a word about schedules
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m missing deadlines like they’re going out of style.
I won’t lie to you. Things around old Casa Raphael have been a real nightmare lately. I don’t want to go into any sordid details, but I’m having to deal with a variety of issues that are devouring any free time for personal projects (like this one) like a green slime working its way through a party of 1st level adventurers.
But that’s not for you to worry about. The point of all this is, I simply have been unable to maintain any kind of regular schedule on this show. Worse yet, while most of the novel Sundered is written and more or less ready for broadcast, most of the Preludes are not. It’s not simply a matter of finding the opportunity to record; I’ve gotta finish writing the damned things. So making the time to eke out words has been infuriatingly difficult.
This weekend, I decided I was going to shut down Sundered. It was too embarrassing and too unfair to you listeners to keep you hanging like this, and too frustrating to watch day after day go by without an opportunity to get any work done on the show. But after some advice from others, I was persuaded instead to press on. So I’m going to keep releasing episodes, in as timely a manner as possible under the circumstances. But with a couple of changes.
Henceforth, thus, the Sundered Preludes will have an official release schedule of “sporadic”, which is slightly longer than “occasional” but faster than “intermittent”.
Secondly, I’m going to make each episode a little shorter than they have been, around 15-20 minutes of story content as opposed to 35-40 minutes. Perhaps this will enable me to tackle the episodes more quickly, thus getting them released more quickly. Or maybe not. But it sounds all super sensible, doesn’t it?
If you think I’m insufferably evil for my unreliability and wish never to hear from me again, this I understand. I wish you well. If you would like to stick around then you are awesomeness personified and I very much hope my stories will continue to entertain.
In the immediate future, there will be at least two more episodes to “Steel Drum”. It’s grown into quite the mini-epic. It’s also a bit scary at times. It’s on the tarmac as I write this, so to speak, firing up its engines and getting ready to take off. Once “Steel Drum” wraps, we’ll move into “Bin”, which I’m really excited about, since it introduces one of the main characters from the novel Sundered, as well as one of the major settings of the novel. It will contain violence, which is generally welcome.
I hope to see you all again very soon in the wastes…
Hang in there Raphael. Thanks for keeping this endeavor alive!
May 29th, 2008 at 3:09 am
I’ll stick around. I like the idea of being known as “awesomeness personified.”
Really enjoying the stories. Too bad about the schedule, but as long as you don’t drop off the face of the Earth I think we can live with the “sporadic” schedule.
Keep up the good work!
June 15th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Mark and Sam, your comments as ever are supportive and very appreciated.
I have good news: the next episode has been recorded and is in post-production! Stay tuned, it will be up very soon.
June 15th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I’m enjoying the stories so far also. I’m very interested to see where it all goes. The stories are a little reminiscent of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. Keep up the good work!
June 16th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Wow, Brian, thanks so much. That’s praise indeed.
By the way, you have just about the most awesome profession I can think of. I hope you will approve of the central ecological theme of Sundered when it begins to make itself known.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:31 pm