News from the Golden Age
All the episodes from here are now live in your normal feeds.
Give the new set up a test spin and see how well it works under load!
Thanks for all your donations and patience during this awkward time.
And thanks to Evo, Chris Miller, and all the people working hard behind the scenes who don’t get enough credit for their roles in helping to give people like me a place to put our works.
Many of you know that Podiobooks has had a serious system failure in the last few days. Evo shared the traffic logs with me and I don’t know if I’m proud or chagrinned to learn that one of the key contributors to the system meltdown was Owner’s Share. Starting with the release on Christmas Eve, the overall system load started climbing and peaked on 1/13 at something over 2x normal load.
Unfortunately, the system didn’t really have that much excess capacity and stuff started going bad.
There were some other releases during that time but visits to Owner’s Share constituted almost 15% of all web traffic for the period – and the page didn’t exist for half of the period covered.
I’ll be posting the episodes here until Podiobooks gets back up. It should be back by Friday and we’ll be in much better shape then. The net result is that the costs to podiobooks.com just doubled. Evo has put up an explanation on the front door of Podiobooks and if you can help out, the donations go straight to keeping the service free.
Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted out.
Somebody reminded me in a comment that, while many of you know what’s happening because you follow me on twitter, there are lots of you who don’t so …
Half Share has gone to layout after an extensive editing process in which *I* have to take the blame for holding up progress. If the galley looks right, we’ll place the order and the book should be available relatively quickly. I’ll post it here when it happens.
Owner’s Share is coming along. I still need to carve out about 50k and there’s a developmental flaw in the early chapters that needs to be addressed. It’s taking too much time, I know, but it’s coming.
In other news, I’ve done some short pieces for Tony C. Smith over on the Hugo Award winning Star Ship Sofa and I’m hoping there will be some crossover traffic from that so more people will find the stories here. He did a short interview with me and that should appear in the next couple of weeks.
Finally, Avempartha – the sequel to The Crown Conspiracy – is still in the stack. I need about 50 hrs in a day to do everything I want to, and I need to get a lot more efficient if I’m going to crank out the kinds of output I’ve committed to.
Ack!!!
You’ll note that NaNoWriMo is not in the list because I’ve just got too much other stuff going on and too much of it is overdue to be able to take the month. In spite of that, Odin1Eye’s View From Valhalla is featuring reviews of my podcast novels this whole month in honor of NaNoWriMo and the works that have come from it. Some of you may remember that both South Coast and Ravenwood are NaNoWriMo winning projects.
Thanks for all your continuing support!
I can’t believe how much of October has already gone! Ack!
Status:
Half Share in text – I’m working on the edits but it’s going slowly. It’s my fault and I’m working to get that resolved ASAP because it’s holding up all the rest of my production. Sorry about that, but this one represents income and the free stuff needs to take a back seat.
Owner’s Share – on hold pending the release of Half Share in text formats. This will be released in Nov/Dec in audio because I’ve got a HUGE editing job waiting for me to get that book into shape and ready to podcast.
Cape Grace and the Ravenwood sequel – both get pushed back a bit.
In audio production work, I did a short story for Tony C. Smith and the Hugo Award winning StarShipSofa podcast which should be the lead in November’s short fiction. I’m really pleased with the way it came out and he’s sent me another to do for December. These are not interfering with the other work because they’re short, easily done, and fall into “gaah! I need a break!” territory without tying me up for days on end.
I’ve also got a paid job for narration that I need to get mixed into this stew and I’m looking at how I can make this all work. I *think* it’ll go together nicely if I can get the family back on a regular schedule and can record a bit each day. If that works, I’ll probably segue right into a more regular day with some portion of it dedicated to reading, some to writing, and some to editing.
This weekend I’ll be at MileHiCon in Denver. That’s the local sci-fi convention and I’m on several panels, doing a reading, and even have an autograph session scheduled. I’ll add it to the Out and About page. MileHi is the “local BaltiCon” and I’m hoping we can get a New Media Track established. There are now five podiobooks authors within driving distance of Denver and perhaps we can put something useful together there.
Finally, welcome to all the new subscribers to the email list. I don’t send out much stuff there so you probably won’t see that get a lot of traffic. I *will* post to it when new books get released.
Back to the salt mines for me. This is shaping up nicely and I’m very pleased with the way it’s coming out.
Now if I could just do more and faster!
I was taken completely by surprise when the Parsec Award for Best Story (Long Form) went to Captain’s Share. I’m still not quite grokking it because I was so certain that the field would leave me standing on the sidelines again and I was already aiming for next year with Owner’s Share.
Thanks to all who supported my work over the years and I’m looking forward to many more years of podcast novels.
