Well, last night I recorded the next episode of Sundered and sorta kinda accidentally, er, uh, deleted the recording. It was one of those priceless “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!” moments like they always depict in slow-motion in movies.

I’ll be away on the 4th, but this weekend, I’ll record a super jumbo-sized episode to sort of make up for it. As an added bonus, because of the extra length, there will be a real doozy of a cliffhanger for you as well.

Following this episode, there should be two more episodes left in “Steel Drum”, then I think it will definitely be time to move on to a couple of shorter pieces just to cool off after this big beast.

A happy Fourth of July to my American listeners, and… um… a happy fourth of July to all other listeners!

I’m recording the next episode of Sundered tonight, but in the meantime I wanted to let you know about an exciting upcoming event in the podcast fiction sphere.

Author Matthew Wayne Selznick was one of the very first podcast novelists with Brave Men Run, a strange and endlessly fun hybrid of 80s John Hughes teen comedies and teen outcast superhero comic books. Sound bizarre? Actually, in his capable hands, it’s anything but, with both elements blending seamlessly together into one very compelling whole. And if you grew up in the 80s like I did, you get the added bonus of some major nostalgic memories. It’s one of my very favorite podcast novels; if you haven’t heard it yet, you should do yourself a favor and give it a try.

Brave Men Run is coming out in a new paperback format from Swarm Press, and Matt has created an exciting all-day event on Sunday, July 13, to encourage everyone to order a copy (or three!) from Amazon.com and together make a run on the bestseller charts. He’ll be webcasting live the entire day, and to make the event even more unique, he will be debuting, each hour, a new short story set in the Brave Men Run universe, each by a different top podcast novelist, among them J.C. Hutchins and Mur Lafferty. Big names, people!

Learn more about what Matt is calling the (highly alliterative) Sovereign Summer Sunday event at his website http://www.mattselznick.com, here.

Also, for a truly magnificent interview with Matt, in the latest episode of J.C. Hutchins’s incomparable UltraCreatives series, visit J.C.’s site here.

Look for a promo for the event in the next episode of Sundered, dropping in a few days. See you all soon!

Very special thanks go out to two podcasters who were kind enough to mention Sundered on their show. You would do yourself a favor if you checked out:

The Awesome Megan AKA Podcast Junky at http://podcastjunky.com

The Awesome Julie at http://hcforgottenclassics.blogspot.com

Awesomeness abounds!

Also, a very special promo indeed this episode, J.C. Hutchins continues to blaze new territory with 7th Son: Obsidian. Do yourself a favor, stick around for the promo at the end of this episode, then head over to http://jchutchins.net for one hell of a podcasting event.

Music in this episode by the inestimable Justin R. Durban, sublime narration by Alan Bainbridge.

Thanks for listening!

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…

Meet Vid, a disenchanted young man living a hand-to-mouth existence in a settlement struggling for survival. When he witnesses an extraordinary phenomenon from a far-off mountain, he and his two close friends set off on a dangerous journey in the desperate hopes of bringing a glimmer of hope to their community’s black future.

This is a long one, nearly 35 minutes of story.

No promos this week, but I spend a minute before the episode talking about all these contemptible delays, and my hope of getting my act together for the future.

“Steel Drum” will continue (but not conclude? Hmm…) next episode.

Thanks for listening! Drop a line and say what you thought once you’ve had a listen!

Update: Things were touch-and-go for a while there—especially Sunday night when the fire reversed itself and made a beeline straight for the town—but thanks to some heroics on the part of the firefighters (nearly 800 of them), and the cooler weather on Tuesday, the fire was turned away and at last the mandatory evacuations clearing out so much of my town were lifted. The fog which rolled in in the night has signaled the end of that fire, and none too soon, say I. Please accept my apologies for all these delays—you people deserve a more regular schedule, and I hope to be able to give that to you. Some day. In the meantime, I’ll put the next episode together, and hope that it will be up this weekend. Thanks to everyone who made a comment or sent an email with well-wishing. I really appreciated each one.

The original post:

Well I arrived home yesterday to something like hell.

(View from my backyard Saturday afternoon pointed north toward the San Gabriel mountains)

Reports were lackadaisical. No big deal. Expected containment within 24 hours. Yadda-yadda. Then things turned nasty after nightfall, as the fire turned direction, headed straight toward the foothill town of Sierra Madre:

Nasty. I didn’t sleep for most of the night as the traffic outside my house resembled rush hour, the city in which I live declared a state of emergency, and 300 homes were evacuated.

At the present moment, we are still in an unseasonable heat spell (temperatures are expected to drop 30 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-week), over 400 firefighters and a number of air support are on the scene, more evacuations are anticipated, and ashes are raining down everywhere.

Even if I felt up to recording the next episode, I don’t think that the constant roar of helicopters flying back and forth over my house would permit it. Sorry, guys. I will get the next episode up as soon as this all settles down (let us hope, for so many reasons, that this is sooner rather than later). It’s looking like a three-week gap between episode 2 and 3. That’s quite a spell. Sorry.

I’ll let you all know how things progress.

I’m away for a couple of days on some business, which means episode 3 will be recorded sometime this weekend and debut some time (earlier) next week. Look! See how a podcast novelist can cause delays beyond your wildest imaginings! Be impressed by a podcast novelist’s almost complete lack of organizational ability!

The upshot of this is that I get to polish the next story, to make it even more tense and suspenseful. This one takes place almost entirely at night, and the night can be a most unsettling place.

See you on the other side…

Sundered Preludes episode 2, the concluding part of “Traits”, is live at last (after yet more technical problems and wrangling, grumble grumble grumble…)

Our narrator, the man with no name, confronts Tek, the formidable leader of the marauders, and sets into motion a chain-reaction of twists and surprises which will end in tragedy.

Our promo this episode is for Pip Ballantine’s new podcast novel, Chasing the Bard. Its official site: http://www.chasingthebard.com.

Call the kooky Wastes Line and leave a voicemail: (206) 888-2899!

Will I be able to get the next episode out in less than two weeks? Stay tuned!

Eventually.

In the immediate foreseeable future, I anticipate dropping a new episode every 10-14 days. With this in mind, I hope to get episode 2, the concluding part of “Traits”, in the feed by the early part of next week. I hope you’re all okay with that timeframe.

This weekend, I’ll be upgrading this site to the newest version of WordPress and all the latest corresponding plugins. If all goes smoothly and painlessly, you won’t even notice it happened. However, if there is any oddity on the site in the next few days, that will be why. If anything odd happens when you come visiting, please let me know! Only with your help can I win the war against the bug onslaught.

Catch you all on the other side.

UPDATE: I’ve just recorded episode 2, the conclusion of “Traits”. It should take me a couple of evenings to edit it together. Look for it very soon!

The awesome music in the podcast is written and performed by the amazing Justin R. Durban, with vocals by the equally-amazing LindsayAnne Klemm. You can find out more about Justin and his music (and through it, LindsayAnne) at http://www.justindurban.com.

The commanding presenter for Sundered is the wondrous Alan Bainbridge. His website is http://www.voxjunction.co.uk.

If you like what these people have done, please tell them so!

Sundered has a voice mail line! Call in to the official Wastes Line (oh, I slay me) at 206-888-2899.