So its that time again, 11 days from now and I’ll be 39. It seems that this time a year for the past several years I can’t help but see where I’m at and where I want to be, and how far apart those seem to always be. I’ve given up comparing myself to my Father, in many aspects I’ll never be able to compete there, for instance by the time my Father was 39, I was already 15, and I currently have no one in my life that could be seen as a remote possibility of having kids with.

So here is what I am hoping for. On the totally outlandish scale, I’d like to make at least part-time money from writing by the time I hit the big 4-0. At the more reasonable level I hope to have at least one book (novel or novella) out in e-book. To this end, I have already purchased Chris A Moody.com which is a total replacement for my former: http://fiction.chrismoody.net.

Beyond that I don’t really have much.

So Nanowrimo just ended a couple of days ago. Did you win? I had decided to hold off till this month as my idea wasn’t thought through enough. Now I’m not so sure.

I’ve recently discovered that one of my problems is being that I do chat tech support for a web hosting company (a job that especially through the Holiday period) I may write pretty close to 20k to 30k words in a shift. By the time I come home and can even think about being creative it feels like my word count for the day is used up.

Do you ever feel this way? How do you get over your Word Count limits?

I’ve started writing a series of 10 short stories that will be at minimum podcasted, and sold as ebooks. For at least the first story, I’m looking for people to help voice the different roles. For this first story there will be some roles that are possibly recurring, others will be only this one time.

These stories are based on an alternative earth where Vampires had been in control for a few centuries at least. Humans are now free of their control, and a special group Vampire Hunters are after their former masters for crimes against humanity. In present day humans have roughly 1940 Western World technology. This means no desktop / laptop computers, no cell phones (however two way radios do exist).

This first story is mainly a flash back story to the year 1141 to give a glimpse of what life was like back when humans thought Vampires were just a myth.

Possibly recurring in this case is based on if the rest of the stories are podcasted as multiple voice, or if I make them a solo read. However at this point the additional 9 stories have only been started on, so its possible that a role that is possible recurring now may not recur.

Guest Star roles (these are the only time this role will appear):

Mr. Waterfall: is a church deacon for a religion close to the Catholic religion in some ways. He is the person in charge of the community he lives in religiously. He is a very by the book kind of person, who while he really loves his son, has no issues with not sparing the rod. (Note: there are no spanking scenes in this story however the person acting in the role should come across that its not impossible to happen if his son displeases him).

Mrs. Waterfall: she is a mother and wife.

Mr. Williams: A respectable towns person, his daughter Melissa is betrothed to the Waterfall’s son.

Melissa Williams: Is an 11 to 13 year old girl, who is betrothed  to the Waterfall’s son. They are scheduled to get married when he turns 15.  She wants to save his eternal soul by getting rid of his virginity.

Female Vampire: This is the vampire that turns the young Waterfall boy into a vampire. Physically she appears to be in her 40′s however her true age is unknown.

Male Vampire: This is the lord of the vampires for this region.

Recurring Roles:

Andrew, Sam, Frank, Larry: These are men in their 20s who are on the vampire hunt group with Rebecca their leader.

Sam is in the medical field, the others are highly intelligent muscle.

Main Star:

Rebecca: She is the leader of this specific Vampire Hunter team. While in this story she doesn’t have many lines, in future stories she will be the main character. She is in her mid 30s and doesn’t take any BS from anyone.

Interested?

Interested in filling any of these positions? Please send me a twitter message @chrispodcaster or email me at fiction [at] chrismoody [dot] net (subject line: ‘Golden One’) with what character you think you would be good in. Also if you have a podcast or previous voice work, please include where I can hear you. If you don’t have recorded voice work publicly available please include a small (1 to 3 minute) audio sample of why you think you would be a good fit for the role.

[Edit: Seems last week I was so looking forward to this story coming out, that I screwed up my calendar. This story will be released sometime today 8/24/09]

So a few weeks ago, I started producing and sending out Qattusverse: Stories from the Station 23 Universe episodes. Today or tomorrow I’m going to put out the 3rd of 3 short stories.

This is the story I put the most emphasis on, I do hope it turns out as well as I had originally expected it to. It was ready by the ever-awesome Christiana Ellis.

This upcoming story is standalone compared to the previous 2, as it takes place about 150 years after it.

If you haven’t heard the podcast yet, head on over to my Fiction site.

As you may have heard, I have been working on fiction for quite a while. I finally have one that I’m wanting to bring out to the public.

Its not fully finished yet, so I will be releasing it as I’m working on it.  This is borrowed from how Mur Lafferty released her book Heaven.

I will also be borrowing features from the likes of Phil Rossi (and others) who pre-released stories in his book’s world. This will be released on September August 1st 2009. More information is available at my new fiction blog.

A few years ago, as I was getting ready for work one morning, I wounded up leaving some stuff on my car while I ran back in to get something I had forgotten. What if this stuff isn’t here when I come back, was the thought that crossed my mind. It was kind of slow at some point during the day, and so I wrote the following:

“Hey Charlie, did you see tha?” asked Tony in an urgent voice.

“Huh? Wah? See what?” replied Charlie, in a halfway sleepy voice.

“Tha guy over t’ere he just lef some stuff on his car, and walked away” replied Tony.

“Per’aps he jus’ forgot somet’ing, an’ he’ll be right back,” Charlie said, trying to go back to sleep.

“I don’ care why he lef, its time for Rob’n Hood, to take from the rich, and give to us poor” said Tony excitedly.

He stood up, to cross the street when Charlie pulled on his old tattered coat. “Now jus’ hold’n,” Charlie started, “jus’ look at that old car. He don’ look that much bett’r off than us. Robin Hood, wouldn’t steel from some’ne who was j’st a lit’le bet’r off than us. He would go afte’ the pee-ple wif them fancy cars.”

Tony shot Charlie an angry look. “Jus’ ’cause you got all tha’ fancy book learning. Got all th’ way to your second yea’ of high school, you t’ink you can tell me wha’ someone wuld ‘ave dun?”

Across the street, the owner approached, his car opened it, and started putting the stuff in it.

“See wha’ you did now? He leav’n an’ we dun’ hav’ any of his stuff” growled Tony quietly, as the car started and drove off. “I nev’r can figger you out, you drag me to this corner, an’ then we don’t even get nuttin from a perf’ect stranger.”

Charlie pulls out a faded picture from his old tattered coat. Most of the color from the photo is gone, just mere outlines of what was there. A smile creeps to his weather worn mouth. Finally, he thinks to himself, I got to see my lil’ boy all grown up. He quietly puts the photo away, as his friend is still ranting about not stealing from the ‘stranger’.

Would love to hear your feedback.

Lately, I have been working with a published author I know on a new story idea. I won’t give much about the plot for this story, except to say I don’t think its been done, or if it has its not done to death like many of the ideas out there.

Found a new cartoon to add to my site that will help you see how this idea is progressing. For the purpose of this blog, I am calling this the Zeta 1 Project. Although while that has something to do with the book, it probably won’t be that important.

Hopefully with the continued support of an author friend that I can actually meet with face to face, this one will go somewhere.

Status upon Writing this Blog Entry

As some of you probably know, I do an interview podcast with authors of books that have been podcasted. Several of my friend’s have recently got book deals:

• Brave Men Run A Novel of the Sovereign Era by Matthew Wayne Selznick

Soon though (on August 8th 2008) the sequels of the following books will be released:

• Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword by Tee Morris
• Chasing the Bard by Philippa Ballantine

If you wish, you can listen to these books before you purchase them, by checking out Podiobooks.com.

I forgot to write here about my new Audio Drama Harvey Klaxon. Or at least I forgot to put up a post saying it was ready to go.

So its actually been available for a while now. I’m hoping that with in the next couple of days to start editing episode 3, and finish writing episode 4.

These are short episodes, probably could have 3 or 4 of them together to equal the time of a normal episode of another podcast (30-45 minutes). You can listen to it at:

Harvey Klaxon Episode 2: Loss

The website Bitstrips has gone into public beta. From what I understand, it was announced at SXSW.

So what is Bitstrips? its a social media examination of your friends in comic book format. When you first join, you create your avatar through the choices they have available, if you spend enough time you can make a decent looking version of yourself. After you add people as your friends, you can include them in your comic.

You can also create your own characters, instead of just people who are on your friends list. Finding friends who are friends of your friends is rather simple, I have no idea how to add friends that you can’t find a link to yet, though I’m assuming this must be possible.

Here is one of the comics I created, using my avatar and an avatar I made up called “The Muse”: