Some highlights and lowlights of 2008

This year, particularly the second half, has seen a lot of people turn very pessimistic about, well, everything. Yeah, the economy’s slowing down. Yeah, people like me are scrambling just to make ends meet - when money goes slow everywhere, it hits the arts hard. And yeah, some things just sucked. But you know what? Today’s “awful” is a hell of a lot better than “great” was when my grandparents were growing up. Despite environmental problems, terrorists, crooked investment bankers, and crookeder politicians (yes, in all parties), I’m living in a time when “five-percent unemployment” is really bad. When I was a kid in the early 80s, that would have been music to everyone’s ears. Ditto for crime, poverty, war casualty, plague death, and violence figures almost everywhere on Earth (though some of us are a lot luckier than others, through no merit of our own).

So, yeah, 2008 might have been a scary year. But as I look back at the global “Big Picture” there aren’t a lot of things that are truly scary in the long run - not like there were twenty, fifty, or eighty years ago - not to mention longer ago than that.

On a personal level, it’s been a mixed year, but as I was drawing up this list I can’t help but be staggered by how far the scales tip towards the wonderful. Click on the link to read my self-indulgent recap.
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A classic Christmas story, short and sweet, slightly revised and performed by members of Casa Sawyer. May your holiday be filled with warmth and delight.

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This is an excerpt from the feedback show I did with Chris Lester for The Metamor City Podcast. Alcohol, chocolate, and Kitty Nic’Iaian conspire with Chris and I to answer one of Chris’s emails from a heterosexual female listener who complained that her orientation was not being well represented in Metamor City. This lead to a discussion of how Chris and I each deal with gender identity and sexual orientation in our novels, and the reasons that we’ve chosen to approach these topics in the way we have.

As I mentioned, this is a small piece of a larger conversation that will be available soon on the Metamor City feed. I hope you enjoy!

The folks at ClonePod liked Cold Duty so much that they ALSO bought it to run as a Christmas episode. You can find it by hitting this link here.

Cold Duty: Selected Readings from the Diary of a Gelusian Repairman is the tale of a stable boy who gets caught working on a steam engine, which lights off an adventure in the big city and a 100-years too early scientific and technological revolution. Steampunk memoir - and a tale very close to my heart. If you haven’t heard it yet, I hope you’ll give it a listen.

You’ve successfully found the blog for my home page. Below you can find my rants on various esoterica, above you can find links to my podcasts, publications, and more info about me. But, if you if you click here, you’ll find the blog for my podcast novel Predestination and Other Games of Chance. It’s a science fiction espionage thriller, which means that you can expect intrigue, suspense, conspiracy, violence, sex, blackmail, organized crime, politicians, defectors, and tradecraft all wrapped in a character-driven story.

This is a full-cast, full-production podcast novel. Danny Schade wrote the original score, and you’ll find many other familiar voices here: Philippa Ballantine, J.C. Hutchins, Chris Lester, Steven H. Wilson, and many other gifted voices from across the podosphere have helped bring this story to life.

You’re already a Junkie. Now, join The Resistance. This is more crack for your ears. Subscribe here.

Enjoy!
-Dan Sawyer