio blog, for a really long time. RSS is nothing new. Dave Winer, if you can believe that Dave did it, which I actually do, made the Enclosure plug-in work to help things out. Adam Curry, of all odd people wrote the first script that somehow sucked it out and moved it around for you automatically. It's just bringing together pieces. So you're exactly right.

The forerunners of podcasting, those of us who from July to say November, we were all using other pieces and are sticking them together in new and exciting ways. So yeah, it wasn't a lot of work to do. It was just, "Gee, I wonder who will listen to me this way now."

DS: Right. I think it also owes a lot to iPods becoming a household name. But, you don't need an iPod to listen to them. But it was because of portable media players I think also played a big part in once people were able to audioblog and get the enclosures and download it automatically. Putting it onto a media and taking it and going.. that was it.

ET: You're exactly right. Untethering from the computer was really the key. Because, while there is still a significant portion of people who will listen to podcasts on their computer, that's not the way it was intended.

The intention here was for you to get it whenever it happens to come down, at 3 o'clock in the morning when you're not using your computer, and for you to move it to your portable player of choice so that you can take it with you. You know, it's "to-go" type of information.

There's no doubt that the success of the iPod really fueled that. Although it's funny that you mentioned that you don't need to have an iPod to listen to podcasting and you're exactly right. Inside the book PODCASTING FOR DUMMIES, I make that statement over and over again, and even go so far as to say, "I don't even own an iPod." But I will tell you a story.

I didn't own an iPod for a long time. As soon as I got a copy of PODCASTING FOR DUMMIES actually in print, in my hand -- not an advanced copy, but the real ones out of the stores -- I went down 30 minutes later and bought an iPod. So there. I didn't want to lie in the book. So if you were one of the first people to buy the book as soon as it went on the shelf, it was true then. It's not true anymore. I now own an iPod.

DS: And what do you listen to on your iPod? If I may ask?

ET: Oh my god. Well, I'm one of those crazy obsessive people that once he finds something that he really enjoys, goes to town with it. So, at last check there were 65 different podcasts that I'm listening to at any given time.

DS: Sixty-five... but you have the time on your commute to listen to them.

ET: Well, that's true, that's probably the best way to do it. You know, I live 105 miles away from the studio, and so that's an hour and a half there, and an hour and a half back, at least once a week. My son plays hockey as I mentioned, so I've got an hour drive to take him to hockey and an hour drive back, that's at least two times a week. Then I've got the two hours that I'm sitting there watching him practice to listen. So I have a lot of time to listen. So yeah, I can consume those 65.

Although I gotta tell ya, I just came back from being gone ten days in Belize and being gone for like four days for a hockey tournament at where my mom was out so I was kinda not very nice of me to sit and listen to podcast while she was out. So I just got caught up yesterday from about 20 days back, it was crazy. My iPod had about 120 different episodes in it.

But you asked me what I'm listening to you right now, Not as much science fiction as people might think. People, I think, tend to assume I listen to a lot of sci-fi shows, but I don't. For the sci-fi shows out there, I do listen to "Escape Pod" and love it, love what Steve Eley is doing with it. I had a lot of fun doing a couple of readings for his show, that's a lot of fun. I've been listening to Mur Lafferty's "Geek-Fu Action Grip" since day one. She's a great person and a great friend, you know she contributes to our show now. I listen to Paul S. Jenkins' "The Rev-Up Review" out of the U.K. And I listen to Daniel Emery's "Brief Glimpses of Somewhere Else". And that's about it for science fiction shows. A few others here and there when I get a chance, and of course the various podiobooks that are on there.

But I try to broaden my horizon with the podcasting world. I've been listening to Dan Klass' "The Bitterest Pill" for a long time, love what Dan does. He's since turned me on to a variety of other people such as Lance Anderson's "The Verge of the Fringe". Cush, "Things I Say", So I try and really get an understanding of what's going on in the podcast world, the "podosphere" we call it. It's really become so difficult to talk about all of them. So, I just posted them. If you go to dragonpage.com and click on the "About" link and click on my picture, you can see every podcast I'm currently listening to. I just updated it a week ago. About every three months somebody sends me a note saying, "Hey, those haven't changed in a while," so I put new ones up there. But those are the ones I listen to regularly. You can find out there.

DS: Very cool. All right. OK, so when did you meet Tee Morris and were you helping him with his novel, and that's what made podiobooks? Or how did that work out?

ET: Yeah, Tee Morris was one of the first guests we had on the Dragon Page Cover-to-Cover in early 2002. He sent us a copy of his book, MOREVI, and I loved it. So we kind of developed a friendship over the years. In November of 2004, he contacted me and said his agent for non-fictional work had contacted him and said there was an opportunity to write a podcasting book and would he be interested. So he immediately called me and said, "Hey, you're the guy that's having me podcast my book MOREVI, maybe you should help me with that."

"Yeah, I should help you with that Tee, since you don't understand the technical side of the thing. You're gonna need some help." So I said, "Sure, we could probably put a 120-page book together."

He talked to his agent and his agent said, "It's a 360-page book." I said, "You're kidding! 360 pages for me to say: Record it, post it up on a web server and link your RSS feed to it. There's no way we can do that."

So, then he said, "It's a For Dummies book." I said, "Crap. I can't say no now."

DS: Yeah, you gotta do that.

ET: So, yeah, how do you say no to that kind of deal? That's a real book. So that's how we got together writing together. But yes, I was helping him podcast his novel, MOREVI. I approached him back in October and said, "There's this new thing we are doing called podcasting. I think you should be involved somehow. I'm not sure. What do you think?"

Well he was going to release his second book in that series come July of 2005 and he talked to his publisher and got permission to go ahead and release every chapter of that book in serialized form in a podcast up until the release date.

Right after he and I had started chatting, I called up another guy, Mark Jeffrey, who I'd also spoken with about the idea, and said, "You're gonna do you book too that way." I didn't even give him a choice.

Scott Sigler contacted me and said, "Hey I'm gonna do this new thing called a podcast for my book," and I said, "that's not new, I'm already doing it, but I'm happy to include you as well." So we stuck him in the mix.

So, for the longest time it was those three, then we found out about a guy named Paul Story doing a book called TOM CORVEN. So they were the first four. Since that time, I'm not sure how many there are out there right now. I know we've got 20 different podcast books up at podiobooks.com right now. There's probably an equal number of those out there that are doing it solo projects for now.

DS: Right, and that's how Scott Sigler started. He was doing it on his own, and was the first if I'm not mistaken.

ET: Well, there were three different firsts. Since I am the one who created the word "podiobooks", by God, I get to say who was first.

DS: Well, there you go. Please.

ET: Yeah, I'll set the record straight, because I actually have the timeline on all of these books. Scott Sigler had the very first "podcast only" novel. You couldn't get EARTHCORE in print form. The only way you could get this book was via podcast. Now it was previously written. It was ready to be published before 2001. But for a variety of reasons it never happened. The imprint he was with fell apart.

Second, another first is Tee Morris. Now Tee Morris had the official very first podcast novel. He had an MP3 file attached to an RSS feed via enclosure before anybody else. Not long before but close enough to before everybody else. So the first ever podcast novel was Tee.

And then we have TOM CORVEN which was written by Paul Story over in Scotland. His was the first novel written exclusively for a podcast. His book wasn't written. He was writing it as he was going along. Every three or four days, he would write a chapter. Sit down, record it, and release it.

So three different firsts, and they all happened in a three-week period.

DS: Wow, well that's the wonderful thing about this medium. It has just been this explosion of ideas, and people are having the same ideas. You know, we can do this. Now, was Paul Story also doing his as a "blook" - as a blogged book? Or just as a podcast?

ET: Strictly as a podcast. You know, I am embarrassed to say this. I heard the term "blook" for the first time two weeks ago. I mean, here I am the guy who was doing an internet radio show all about science fiction books, and the guy behind podiobooks and I'd never heard of blooks before. Sorry, I kinda skipped that. Yeah, those are cool, too, but no Paul's book, TOM CORVEN, was only available as a podcast.

DS: Wow, cool. How is podiobooks doing right now? I mean you said you've got about 20 books up there right now. Are you actively pursuing more authors? Are more authors coming to you? How's it going so far?

ET: Well, it's going really well. We put the site up in a beta form, kind of an official beta, on the first of October of last year. I think we launched with, I don't know, about five or six different titles. Since that time, we went out of beta last weekend, or weekend before last, I forget when it was, with an all-new site design. Everything works well, and with 20 different titles on top of it. Really excited. We're adding, as of last count, almost 100 new members a day. That's really cool, and they're subscribing to three to four books each on average.

That's the cool thing about podiobooks, you know. It's hard to read, unless you're a crazy person like me, more than one book at a time. But it's easy to listen to more that one podiobook at a time. You know, the way we designed that system is each feed is unique to each individual. So, even if you are on chapter 17, and you are the author, and somebody comes in next week, they don't have to catch up 1 to 16. They get chapter one. And it comes down to them every week, if that's the way they set it.

So on a Monday, they could subscribe to MOREVI, and on a Tuesday they could come back and subscribe to EARTHCORE. On Wednesday they could come back and subscribe to AMBER PAGE. That's three books, three days, stretched out. And you can easily listen to them one chapter at a time that way.

So, you'd asked the question, are we going out and getting more authors? Yes. At last count 60 different people are in various stages of developing their book right now. Some of them are in the real early stages. Some of them are in the process of recording chapters. So there are 60 different authors last I checked, that are in the process of recording a podiobook.

Some of them -- most of them have actually came to us and said, "I want to put out a book, you guys seem to be the place." A few of them, we went out and cultivated and said, "You're already doing this, you should come over here since I'm not charging you anything and we've already got the audience base."

DS: Right, and there you go. There's bound to be a lot of authors like me that think, "This is really cool, I would like to do this, too." What advice do you have for authors like me who, we've got a book, what do we do now, if we wanted to make a podiobook out of it?

ET: Well, you're ahead of the curve. A lot of the people who talk to us want a book -- and a podiobook. So, my first advice to you is, you need a book first. It worked for Paul Story, actually writing his book as he goes.

But, I've been involved in the publishing industry long enough to realize that first drafts -- 99 times out of 100 -- suck. You're not ready to podcast your first draft. Write your book. Edit your book. Editors by the way, don't have the same last name as you. It needs to be someone different than your mother.

Once your book is solid, assuming you are starting with a book that is as tight as you can make it, then what are your next things to do. First thing you want to do is go listen to some other folks that are doing it because there a lot of right ways. A lot of different right ways to do a podiobook. And find your particular style. You know, some people use music all the way throughout. Some people have a very heavy, engaging first couple of minutes before they get into their book and they do it almost "Battlestar Galactica" style. With "Previously on..." and then "Next Week". Which is how Scott Sigler did it.

DS: Yes, I was just going to say EARTHCORE does that.

ET: Yes, Scott did that. I mean he said, "this is watt 24 does, this is what Battlestar does, this is what people are used to by god, I'm gonna do it that way." Scott's a media-whore, so he's gonna do what it takes to get it there. But everybody's different. Some people like Jack Mangan who did SPHERICAL TOMI. You know Jack's deadpan. I mean the boy seems to have no emotions coming out of his mouth. That's an OK delivery style. The nice thing about podiobooks are that it is different than an audio book.

When I listen to an audio book I want professional sounding voice actors giving it to me. That's because of what we've been trained to expect.

DS: Well, and you are also paying $40 for an audio book.

ET: No doubt, but with a podiobook, I want to hear it from the author. In the author's voice. I don't want someone else to do it for him, or her. I would actually prefer to listen to it in that voice, because I get a much better connection to that story by listening to the guy who wrote it. As opposed to some actor that was paid $500 a minute to try and read it.

So, back to the advice I'd give somebody: invest in a good quality microphone. That's probably the single best piece of advice I can give you.

Your editing software is immaterial. You're not going to do that much with it. Audacity and GarageBand are two free products, well sort of free for GarageBand if you've got a Mac, are perfectly fine. Use Audacity, it's going to do everything you want it to do.

Spend some time navigating through one of the podsafe music directories to find the music that fits your book. Contact that artist and say, "I want to use this, are you OK with it?" You already have the rights to do it, but it's still nice to do that. That's all you've got to do.

Get a good microphone, get some good background music with it, and put your heart and your soul into it. Take your time. Don't rush. Podiobooks aren't going anywhere. We'll be around until you get it right.

DS: Cool, and that brings me to your first point: a good quality microphone. I'm still using an old-fashioned Radio Shack headset microphone plugged into my PC. But I've heard a lot of people saying that the USB microphones are better. Just for going that way, would you suggest that, or would you say you really need a studio-quality decent microphone.

ET: Well, it really depends on what else you want to do with that. There are plenty of people that are recording their podiobooks on, like me I've got a $60 Plantronics USB headset that I'm talking to you on. You can do it with that. I would not personally. The lowest microphone I would use personally if I was going to record these books, I've got a Shure SM-58 sitting right next to me. That's what I do all of my recording on solo. Now when I go to the studio with Mike, he's got $700 AKG blah-blah I don't even know what they are, that we do it with. If you are going to do it right, get a good quality studio condenser mic preferably, I would say. Although I'm really not the person to talk to talk tech on microphones with.

I don't know that I'd go with a USB mic. I might go with a USB interface that can plug in a regular microphone into that with a nice XLR jack or 1/4" plug. The USB mics I've heard people say that there are some really high-quality ones and I'm gonna go to the store and research some of those over the weekend. Because I'd like to be able to just plug in straight to my computer and not plug in the Shure SM-58 in the MotuTraveler who goes into all that other stuff.

But the thing about a microphone that every one should know is go try them out. Just because I use microphone A doesn't mean your voice is right for that same microphone. You might be able to get off with a much cheaper microphone, so go spend some time testing them all out. Got to Guitar Centers, they've got a thousand different microphones there. Tell the guy behind the counter you're not buying today you just want to check them out. Put some headphones on and see how your voice sounds and the one that makes your voice sound the best, buy it.

DS: Cool, great advice. Thank you very much. So, let's see. Besides working on PODCASTING FOR DUMMIES, what else have you written?

ET: Well, my first official written opportunity also came from Mr. Tee Morris. Trying to think exactly when this was. it was either 2003 or 2004, he was putting together an anthology if you will, I guess not an anthology, but it was called THE FANTASY WRITERS' COMPANION. A year or so before he had contributed to a book called THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WRITING FANTASY. So this was the sequel to that, which kinda struck me as odd. If it was complete, why would you need a sequel? So we kinda joked about the name. For the longest time we were going to call it BRIDE OF THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WRITING FANTASY, RETURN OF..., etc.

In the end they decided to call it THE FANTASY WRITERS' COMPANION. Tee had sent me an email and said that he would like for me to contribute a chapter to the book. Which was kinda funny because for those people out there who listen to my shows that I do, I don't like fantasy. I'm a reader of hard science fiction and bizarre stuff. Fantasy has never really lifted my flag, to say it's not my thing, so, as he asked me to write this I wasn't sure what to do.

We were going through my background and he said, "Maybe you could do something with herbalism." Which also struck me as kind of odd, but as I realized it, most fantasy books are written in 500-year old, some sort of medieval setting, at least where there's not modern-day technology. Herbal medicine is plant-based medicine. You go pick something, you do something with it, and you get medicine out of it. But so many books and movies, like LORD OF THE RINGS, for example, get it wrong. That's not the way things actually happen. Or they have it to where, oh, this person has broken his leg, quick, we have to go rush and find a healer 17 villages away. You know, 500 years ago, people could take care of just about anything on their own.

So, I decided to write that. So I wrote a book on how to make herbal medicine work in your fantasy world, and it was a lot of fun. I got to help you make up names for your plants and I used real-world stuff. You know, how plants got their names, through folklore, through legend, and what they did. A lot of the plants out there have healing names with them. So that was the first thing I sat down to write professionally. You know things I got paid for, and I found it to be a blast.

I struggled with it for about a week, and then I crumpled the page up and threw it away, and six days later I was done with my entire chapter. So I thought, wow, this actually works out for me. So then I set out to write the great American novel. And that's never gonna go anywhere. I have no gift for plot. Not my thing. And I genuinely didn't enjoy it. So I thought, OK, that was weird. Then I got the chance to write PODCASTING FOR DUMMIES, and I loved every second of it. So I realized, I'm a non-fiction author. That's what I'm supposed to do. Now I'll do some more with that. What? I don't know. I've got a couple things in the works. I've got some feelers out there that I've been talking to some people about. So we'll see, because I enjoyed that.

DS: Very cool, I loved the bio for you in PODCASTING FOR DUMMIES. Let's see if I can get this right.

"Evo is the poster child for Type A personalities the world over. Washed-up musician, tree-hugging herbalist, heretical-but-ordained minister, talk-radio personality, advertising executive and technology innovator, all wrapped up in one single-serving package."

I want to talk about each of these really quick. "Washed-up musician." Tell us about when you started playing guitar, or bass excuse me, and what happened with that?

ET: Well, it's a funny story how I got to playing. I was working in California, with a bunch of guys in a large company, and the vice-president of the area I worked for had come to me and said, "You used to play music when you were in high school, didn't you?" I was 25 or do and said, "Sure I did." So he said, "I'm thinking about gonna get together a band, are you interested?" I said I'd love to.

So three months later, he contacts me again. He rattled off the people who were gonna play, and he said, "I got this guy named Ron who's gonna play the drums." And I said, "Wait a minute, I play drums." And, he said, "I thought you played bass guitar." My response was, "I guess I do now." So I went out and bought a bass guitar. I used to play six-string guitar when I was much younger, and grew bored and frustrated with trying to place four fingers at a time. I could play single notes really well, but you know chords were beyond me. Bass guitar, ooh, one-finger chords. I'm in. So I picked it up and for like three years we were together doing cover tunes and whatever.

I got to Phoenix, and I met a really talented guy named Don Cross, who is just a musician -- it doesn't matter what it is, Don plays and wants to do something with it. Whether it's guitar, whether it's drums, whether it's the trumpet, whatever. Don's always had something going. He and I hooked up through some weird connections and we just synched-up together really well.

We formed a band called Serpent of Eve along with another guy named Dave Gonzales. We were just strictly a studio band at the time. We did two or three different albums of all of our original music. That was a lot of fun. But then we lost Dave, he had to pursue a career of driving a beer truck.

DS: Poor guy.

ET: Yeah, so we lost him. So I teamed up with Don as well with these really cool, interesting, innovative people that were forming a band called Spaz Kitty. That was a Ska Punk band. I loved the music although I had never played Ska before. So again I took home tons of CDs and had to learn how to play that funky rhythm. Being a drummer and a bass player, rhythm's not really a problem for me.

We were together for about a year and a half. We did a lot of gigs here in and around the Phoenix valley. In fact the band's still together. Don and I both left the band for a variety of reasons. One was the fact that I was moving 100 miles away. Plus I wanted to focus a lot more on the radio stuff that I was doing.

So they're still playing, but that was a lot of fun. My favorite memories of the band was that we did a cover song, and I really don't like playing cover tunes. I told the band that, so they wanted to do a cover of "Sedated", and I agreed to it. But only if we did it "Country-style". That's still my favorite song.

DS: I would love to hear that.

ET: You know what, Brian Ibbott from Coverville has a copy of it. So email him and tell him you want him to play that song on there. "Sedated" by Spaz Kitty.

DS: Cool, so you're also an herbalist. Now are you still practicing up in Cottonwood?

ET: Yes I do. I have a handful of clients, not many. I graduated from the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, their Herbal program in, I believe it was 2000. I'd been studying since 1997 kind of on my own, but reached a point to where I was as far as I could get. I needed somebody with more knowledge than me to take it further.

So I met a really cool lady who'd been a practicing herbalist for thirty-some-odd years that was teaching and advanced course in herbalism. So I studied under her. Her name is JoAnn Sanchez. A really talented, wonderful lady, who taught me amazing things.

So, after that I moved to Cottonwood, and grabbed a handful of clients. My specialty is the natural healing plants of this area. I like to use things that are local to where somebody happens to be. That's one of my specialties.

The other is dealing with people like me -- Type-A personalities -- that have way too much going on in their lives that really don't want to change and live the monastic lifestyle but need some things to help calm them down. So I do a mixture of herbs and also just some stress-reduction techniques, to help people like me deal with the world.

DS: Cool, OK, next one: "Ordained Minister."

ET: Yeah, believe it or not, I'm an ordained minister, I have actually performed three weddings and I have another one scheduled for March. Kind of a funny story. Some very close fiends of my wife a I got married over 2000 and they invited us to fly out to California to be with them in their wedding, and their wedding was in some guy's house. It was just them and this guy.

I said, "This is kind of cool, what's this all about?" So I talked with him and he became an ordained minister because he had some friends that wanted to get married and didn't really want to have all of the church stuff thrown on top of them.

In most states all you need to do is be recognized by an organized religion. So there's a group out there called the Universal Life Church. If you'd like to be an ordained minister, you can go to UniversalLife.org (or ulc.org) you fill out a web form and they send you a piece of paper in the mail that says you are now an ordained minister.

So while I wouldn't ever presume to stand up and you know preach a sermon or give someone the Last Rites, cause I'm not that kind of ordained minister, I definitely am able to perform ceremonies such as marriages within the letter of the law at least in Arizona and many other states.

DS: I was just going to ask you because, I too am an ordained minister through the ULC. I've performed one ceremony, and that was here in Maricopa County, in Glendale. But I wanted to know if it was different in Yavapai County up there.

ET: All of mine also have been done in Maricopa, I haven't done Yavapai yet, but I assume it's the same.

DS: Don't assume, but I bet it is.

ET: Yeah, well, that's the great thing about it. As the minister of the ceremony, I make it all up to them. Go get your paperwork, give it to me, I'll sign it, you mail it back. You're more responsible than I am.

DS: Well, a friend of mine just performed one in Colorado, and apparently there in Colorado, it's extremely simple. You don't even need an ordained minister. One person says "Do you?" The other person says, "Yes." They say, "Do you?" The other person says "Yes." You're married. It's that simple.

ET: That's awesome.

DS: Yes, you have to have a license, but you don't need a minister (or a Justice of the Peace). Anybody can perform the ceremony. That is what I wish it was everywhere. But, where it isn't like that, the ULC makes it easier.

ET: They make people like you and I who really get a kick out of doing it. That's the whole reason for doing it. You know, when my wife and I got married, we got married at 20 years old. We lived in Oklahoma at the time. Not because she was pregnant, mine son was born when I was 23, do your math. But in the state of Oklahoma, in order for a woman can get married in the state of Oklahoma, if she is 18 or older. A male in Oklahoma has to be 21 or older, unless he gets his parents' permission. That just struck me as the most bizarre thing on the planet. I need my mommy's permission to get married and I'm 20 years old. I'm living on my own, no. Not that my mother wouldn't have given us permission, but we didn't want to go that route.

So we drove to Texas and got married. Our plan was to go to a Justice of the Peace to perform the ceremony. But my wife kind of got sentimental there towards the end and said she'd really like to have a minister do it. So we found a really nice guy down on South Padre Island, Texas. A little place called Chapel By The Sea, and it really was. He had sliding windows that he opened up and there was the ocean in front of there. It was my wife and I and the minister and we got married. He talked to us for like twenty minutes beforehand and said, "OK, come on, let's do this thing." It was beautiful, it was a great ceremony. That's the kind of minister that I'd like to be to help these people do that.

So, when my friends got married years ago, now years later, this is something that I've gotta do to help people do this. You know, release the stress. Because getting married is stressful. Especially, from what I understand, for women. I didn't really feel that much stress. But womenfolk tend to feel a little more. So, I hope to relieve some of that.

DS: There you go. Awesome. So, let's see. We already know about the "talk-radio personality". "Advertising executive and technology innovator". Well "technology innovator" we know about podiobooks.com.

ET: Right, well and my prior life before that. I worked inside of e-business. I led a multi-million dollar revenue-generating products for years before I decide to get out of that and go into consulting. So, in consulting, I'm now doing online advertising. I work with a firm out of New York City and place somewhere in the neighborhood of $20-25 Million worth of ads on behalf of our clients every year.

DS: Wow.

ET: It's a job.

DS: It's a job...

ET: It pays the bills. There are definitely some challenges and some things that are quite interesting. But when it all boils down to it, I'd rather just be podcasting all day long.

DS: Yeah, so I guess that really brings you to one last thing. That is, how many people do you think are really making money out of podcasting? Is that something that you think is going to change in the future or do you think, hey we should do this to do what we love and if we make a buck or two, that's cool.

ET: Well, you know, I'd love to have the Dave Slusher attitude, which is the latter one. You know, do what you love and if you can make a buck or two, that is cool. And in fact that is still the approach I take every single day. But I do see some opportunities coming. For people to afford to podcast full-time. You know, I would have said "quit your day job", but that's been patented now or trademarked, and I don't know if I can say that without giving Adam and Ron some money. So, it is possible. But, where I think you're going to find the biggest thing happening is not necessarily with people who just wanna sit in front of a microphone and talk all day long. You know we have a medium for that, it's called radio. Podcasting needs to be something different.

DS: Right.

ET: So, your message has to be different. But you also have to think about what is revenue-generating opportunities that takes to podcasting. There are a lot of folks that I think will have, in 2006, that will find significant sums of income from production work. Actually helping people make podcasts, helping organizations and companies get into podcasting. There's a huge opportunity for that. I think there's a great chance also for people to get involved in the educational system. That is a great untapped market.

DS: Oh, absolutely. I would love to see, and I think I had heard either you talking about it, or maybe you'd written about it, about seeing podiobooks become something that you could see text books making it's way to.

ET: No doubt. Any sort of information, that is sequential in nature, and needs to be started from one, and unique to that particular person. Needs to be put out in podcast form. Probably the way we are doing it with podiobooks. With our "EachCaster" feed, that goes out for you. But those are the true opportunities.

Can you make money, by sitting together, you and your spouse, in a farmhouse in Wisconsin podcasting? Yeah. You can. How many people can do that, becomes the big question.

Those people that will find a way to derive real income from podcasting will make sure it is in the spirit of podcasting, which is the first thing you said, you know, do what you love. That's gotta be a big part of it. But, do something innovative.

Find a new direction for this. As we said before, there's nothing new inside of podcasting. But we can take this avenue of distributed audio and video content (I even call video podcasters, "Podcasts") a new direction. That's where the money's gonna come.

So, one show a week where you sit down for thirty minutes and do it, of course you're not gonna make any money off of it. That's ludicrous to think that's gonna happen to anybody. But maybe you help 15 different podcasters produce some stuff. Maybe you work with an organization to help them figure out this new distribution method. There will be opportunities that present themselves, I guarantee it.

DS: All right. Well, thank you very much for sitting with me and making the time to chat.

ET: You're welcome.

DS: I'm looking forward to listening to more of The Dragon Page, and Slice of Sci-Fi. Say Hi to everybody over there at the Draco Vista Studios.

ET: I will definitely do that, Dan. We look forward to seeing your book on Podiobooks.com before too long.

DS: Yes, well thank you very much. Take care.

ET: You're very welcome.

* I wrapped up the show by playing "Astray" by Serpent of Eve.

If you want to join us on our podcast, Skype me at IsThisThingOnPodcast.

- We don't have a scheduled time yet, but watch the status on Skype of IsThisThingOnPodcast.

If you have any comments about this podcast, feel free to drop a note at shaurette.net/podmail. Thanks for visiting.

This Blog and PodCast are © Copyright 2006 by Dan Shaurette, under the Creative Commons "Attribution with No Derivatives" License. Some Rights Reserved.

Music for this podcast was provided by the PodShow Podsafe Music Network.

The theme music came from the royalty-free collection at http://www.musicloops.com.

Technorati Tags:Podcast, Podsafe Music, Serpent Of Eve, Evo Terra

Harmless Historical Nuts
By Dan Shaurette

Be careful of what paradise you deal
What hope you make other dreamers feel
For if too many hear it,
They will struggle to draw near it
And in the search they just might make it real!
-- Leslie Fish, "Valhalla"

Have you ever felt as if you were "born too late", as if you didn't fit into this modern world? Have you ever practiced genealogy in order to trace your roots, to find out the history of your family? Have you ever picked up a history book, or one on architecture and the arts and felt like you belonged there and not here? Do you instantly connect with movies about Camelot, knights in shining armor, or Robin Hood? Perhaps you are fascinated by the Renaissance period, or the tales of Vikings, or great epics such as Tolkien's tales of Middle Earth.

Then perhaps you would be interested in knowing there is a sub-culture of people who share their mundane lives with time in what they call The Current Middle Ages. These people are members of a worldwide organization known as the Society for Creative Anachronism. Do not mistake that last word - it is not Anarchism, for the SCA is definitely not full of anarchy. Quite the opposite, it modeled after the feudal societies that ruled medieval Europe. The "Knowne World" of the SCA consists of seventeen Kingdoms, each further containing Baronies, Shires, Colleges, Clans, Households, and so on.

Anachronism is a word that means "outdated" or "relic". Essentially they are a historical re-enactment and research group, similar to the "American Civil War Re-enacters". However the SCA concentrates on the recreation of the European Middle Ages, before 1600 A.D. The SCA was incorporated as a non-profit organization in May of

1966, by a group of science fiction and fantasy fans in Berkeley, CA. Dates of events within the SCA have the designation of "A.S.", referring to "Anno Societatis", or Year of the Society, counting after that.

Virtually all facets of medieval society are studied and recreated, including dance, music and the arts, cooking and brewing, metalwork and jewelry, martial arts and weaponry, archery, and costuming. The latter is possibly the most important. For unless you are dressed in period costume, known as garb, you are said to be "naked". There are folks however who are known as Hospitaliers (or "Gold Keys"), who maintain a trunk of garb for those new to events.

Not only is historical research a key to becoming good at whatever arts and sciences that you favor, but it is a requirement for creating a persona, which is your alter-ego within the SCA. When you register to become a member of the SCA, you must choose a name for yourself, design a personal coat of arms (or "device"), and give a historical background for your persona. There are many requirements involved for all of this, and it is no simple task, as it must be unique. However there are groups who will help the process along when you join. It is important to point out that you do not have to become a member of the SCA to enjoy its chivalry. It is estimated that for every registered member of the SCA in attendance at an event, there is an average of four others who are not.

The best way to discover what the SCA is really all about is to attend an event. Thanks to the Internet this has become quite simple. By visiting www.sca.org and clicking the link to Kingdoms and Groups, you will be able to find a group in your hometown or one nearby. Before that, and truly even today, most people discovered the SCA when they attended a sci-fi convention or similar event.

Here in Arizona, the SCA has it's own history. In 1969, a group of folks from Phoenix went to a convention in Berkeley and discovered the SCA. When they returned to Phoenix, they started their own chapter. They chose the name Atenveldt, which comes from the name of the Egyptian Sun God "Aton" and the German word for valley or land, "veldt". The Kingdom of The West already was considered to extend to Arizona, so instead of becoming a new kingdom, the SCA created the very first barony - the Barony of Atenveldt.

It wasn't long however before Atenveldt grew to encompass members from Mexico to Montana. In 1970, the SCA designated them as the very first Principality and allowed for different baronies within it. Finally, in 1971, the Principality was so large that the SCA granted them the sovereignty to become the fourth Kingdom. There are now 17 distinct Kingdoms all over the world.

Today, the Kingdom of Atenveldt is limited to the borders of Arizona, and the Barony of Atenveldt is still the area of Central Metro Phoenix, but in the West Valley you will find the Barony of Sun Dragon and in the East Valley you will find the Barony of Twin Moons. There are also baronies in Tucson (Tir Ysgithr), Flagstaff (Ered Sul), and Sierra Vista (Mons Tonitrus). Each of our three major universities are the home to smaller groups called Colleges, and there are eight Shires as well within the Kingdom, including the Shire of Londinium ad Rubrum Flumen in Lake Havasu City where the London Bridge makes its home.

Each barony has its own events, on a yearly, monthly, and even weekly basis. The most common weekly events are the Fighter Practices at which many fighters get together, don their armor, and test out their weapons and skills. Often at Fighter Practice, like the Barony of Atenveldt's at Encanto Park, which is held every Wednesday night at 7PM, you will find jugglers, belly dancers, fighters, archers, and merchants selling their period costumes and wares. The last Wednesday of the month is reserved for Court Night, at which the Baron and Baroness hold court, announce business, and dispense awards.

The largest event in Atenveldt is The Estrella War, so named after the Estrella Mountain Park at which it is held, out in Goodyear. The event celebrates its 20th year in 2004 and begins Wednesday February 11th and runs to Monday the 16th (President's Day, when the war site is torn down.) Estrella War has grown to become one of the largest events in the Knowne World, drawing visitors to camp there from virtually every Kingdom.

Estrella War is a huge tournament and camping grounds where people from different realms come together to meet, show off their skills, and enjoy the festivities. Everything that folks have learned and created throughout the year culminates with this event. It is full of competition, classes, dancing, feasting, singing with Bards, and shopping. There have even been Handfastings (marriages) held during Estrella War. To find out exactly where Estrella War is, how much admittance and parking are, etc., visit www.estrellawar.com and www.atenveldt.com.

The SCA is an ever-evolving organization, but it has always stood for revelry, festivity, honor, and chivalry. In a day and age when the modern world seems to have forgotten these ancient ideals, it is good to know that there are those that keep the Dream alive.

We're just harmless historical nuts
Who wear boilerplate on our butts.
Who dress up in clothes from the 12th century
To bash on each other with sticks and debris,
And make up the world's largest private army.
Harmless historical nuts.
--Leslie Fish, "True Story"

___

Originally published in Issue #4 of Acrimony, November 2003.

On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet; several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as office buildings, silent as birds.

- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

In March of 1997, the Hale-Bopp comet made its closest pass by Earth and was visible to the naked eye for most of the month. It was an expected and brilliant astronomical phenomenon, one that won't be seen again for another 3,000 years. Many amateur astronomers, and regular folks with telescopes, were eagerly scanning the skies hoping to catch a glimpse after the sun set.

But on one particular Thursday, March 13, 1997 to be exact, something else was spotted in the night sky above Phoenix, Arizona. Not by one or two folks, but by hundreds of witnesses, some with video cameras. Just around 10 PM, about nine bright orbs of light appeared in a "V"-shaped formation above the mountains south of Phoenix, hovered for a while, and then disappeared southward. This was only one of an amazing collection of sightings that progressed throughout the evening, from Las Vegas, Nevada to Tucson, Arizona.

Local TV stations, authorities and air force bases were deluged with calls from all over the valley as people called panicked by what they had seen. When the TV stations aired the amateur video of the orbs, more calls came in -- not just because of that incredible sighting, but because of sightings made earlier in the evening, all over Arizona. Once seen on the air, the phenomenon was given a name, The Phoenix Lights. It would become one of the largest recorded sightings in American UFO history, garnering even international coverage and investigation.

At approximately 7:55 PM Arizona time, a gentleman from Henderson, NV, called in the first sighting, reporting that he observed what he described as a "V-shaped" formation of six bright blue and yellowish-white orbs leaving the area around Las Vegas, NV, making its way over the border into Arizona. As the object passed overhead he said it was very quiet, making a sound like that of a "rushing wind".

A former police officer from Paulden, AZ reported the second sighting. He left his home at about 8:15 PM, and as he was driving, he spotted a cluster of four reddish-orange lights with a fifth light trailing the other four. There were other sightings around the Prescott area at about 8:15 PM.

Between 8:30 and 8:45 PM were the Phoenix sightings. Probably the most interesting involves a truck driver who was hauling cement from Glendale who noticed a bright object in the sky. When he pulled his truck over to take a better look, he saw two aircraft fly from Luke Air Force Base to approach the strange object, which then vanished. There were other accounts of military aircraft tracking the objects all the way to Tucson. Luke A.F.B. denies that they tracked anything that evening, and that in fact the base is purely a training facility and its aircraft would never have been called for such a purpose.

One group of witnesses reported that they saw a huge "wedge-shaped" craft with five lights on its surface. Another group of witnesses saw an object "shaped somewhat like a sergeant's stripes" come over Camelback Mountain near downtown Phoenix. It apparently stopped directly above them, at the intersection of 7th Avenue and Indian School Road, where it hovered for about 5 minutes. It stayed so steady that they reported they could see panels on a definite surface that blocked a large portion of the sky above them.

The object then flew to the area around Sky Harbor Airport, between Phoenix and Tempe, where two air traffic controllers in their tower, and several pilots on the ground and on approach, observed it as well, saying they saw absolutely nothing on their radar. Other sightings were made in the same time period in Scottsdale, Glendale, and Gilbert.

This was either one fast, large object, or there were perhaps a few on parallel paths. Some reports seem to conflict, but the sightings all agree that the object was swift and enormous. Conservative estimates of the size are on the order of at least three football fields wide. Depending on their proximity to the witnesses, some estimates ranged up to 2 miles wide, based on the city block over which it stretched.

Between 8:45 and 9:00 PM, other sightings were reported by witnesses traveling the stretch of Interstate 10 that runs from Phoenix to Tucson. One family that was driving from Tucson north to Phoenix reported that they could easily see each "wing tip" of the object from either side of their vehicle. As they continued to drive in the opposite direction of the object, they claimed that they were underneath it for roughly two minutes, at a clip of about 80 M.P.H.

So from even the roughest estimates, the formation traveled from Henderson, Nevada to Tucson, Arizona within an hour's time. As the crow flies, that's 354 miles (or 308 nautical miles) in less than an hour. That's one fast crow!

This is just a sampling of the many reports that were received that night, and all of these happened before the lights that appeared over Phoenix that were captured on videotape at about 10 PM. So, with all of these witnesses' reports, and videotaped recordings, has there ever been any explanations offered for what happened?

Whether you believe in UFOs, alien visitations, and conspiracies or not there were a few attempts to prove that the Phoenix Lights either were or were not extraterrestrial in nature. In June, a reporter from NBC affiliate KPNX-TV filmed a drop of flares by military aircraft, above an Air Force range southwest of Phoenix. These flares were caught on video and looked very much like the same mysterious orbs that appeared at 10 PM on March 13th. They declared that they had solved the mystery.

Not long after that story broke, the Maryland Air National Guard, which was training in Arizona for the winter, announced that they had a squad of A-10 fighters that flew over the gunnery range and had dropped those flares. The Arizona National guard determined that those flares were indeed dropped at 10 PM at an altitude of 15,000 feet. Even with this declaration by the military explaining the 10 PM Phoenix Lights caught on video, they also declared that the A-10s did not proceed north of Phoenix and therefore could not have been the formation that was seen in the Phoenix area around 8:30 PM.

Most people are never satisfied by the military's explanations, finding them too convenient and supporting their conspiracy theories. The nature of the government being able to hide some secrets and release others at will only supports their beliefs. However, one group of witnesses took their video of both the "Phoenix Lights" and the "June Flares" to a video lab for analysis. Jim Diletosso's company, Village Labs of Tempe, did the analysis and concluded that not only were the lights in the different videos not the same type of light, but that the Phoenix Lights were not flares, planes, or anything else man-made.

This declaration became much hyped as well; I mean this would become proof of an extraterrestrial presence over Phoenix! Newspapers and television, and even a Discovery channel special about UFOs touted Diletosso's discovery. However, the kind of optical analysis he claimed to have done is comparable to spectral analysis. He explained that a video recorder could capture all the minute details of a source of light, and that his computers could break down and analyze that source, creating a graph.

However, as the Phoenix New Times very accurately described the physics of how a video camera works, this amount of detail just isn't possible. All Diletosso could do is compare the color histogram, or breakdown of red, green and blue components of the pixels, that make up the picture of the light source. In fact, when the New Times reporter asked Diletosso to reproduce his analysis, he was unable to do so and became defensive and touted scientifically impossible theories.

But we all love scientifically impossible theories, don't we? That's why it's called science fiction, that realm of writing genre that applies the technical jargon and speculative theory about everything to create scenarios that are literally out of this world. So many people want to believe in UFOs, and some people want to discount them. So in the end, there really is still no final say over what appeared over Phoenix five years ago. All that is known is that there was something in the sky that night, and it wasn't just the bright comet Hale-Bopp.

Interestingly enough, I have more to tell about Hale-Bopp. Call it a coincidence, or call it a revelation. Literally. Revelations 8:10-11 describes a rock which would fall from the heavens, named Wormwood (or "bitterness"), after the seven seals were opened, bringing about the destruction of the Earth. Sure, there were lots of millennium prophecies, and based on interpretation they either haven't come true, or just are a prelude to more. But one group of people believed their charismatic leader so much, that Hale-Bopp was a sign of the end of the world, that they all committed suicide.

You know who I'm talking about, right? The Nike-wearing members of the "Heaven's Gate" cult, including their leader, Marshall Applewhite, committed suicide in a rented mansion in San Diego, California. They not only believed that Hale-Bopp was a harbinger of destruction, like Wormwood, but they latched on to a story of an anomalous photograph of Hale-Bopp that showed a "companion" object with the comet. They believed this companion was a spaceship that was coming to take them home. On March 22, 1997, comet Hale-Bopp was the closest it would get to the Earth on its approach to swing around the sun. On March 23, 1997, there was a lunar eclipse, which made viewing Hale-Bopp especially brilliant.

To some, it was a sign. Do you remember, "The moon shall become as black as sack-cloth"? On March 27, 1997, Marshall Applewhite lead 38 members of his "Heaven's Gate" cult to commit suicide. They may have chosen San Diego to commence their exit from this world, but did you know that Applewhite and his cult were based in Phoenix, Arizona? Shocking coincidence to say the least. Did Applewhite believe that the object that visited Phoenix two weeks before was the "companion" ship? We may never know.

By the way, the Hale-Bopp comet got its unusual name from the two men who simultaneously made the discovery of it. Officially named "C/1995 O1", for when it was discovered, in June 1995. Alan Hale, Ph.D., a professional astronomer from New Mexico called in the first discovery. Moments later, Thomas Bopp, an amateur astronomer made the same discovery while at a star-gazing party with friends 90 miles away from the lights of the city; not all that far from the suburb of Phoenix, Arizona that he calls home.

Gotta love coincidences.

___

Copyright © 2003 Dan Shaurette.
Besides being the editor of the newsletter for http://selfpublishedauthors.com/, Dan is the author of LILITH'S LOVE, a modern vampire romance novel, which you can learn more about at http://liliths-love.com/. He also hosts "Is This Thing On?", an eclectic podcast featuring chat, interviews, and independent music at http://is-this-thing-on.net/. You can find out more on his blog at http://danshaurette.com/.

"Did you write the book of love
And do you have faith in God above?
If the Bible tells you so.
Now do you believe in Rock 'n' roll
And can music save your mortal soul
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?"
-- "American Pie", Don McLean

Music is often the muse that inspires me to write. That song with the infectious beat and the soulful lyrics. The one that seemed to have been written just for me. Played on the radio as if God himself was the DJ and he knew just what I needed to hear. No particular genre; I listen to it all. Everything from Mozart to Madonna to Marilyn Manson. From Genesis to Godsmack. From Abba to ZZ Top and everything in between. If it speaks to me, and moves me, you'll probably find a quote from it in a short story or presenting a chapter in my novel.

That being said I have to admit, when I start writing, I seem to become the instrument of the muse. The music falls to the background and my story plays before me like a well-choreographed movie. I never feel like I am the director however. Instead I feel like the cameraman trying to keep up with the action, recording it in my word processor or handy-dandy notebook. This is as true today as it was when I started writing in college.

I wrote my first novel almost a decade ago. Today, the paperback and e-book can be bought online thanks to the modern miracle of print-on-demand publishing. Ten years seems like a lot of time because of everything life has brought me in that time. In the spans of time involving my book though, it seems more like an overnight rush.

I still remember 1993. I remember I was bored with college, but knew it was the key to my future. Not just a career in software design, which my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science has afforded me, but in appreciating the world around me. College can be frightening as well as exhilarating. It can also be a very lonely place. I think that's why sororities and fraternities exist -- to help people feel like they belong somewhere. I never joined a fraternity house, though I often imagined I'd fit in well at Lambda Lambda Lambda (from "Revenge of the Nerds").

It was this loneliness that inspired me to write a poem, about the Woman of My Dreams, someone I imagined I'd never meet in the flesh. She was my muse and still is. It was a dark, gothic poem that in turn inspired me to write my first real short story, "For The Blood Is The Life". After sharing this story with some friends of mine, they suggested it could make a really good book if there was some meat to it. A 5,000-word story became a 50,000-word novella by the end of 1993. It was written down in my notebooks for school, when I should have been taking notes in class. Research about compiler design or calculus was derailed into history of the Salem Witch Trials. Late night cram sessions turned into sleepless nights pulling whole chapters out of the ether of my dreams.

I am not sure who said it first, but I am fond of quoting the following painful piece of advice I have for my fellow authors, "Writing is easy; getting published is the hard part." I of course believed my story was good and deserved to be published. I never, ever expected to get rich or famous from my book. Odds are I'll win the lottery first. My overriding concern was that it be written. What started as a simple story came to life and demanded to be told. My winged muse was there, not only supplying the story, but also driving me hard to write it. I would have gone insane had I ignored her. ("I do not suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.")

I excitedly sent my manuscript to the Registrar of Copyrights at the Library of Congress. Once secure in the knowledge that no one would be able to claim my masterpiece as their own, I set out to have it published. It was quickly and repeatedly rejected. I kept my first rejection letter, from Tor Books. It would appear to be a standard template rejection, feigning a polite respect for my work, but alas, they were not interested in my manuscript. I kept it not only because it was the first of many rejection letters, but because it was in desperate need of an Editor! (This letter is now immortalized by Jennifer Hollowell's Writers' Block Project.)

If I can offer any advice at all to my fellow writers, it is: do not give up on your manuscript. If it was meant to be written then it was meant to be read. Even if it is only your small circle of friends who get the joy of reading it now, someone else out there is bound to want to read it. You must get it in their hands.

Authors are a unique breed of artist. We have no paints and brushes, no musical instruments, no celluloid film nor cathode ray tubes to present our art. We have paper and ink, a monochrome serial collection of words to express ourselves. We have language and grammar to restrict us. But our landscape is the human imagination, and we can shape that medium into something more permanent than marble. In the beginning there was the word, and it is still good.

By: Dan Shaurette

On: May 14, 2001

An author who I considered to be a modern sci-fi/comedy genius, Douglas Adams passed away Friday. He was only 49 years old, and ironically, he died of a heart attack while working out. Adams achieved fame and cult status when he wrote and aired the infamous BBC radio play, "The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy". Later, he penned the story as a novel and wrote many sequels. "The Guide" took form also as a album recording, stage play, BBC television mini-series, video game by Infocom, and comic book.

The story begins with an average earthling, Arthur Dent, being rescued from the Earth by his friend, Ford Prefect, who turns out not to be human after all but from a small planet outside of Betelguese. The Earth was destroyed to make way for an Intergalactic hyperspace bypass. It turns out Ford is a researcher for a galactic compendium of facts, the namesake of the novel, and happened to be on Earth because he was researching it in the vain attempt to have the current entry updated beyond the short, but wholly accurate "Mostly Harmless". After being rescued, Arthur decides to tag along with Ford as they jump from ship to ship across the galaxy, encountering many weird creatures along the way.

Adams was working on writing the screenplay for a motion picture version of his story, but he had much trouble in doing so. Certainly not because of lack of special effects, but because the book/play was such an imaginative and visually intense story, with a plot that leads from one incident to another, that he found it dificult to fit to to a 100-minute movie format. Now there is much speculation into whether there could or should be a movie made. Many fear that only Adams could have written a proper screenplay. But seeing how much trouble he had, they doubt anyone else could capture his vision properly. Others, including myself, hope it will still be made, if only as a tribute to this great author.

To his credit, Adams wrote other novels, including those detailing the exploits of a "holistic detective" named Dirk Gently. The third book in that series, "Salmon of a Doubt", also now remains unfinished. Adams also wrote a book about his experiences during a safari entitled, "Last Chance To See". He also co-authored the dictionary of odd words entitled, "The Meaning of Liff". His company The Digital Village created the popular video game, Starship Titanic, which is a richly immersive first-person adventure. They also created www.h2g2.com which is an online community that allows many people to submit new entries about Life, The Universe, and Everything into the Guide.

His fans worldwide, of which I include myself, will miss him terribly. The knowledge that he was in wonderful health and seemed to have much left to write only makes accepting his absence that much more difficult.

Douglas is survived by his wife, daughter, and mother. I wish them peace in the times ahead.

DanShaurette.com

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