It was the 98th title and Podiobooks had just over 10,000 members. I remember that it took a couple of months or more for me to pick up 100 subscribers and I was being trounced on the charts by Morevi and Earthcore and 7th Son.

In the beginning, I set out to see if I could finish a novel, and have a little fun. I wrote, recorded, and edited Quarter Share in secret so I could present it as an anniversary present to my wife, Kay, who suffered through so many false starts and rough writings that it’s a miracle she’ll read anything of mine any more.

Because of a tagging error on the files, I missed the date by a day so the first episode didn’t drop on our anniversary, but actually the day after.

Today, four years later (almost) with eight books, almost 20,000 fans, 162 episodes of my own work, and two books in print, this little writing project is bearing a lot more fruit than I ever thought it would.

She’s put up with it, even when it made her uncomfortable to have all you strangers in our life. She’s been a supporter and a fan and a friend for over thirty years. Today marks our 26th wedding anniversary.

To quote the Grateful Dead: “What a long strange trip it’s been.”

Personally, I’m hoping for longer and stranger.

We’ve been hanging mostly in the under-1000 region for a few days now and more folks who aren’t from the podcast world are beginning to find it. It’s terribly exciting and even though these are sub-genre lists, the idea that I’m in there with the likes of Asimov and Heinlein has me a bit giddy. I’m even number 30 in best sellers in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction — which is squee-worthy in itself.

Thanks to all of you for helping me reach this point and I’m looking forward to releasing the next book in a few weeks.

There was quite a pile of addresses and I’ve already gone through half a case of books. We’re gonna have to order more pretty quickly I think.

In addition to these domestic US, there were copies to New Zealand, Australia, and Europe.

I don’t know how many you all have bought in total across the various media, but I’m fairly well amazed. When it all happens behind the screen, it’s hard to really get a feel for how many books are out there. With them stacked up on the dining room table like that, it gets very real.

Thank you, all.

Amazon now lists it in stock and Ridan reports they have recieved their initial shipments. I’m waiting for my boxes to show up here in the next day or so and you can order a signed copy of your own right now!

Pretty cool, I think.

We’ve passed the book back and forth about three times now and I’m very pleased with the way the editing is going. We’ve had some tweaking of the cover art, mostly for color and tone, but the real time is being put into cleaning up the story.

One of the things that always baffled me about interviews with authors who went from Print to Podio was the question of “Did you have to change much?” I understand that question much better now. Writing for print is, on its surface, a much more straightforward proposition. There are a lot of visual cues on the page to help the reader understand what’s going on. There are, likewise, a lot of audio cues in a podiobook. Since I wrote all my books to be read aloud and not printed, I’m finding that we’re spending a lot of time fine tuning that difference.

It’s taking longer to edit that it did to write originally, but that’s to be expected, given how fast I wrote it. I believe that — in the end — you’re going to be pleased with the results, and in any case, we’re taking the approach that it’s better to be good than fast.

The nice people over at Sci Fi Surplus just interviewed me about a review they’re doing on Quarter Share. We had a bit of a ramble but they’re accepting comments about the book. Email your comments about Quarter Share to thegeeks@scifisurplus.com. I think they’d take voice messages to at 801-938-5525 or skype call “scifisurplus” and leave a message.

Long and short is that the music I’ve used in the four novels has been licensed in various ways. For the present use, that is, as a free podcast novel, the licensing which includes Non-Commercial is fine since the Podiobooks are released under attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives licenses. The Podiobooks authors working to support the OLPC project by having our work included as source content for educational purposes. The problem, of course, is that we have to change the license to Attribution-ShareALike and my music isn’t licensed for that.

So, I’m posting the music credits here in text in hopes that the people responsible have vanity-searches and will contact me.

Quarter Share: Lucky Black Cat – James Curran
Half Share: Banks of Newfoundland – Peter James Conlan
Full Share: Foxhunters – James Curran
South Coast: Wish – Raphael Garcia Perdigon

All from the Open Audio archives at http://www.archive.org.

And any musicians out there who’d like to have me consider music for future novels, drop me an email via the Contact link on the side bar! I’m planning on six books this year and I may wind up remixing if I can’t get these licenses untangled.

A year ago Quarter Share went up onto the Podiobooks.com servers. The first six episodes cleared review and were posted on Feb 18, 2007. Since that time, the outpouring of support has been overwhelming. I remember watching the numbers in those early days and wondering how long it would take to break into two digits, and then into three. Now, with the listings on iTunes, I have no idea how many subscribers I really have, and I’ve come to realize it’s not about the numbers.

It’s about the stories and it’s about the people who care about the stories.

We’ve always had the ability to tell stories to ourselves. There are piles of typewritten pages all around the globe. There are moldy journals with painfully scratched out stories in them in attics on every continent. But with the internet, we have the ability to tell stories to each other in ways that seem miraculous. Podcasting, print-on-demand, blogs, and even simple webpages provide the distribution channel that permit my simple stories to flow out into the world.

And it’s about finding the audience.

You all are the best audience in the world. I know every podcaster/author/performer says that. I used to think, “Ya, right … a little biased are we?” whenever I heard somebody use that phrase, but the truth is, you are. The nature of audiences is that you’re the ones listening/reading/watching. By your actions — fan mail, donations, reviews on iTunes, and podiobook rankings — you offer encouragement and give back something that I’ve come to appreciate more as the year has worn on. You’re not just responding back to me, you’re spreading the word to your friends and families. You’re finding others and — through the stories — connecting to them. You’re the reason that – a year later – Quarter Share is back on the Top Ten Subscriptions for the Month list at Podiobooks. You’re the reason that all four of my titles have been camped out on the Podiobooks charts for the last month. You’re the reason Scott Sigler hates me. And believe me, it’s an honor to be hated by The Sigler.

New stories are on the way, although not as fast as we’d all hoped. I’ve had some other projects get in the way – some of which you’re going to be happy about when I can actually talk about them. There’s a new novella coming out, but it’s not one of my stories. I’ve recorded a “SF Classic” for SFFAudio as a way to recognized the giants upon whose shoulders we all stand. It’s all recorded and only needs a few hours of editing before I dump the whole thing up onto Podiobooks. And no, that’s not one of the projects that got in the way.

So, Happy Valentine’s Day, shipmates.

Safe Voyage.

On behalf of the podcasting community, we wish to congratulate you for your recent nomination for a Parsec Award for the following podcast(s):

Quarter Share – Best Speculative Fiction Story (Novel Form)

On the one hand, I think every Podiobook in the Science-Fiction category was nominated. On the other hand, feels good to be nominated in the same category as all those excellent books!

I have to submit a sample audio file for judging — not to exceed 10 minutes or 3 clips. I’ve put together three — I like the beginning and ending but the middle I’m having trouble deciding. So, I’m gonna ask you what you think. I reserve the right to ignore you all, but I’d be grateful if you’d leave a comment below on whether you think a, b, or c represents the book the best.

A. Ishmael and Bev buy belts

B. Ishmael meets the coffee urns

C. Ishmael sees the rest of the ship

UPDATE: Well, we didn’t make the top 5. Such is fame. Better luck next year, maybe.

The good news is that Half Share is ready to go. As soon as I get the clearance from PB to start uploading, I’ll post it and leave a note here.

I’ve also added a notification list server. See the Email Notices page in the sidebar to add your email to the list.