Welcome to all fans of Phillipa Ballantine’s Chasing the Bard! You’re doubtless moseying on over here because you heard me this week on The Story So Far and are wondering about those podcasts I mentioned.

Well, look no further. You can find my collection of fantasy, science fiction, and erotica stories here. It’s called Sculpting God and it’s chock full of adult-oriented bedtime stories, with a new two-parter coming next week.

The first volume of my podcast novel Antithesis - costarring the lovely Chasing The Bard author Phillipa Ballantine - will be posting shortly. There is a feed up right now, containing the promo, and episodes will start dropping before the end of the month. We’ve already got a couple of them produced - a couple more and we’ll have a comfortable buffer lined up so there won’t be any story interruptions once we get it started. In the meantime, you can read the back-of-the-book summary here, and watch the Sculpting God feed for more details.

Those of you who are of a vaguely intellectual bent might also enjoy my nonfiction podcasts, The Reprobates Hour (soon to enter its third season), and Apologia, a philosohpical roudtable discussion about matters of ethics, secularism, religion, and epistemology.

Feel free to poke around, read my older posts, and check out my photography work if you’re looking for some good desktop wallpapers.

Thanks for stopping by!

Well, it’s official. I interviewed Cory Doctorow for a LinuxJournal earlier this week, and just got done transcribing the interview. He’s not the fastest mouth in the west, but man does he talk fast. At the end of the transcription I clocked his word-rate, subtracting out the gaps where I was asking questions and not counting his false-starts, umms, ahs, and other verbal stumbles that one doesn’t transcribe for a published interview.

The Official Cory Doctorow verbal word rate (on a day when he’s jet-lagged and taking things slow) is:

148wpm.

And I’ve met the guy in person when he’s at the top of his game, and I’ll bet you my left toe that he was running slow in our interview.

Hat’s off, Cory. Next target: The MicroMachine Man!

Check out Cory’s other blog, BoingBoing.

As part of the research for one of the new books I’m working on, I’m coming up to speed on the state of the art in biotech, nanotech, gerontology, and bioethics. As such, I’ll be posting periodically links to speeches, lectures, and articles I find germane to the topic so that I can find them easily for reference. I might also do a few articles as I get a deeper grasp on the topic.

This first order of business is this lecture from William Hurlbut, and represents probably the best, most nuanced articulation I’ve heard of the bioconservative case. Does anyone else find it distressing that the part he reads from the President’s Report at the end (which he authored) sounds much more like something you’d get out of a Romantic poet than like something you should get out of a scientist?

So, after finishing Predestination, and getting the last of the edits in this week from my readers, I’m well on the way to recording and mixing it for the podcast. It’s going to be a near thing making a June release date, but so far it looks good.

Along those lines, I’m looking for readers to read different parts. I’ve got all of the leads cast but one, so I’m mostly down to minor characters with between one and eight scenes. We’re doing this production full-cast audio book style, so the guest voices only read the direct thoughts and spoken words of their characters, while I’ll be doing the narration.

Once I get the rest of the recording done, I can move on to the next two novels - currently, I’m looking at starting the second draft of Antithesis book 2: Free Will and Other Compulsions, and novelizing Down From Ten, but I may step back from the novelization of Down From Ten to write a little urban fantasy book that’s been percolating in the back of my mind. I won’t say more yet, other than it may turn out to be a good YA novel - and if it does, that’ll open up a whole new can of worms for me in terms of markets to learn!

Finally, as per the title of this post, the new Sculpting God story is finished. For the next episode I’ll be deviating somewhat from the normal formula of standalone stories to bring you a future noir set in the jungle featuring characters from Predestination, in a story called “The Man In The Rain.” I’ll be recording it tomorrow and posting over the week as time permits, and you should get it sometime towards the weekend. After this, and perhaps one or two further stories, Sculpting God will go on a brief hiatus while I get far enough ahead on Predestination that I can spool the episodes out on a dependable weekly basis. Once that’s done, Sculpting God will come back with another eight to ten stories, most of which will be two parters or better.

That’s it for today - more stuff coming soon. Also, thanks to the lovely T. Borregaard for the link to the site. She’s an up-and-coming author in the paranormal and steampunk romance categories - keep your eye on her!

My latest appearance out and about in the podosphere is on The Reason Driven Podcast, where I discuss Satan. We go to and fro from the real history of the devil as told in the Bible (it’s not what you heard in church), the history of the devil as a literary character, and the gestalt value of the Satan archetype as it appears in everyday life.

If you’ve ever wondered why Satan is working for God in the book of Job, or if you’d like to hear me defend the statements “I’m an athiest, but I believe in Satan” or “Satan is the friend everyone wishes they had,” tune in. It is many things, but dull ain’t one of them.