Last year, Quarter Share was eligible, and nominated, but didn’t make it to the finals.

This year, the other three novels were eligible and nominated. Full Share and South Coast made it into the finals, but Mur Lafferty’s Playing for Keeps won. I can’t find any fault with that decision. Losing to Mur no shame. She’s awesome and Playing for Keeps is an excellent novel. So, we got a little closer.

Next year? Double Share will be eligible. And we’ll see what else may come between now and the end of April.

Thanks to all of you for your warm wishes and words of support and encouragement. I’m humbled and grateful.

[UPDATE: Farpoint Media has a good rundown of the categories, nominees, and winners.]

The Parsec Awards have listed the short list finalists and BOTH Full Share and South Coast have been selected as finalists. Only one can win, of course, but hey, just getting the finalist nomination is an honor.

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.

To recap this year:
- Quarter Share - 17 episodes completed in March
- Half Share – 14 episodes completed in May
- Full Share - 16 episodes completed in September (yea, sorry about that)
- South Coast – 21 episodes completed in December

That’s four books, 68 episodes, and over 24 hours of audio!

And because of YOU and your voting for the titles on Podiobooks.com, Quarter Share and Full Share are on the Top Ten for Quality *and* Most Rated. South Coast is on its way to joining them. While this might seem trivial, it really helps to keep the titles visible to newcomers to the Podiobook site. (If you haven’t rated them, please? Every little bit helps. You need to subscribe to the titles on Podiobooks to do so. )

So thanks for a great 2007 and I’m looking forward to these new projects in the coming year:

- Time Crime by H. Beam Piper. As part of the SFFAudio.com 2nd Audio Challenge, I’ll be lending voice to a classic sci fi author. Look for this to wrap by the end of January and be published on Podiobooks.com.

- Double Share – the first of the new Trader’s Tales trilogy. My calendar has this on for January to write and February to record. We’ll see how well my NaNoWriMo discipline holds up.

- Cape Grace – the link volume between South Coast and Half Share. It should be an interesting challenge to get the two story lines to link up, but I’m penciling this into March and April.

- Captain’s Share. May – June.

- Owner’s Share. July – August

… this is all with the proviso that RL doesn’t get in the way and that I can actually scrape together the time and energy to tell these stories.

Otto was the only son of Richard Krugg and heir to the Shaman’s Gift. The only problem was he didn’t want it. When Company production quotas force unwelcome changes onto his life and threaten even the security of the village, he discovers that being a shaman isn’t really optional and, along the way, that it’s not that bad.

Coming in December from Podiobooks.Com but for all the faithful fans who’ve been almost patient, here’s Episode 1.

Please let me know what you think before I get too far down the road with it.

Episode 01: Otto learns that being a shaman is probably even less fun than he thought. Jimmy Pirano faces some very tough choices (Chapters 1-3).

I’m starting recording tonight!

As I sit down to scope out the way Shaman will run, I’m trying to think about ways to improve your listening pleasure.

Music
I’m looking for the music now. I’m leaning toward one called “Celtic Dance” that’s on http://www.archive.org. I was looking for something a little different from the sea shanties. Ironic since almost all the story is about life on the South Coast of St. Cloud’s Western Reaches. In my head I wanted something a little more “new agey” and perhaps a little mystical.

So? Got any candidates? Here are the criteria:

- The music has to be well underway by about 15 seconds in. A lot of really good choices don’t really get rolling until the 30 second mark and that’s too much “waiting for the theme music” for me.

- The music needs a good ending. When I get to that closing “For more information, visit www.durandus.org slash golden” I want to be able to have a nice little bump at the end of no more than another 15 seconds.

- It must be instrumental. I don’t wanna have to talk over somebody singing.

- It has to be offered under a Creative Commons license that allows for derivative works. Or you have to own it and grant me license. Because I don’t use the whole song … it’s a derivative work and some artists don’t like that.

Leave a link to your suggestions in my comments or email them to me using the Contact form.

Jibber Jab
There’s not going to be a lot of time for me to take listener comments and include them in a jibber-jab feed. Yes, I’m considering adding a second feed (here, rather than on Podiobooks) to do the kind of episode commentary several people have asked for. The problem is one of timing. I intend to start the voice recording tomorrow (Saturday, December 1) and there’ll be six episodes on Podiobooks as soon as I can get these other pesky details ironed out. Means it’s going to be difficult for you to get in between … so? Any suggestions on how to make that work? Or just save it up for the end?

My opinion on it is that, if i have to explain it outside the story, then the story isn’t strong enough — or you need to listen again.

I’m looking forward to your feedback.

Otto was the only son of Richard Krugg and heir to the Shaman’s Gift. The only problem was he didn’t want it. When Company production quotas force unwelcome changes onto his life and threaten even the security of the village, he discovers that being a shaman isn’t really optional and, along the way, that it’s not that bad.

Coming in December from Podiobooks.Com.

Update: Title change to keep the “shamans” from getting all silly in the beginning

We’re closing in on 80,000 words and the thrilling conclusion of the first draft. Keep your fingers crossed!