Somehow I have managed not to mention a whole truckload of things in the last month. Rather than off-load them all at once, I'll stick up a series of short posts to get back on course.
First of all, since I last posted, there have been another two stories posted to Great Hites, both 'Some Other Scotland' spin-off tales.
Since these are spin-off, they will both appear in the main SOS podcast feed in the future.
In addition to those, I recently included a 100-word story in the SOS feed that was to have been submitted to the 100 Word Stories podcast. It also gives more information about the first attack on the 'Merk' in a highly-condensed form.
There was also a bonus prompt for Great Hites recently for a 100-word story, written with a tight deadline, on the subject of "Spicy Mustard". Like "Kelvin's Last Message", this is set in the future of SOS and may never come to pass. I will post the link to this when it becomes available.
Finally, just a reminder that there is a link on the right of this page that will take you to all my short stories, headed "Mick's Short Stories".
I'm doing a live chat and interview with PodioRacket's Rhonda Carpenter on Monday 31st August at 2:30 pm PST / 5:30pm EST / 10:30pm UK (BST) and there will be prizes:
Full details of the competitions can be found at the BlogTalkRadio PodioRacket website.
This week's Great Hites episode includes the biggest number of stories to date, with a number of new authors joining in and existing authors pulling out all the stops to make this a really good stepping-on point if you've never visited the site before.
The prompt for the stories was "Silver Bullets; the real reason that some cowboys carried them" and as you can imagine this has resulted in a number of werewolf-westerns as well as a few more unusual approaches. There are 12 stories in total, so Jeff has split it into 4 chunks, but it is all well worth a listen or two.
Two of the stories are mine: "Waltzing with Werewolves" is a 100 word love story set to music in a sort of spoken-song format, whilst "Silver Solves The Dilemma" is a fairly traditional western tale, but with werewolves and a somewhat skewed moral code.
Incidentally, the introduction music for each part that Jeff talks over is the theremin solo from The Ballad of Rufus Amos Adams - the country song I wrote some time ago for the Masters of Song Fu. Follow the link for the whole song.
Over on 'Some Other Scotland' this week, the action heads over the Atlantic to New York where the final scene shows how the influence of the story is reaching far beyond the shores of Scotland, with some devastating consequences. I was delighted to have Philip 'NorvalJoe' Carroll join me as the guest voice for Razer's American friend Kyle, who provides him with a place to lay low for a while. The two of us also concocted the creepy promo for Great Hites that you'll hear in the same episode, which was fun to put together.
Finally, I have been invited to do a live interview and call-in chat with Podioracket.com on BlogTalkRadio on the 10th of August. I will have more information about this shortly, but in the meantime, visit this link to set an email reminder of when the show will be broadcast.
Over at Great Hites, my story "Take It Away" has proved reasonably popular amongst the people who take the time to vote. It tells of a great pianist who returns to his old school, whereupon he sits down at the old wreck of a piano he last played in his youth. The music teacher who stands watching him is surprised by the result.
This coming week is going to see a bumper Great Hites episode, with 12 stories being included, no doubt due to the prompt being related to cowboys and werewolves. More details when the episode is posted online, but I wrote two stories for the prompt, one of which just so happened to also fit the prompt for 100 Word Stories this week, which was "The games we play". That means you'll be able to read and/or listen to one of my stories from next week's Great Hites in advance. It is called "Waltzing with Werewolves" and is in a spoken-song format with musical accompaniment.
Some major changes are afoot in the world of 'Some Other Scotland' later this week, with something that will force the plot out into the public view in a rather impressive fashion. I'm keen to get another interlude episode out this week as well, so keep an eye on the website.
Finally, I have had some great support from Seth Harwood, author of "Jack Wakes Up", following his appearance on the live Podioracket talk show. He has very kindly played the promo for SOS on the latest episode of his "Hot Tub" podcast, side-by-side with one for Arlene Radasky's book "The Fox". Arlene has been a strong supporter of SOS from early in the life of the podcast and I'll be talking a little about her book in the next Interlude episode.
My latest short story to appear at 'Great Hites' is called "The Cave". It is another short spin-off from 'Some Other Scotland', taking us back to the events (thousands of years ago) that set in motion much of what is taking place with Harald and Razer in the story at the moment. Remember the seemingly innocuous comment about cloning polar bears back in episode 8? Well, this story returns to that topic. The events mentioned here will be covered in SOS, though from a different perspective. This story is subtitled "part 1", as there is more to tell about what happened in the cave...
The short stories will be taking a break from linking to SOS for a couple of weeks, covering different topics for a while. I don't want to go overboard with SOS and make you all sick of it!
Welcome to new visitors coming here from Podiobooks.com. The version of the story on podiobooks does not include the news items or the extras I include in the main podcast feed, the spin-offs and Interludes, just the story itself. I was delighted to gain over 100 new listeners within the first three days live at podiobooks, putting SOS into their top ten for this month, alongside some of the big names in podcast fiction. If you are enjoying the story on podiobooks, please do take the time to rate the podcast and leave a comment, as well as stopping by the main SOS website to vote in the poll. Follow @SOScotland on Twitter to be notified of news, poll postings and new episodes.
Finally, I was interviewed recently about SOS by Rhonda Carpenter of Podioracket, a podcast that covers everything new in the world of podcast fiction and features interviews with authors, news, competitions and promotional details of new books. If you are enjoying SOS or Great Hites, I would recommend paying them a visit for lots of ideas for what to listen to. I'll put up a direct link to the interview when that episode comes out.
No, it's not a UFO or an airship - it's the blimp flying over T in the Park, just down the road.
This week's Great Hites story is ready and waiting to be read and/or downloaded. It is called "Dandelions Of Memory" and is another 'Some Other Scotland' tie-in, probably the most direct so far, featuring Erica at the airport before heading off towards Skara Brae. Go and have a listen and don't forget to vote for your favourite!
My 100 Word Story last week had the most votes (thank you to all who enjoyed it enough to vote for it), so I got to choose the topic for this week, which is "Shrouded in mist". I had no great plan for the topic, it is simply what I saw when I looked out the window at the time. However, it did result in me writing the shortest SOS spin-off so far. I've had something of a Harald special for this week of writing and both that story and my next Great Hites story give a little more background to him, tying into him being the focus of the latest SOS episode.
There is a new episode of 'Some Other Scotland' ready for download, the topic this week being 'Ghost'. Please have a listen and don't forget to vote for the future plot twist! On the SOS site you'll find a couple of audio promos for the podcast, set to some Song Fu tracks from the past. If you have a podcast or can use them in any way - please do! Let me know what you do with them, too.
Finally, I have just had confirmation that SOS will soon (17th July) be available at Podiobooks.com - probably the best online source of free podcast stories, with all sorts of things available there, including several that have gone on to become published novels. They are very focused on the story, so the version of SOS that will appear at podiobooks will lack the news items and any other chat from me, having only the story itself. Note that subscribing to the podcast there will not include 'Interlude' or 'Spin-off' episodes which can only be downloaded from the main SOS site, but if you want to hear them you can still just download those individual episodes.
It has been a busy week for writing, with a new episode of 'Some Other Scotland' and two new short stories.
Over at Great Hites episode 59 you will find "Kelvin's Last Message", a tale of two UFO hunters trying to follow a pattern of sightings and ending up getting more than they bargained for. The prompt this week was "It is verboten", which had me struggling for a while until I remembered that 'verbo' is a word that appears on my mobile phone's predictive text when I try to type in 'tesco' (the biggest supermarket chain in the UK, for those unfamiliar with it). Upon further investigation, I found that the keys used to spell 'ten' could also spell UFO and the idea came from that. I like the idea that so much can change at the delicate interface between man and machine.
Although I didn't set out to create another spin-off from SOS this week, this could be read as one, given what we know about unusual flying contraptions in that world. It is open-ended enough that it could foreshadow what is coming in SOS, but don't hold your breath - the story changes tack every week, so anything is possible.
The 100 Word Podcast features my story "Gruel", taking the run of animal-related diseases we're in the midst of and extrapolating a little, where eating meat becomes a game of chance with more serious consequences.
Don't forget to vote for your favourite stories at both GH and 100WS!
The first of the Great Hites Anthology episodes will be coming out fairly soon, so I have done a couple of short promo recordings to (hopefully) help Jeff reach a wider audience. One was just me chatting, whilst the other was a collaborative effort with Norval Joe, another Great Hites regular, and was really quite fun to do. I'll certainly be including it within the SOS feed as well as linking to it from here once Jeff is ready to launch.
Great Hites episode 58 is ready to view and download now. My story this week is more of a short character study than previous entries have been, dealing with a single woman struggling to come to terms with bereavement despite her familiarity with helping others do so.
Although it is a stand-alone story, it is set in the 'Some Other Scotland' world and features Sarah Fullarton, a minor character we last saw back in episode 2 of SOS. It takes place at her home shortly before the events of SOS.
The latest prompt at Great Hites is "arriving at the airport", probably the most open-ended prompt for several weeks, and will almost certainly end up being related to SOS as well.
There's another of my short stories available to read or download and listen to over at Great Hites this week.
This one sets up a tale of lost love, interplanetary travel and homecoming around the recently discovered primate fossil, claimed by many to be the 'missing link'. Does it seem like I have a thing for ancient, advanced civilisations? You might think so.
There is some very subtle sci-fi background music in this latest tale. It comes courtesy of The Lunacy Board, and is called "Japan In A Trashcan". You'll find it on our third album, the entirely instrumental Stockholm, which is available to buy on CD or as a digital download. Follow the link for most information about the album, a couple of samples of other tracks and an order form.
There's also a new episode of 'Some Other Scotland' ready for download. There seems to be a link between Charles' letter and another letter written to William Wallace - interesting, since around 400 years separates them. We also learn a bit more about the object Razer found in the underground tunnel.
The Euro elections may have passed, but there's still plenty to vote for. Both 'Great Hites' and 'Some Other Scotland' feature polls that affect future episodes - if you are enjoying either of these podcasts, please take the time to vote and make your choice count!
Yet more podcast short fiction from the Bordet pen. This one is a very short tale for the "100 Word Stories" podcast. It was based on the prompt "Elvis drives a bus" and goes somewhere along the road of trying to explain just how that could happen.
Obviously, it takes place in some other reality. It isn't the 'Some Other Scotland' world, though there is some common ground. It's based on Elvis' Scottish roots, it's fun and it only takes seconds to read. Alternatively, download the whole podcast and enjoy a barrage of stories with roughly the same theme, albeit with very different approaches.
Life can take you on interesting detours.
I sat down a couple of nights ago to write the next episode of 'Some Other Scotland', only to find myself some time later digging through the internet for every scrap of information I could find about the R34 - the first aircraft to make a return Atlantic crossing. Why? It all ties in with the first 'spin-off' story from SOS, and I was checking some facts from the past before including them in the main podcast so that I wouldn't end up contradicting myself when I come to writing the off-shoot. It seemed like a logical course of action.
What I ended up with, in conjunction with the latest prompt from Great Hites, was a short stand-alone story providing background for the main character of that story. It is, in effect, a spin-off from the spin-off.
This new story tells the tale of one year in the life of a rigger on the R34 airship, which was based at East Fortune, not far from North Berwick. As it stands, there is no direct link with the podcast story, but the forthcoming special episode will tie the two together.
Pay a visit to Great Hites' latest episode to read the story or listen to me reading it, along with a number of other short tales read by their authors. Great Hites celebrates a year or podcasting short fiction this week, so drop by and show your support!
For the first time since it started, 'Masters of Song Fu' has been won by a challenger - well done Molly! They have already announced the date for sign-up for the next round, but I think I'm going to take a rest from the Fu for a while.
I need to devote more time to the Some Other Scotland podcast for a while, as Song Fu deadlines meant that podcast episodes have slipped back. I have a special non-story episode coming up soon (after episode 10 launches) that will deal with some questions I've had about the story. That has yet to be recorded, so please feel free to send questions and/or feedback to me at mickbordet {at} gmail {dot} com and I can reply on the podcast.
When the podcast started, I hoped to be able to expand the world with a few spin-off stories giving some background to certain characters or events - short tales that would stand on their own as well as giving more depth to the main story. I have come up with a rough plan for the first of these, though it has turned out to be a bit more ambitious than originally planned because it will be more of an audio drama than the main podcast. More news on that as I settle the thing down in a script.
I've also completed a short story for possible inclusion on another podcast, so details of that will follow if it comes into being. If it doesn't I may just post it here instead.
All of this writing and podcasting activity does NOT mean that the music has been abandoned, though. There are a couple of possible guest appearances in the pipeline, a Lunacy Board session of some sort is long overdue and I have a few half-completed songs still kicking around from the FAWM challenge that need to be finished off. At some point soon I'll also revisit the Song Fu material I have amassed and combine it into an album, though there are some parts to be re-recorded with the luxury of no deadline, as the originals make me cringe in several places. Finally, I have a top secret plan for a podcast-related musical piece that will surface at some point and, who knows, maybe one of these days I'll get round to sorting out the pile of Dunoon songs.
I mentioned this project in passing a while ago, but since I've just completed the third episode, now seems like a good time to let you know a bit more about it.
Some Other Scotland is a podcast novel. Huh? In effect, it is simply a book read in weekly episodes, not unlike a radio show. There are quite a few of these about if you look around the internet, but I like to think this one is a little different from the rest.
Why?
Rather than the more rational method of writing, then editing, a book before reading it and broadcasting the podcast, Some Other Scotland is much more immediate. It is based on a week's news in Scotland. Every day I pick out one item of news that I think could be interesting to incorporate into the bigger story, then I post a poll at the end of that week. Listeners (YOU!) can vote for the feature story. This feature will appear in some major way in the following week's podcast, though altered in some way. This creates an alternative Scotland, full of 'paths not taken'. For example, in the most recent episode, a mansion on a West Coast island was burnt down in the real world, but in Some Other Scotland, the fire came to nothing, stopped by a new character to the story.
The first few weeks have run without much to join each story thread together, but as new items crop up in the news, changes in direction become apparent, and already I have a general plan for the larger plot.
It is my intention to run this until the end of the year, unless the story draws to a natural conclusion before then. In the meantime, please visit the link above to sign up for the podcast feed, or you can stream the story from the little widget on the right hand side of this page.
Your feedback would be very welcome.
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