About the last podcast...

... just checking, can everyone understand what is being said by Valtamus? I'm just a little worried that some words get lost to the modulation effects, and this is the first time that I haven't linked through to the full text of the story.

If anyone has any problems I'll send through a copy of the story.

... and to all a good night!

Merry Christmas folks!

Episode #005 - The Christmas podcast

Tags: podcast short story fiction christmas the long watch gideon strangechild

Something a little different with the podcast, since it is Christmas! I'm experimenting with music and sound effects for the voices.

Sadly, the female voice sound effect is a little tinny (and the accent veers to German, instead of French) but I'm pleasantly surprised by the voice effects for Valtamus.

This story is part of the short story collection Major Arcana (http://www.paulanderson.org.uk/wip/stories/majorarcana.htm) I am working on. It is also a prequel to the events in The Long Watch (http://www.paulanderson.org.uk/wip/novels/longwatch.htm).

Although Valtamus doees not appear until the end of the story, the "incident at St Jude's" is referenced throughout, and the implications arising from it cause many of the major events of the story.

The music used in the podcast is Christmas Eve - Sarajevo 12.24 by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (http://www.trans-siberian.com/index-main.php). Please do visit their site and buy their albums. It may be a little late for this Christmas, but buy for next Christmas - their work is fantastic, and if ever the Long Watch sees the light of day on the screen (big or small), these are the guys I'd want to do the music!

To listen to the full song, go here (http://wm.wmg.com/epromo/site-label/lava-label/xmasevesarajevo-wma-full.wma).

It only remains for me to say a huge thank you and a very Merry Christmas to all my listeners and readers, and here's hoping for success in 2008!

You guys are lovely...

... I on the other hand suck. Over a month and a half on from the last podcast (wow, NaNoWriMo sucked the life outta me...) I am about to launch a new episode this week. Possibly two new episodes. Although they might just be parts 1 and 2 of a longer story, we'll see.

This will be the Christmas edition of the podcast, with a Christmas-esque story (if it is set on Christmas Eve, it is a Christmas story, don't argue with me on this one...) and it will go out some time this week. So keep an eye on your RSS feeds, podcast aggregators and however else you keep up with this.

Because I know you're out there, I can hear you breathing (and, y'know, Feedburner and Statcounter tell me that you visit...) - so drop me a line, a comment, an e-mail, anything just to say hi, that you dropped by, had a listen, that kind of thing.

Oh, almost forgot. My very generous sponsors (my mum and dad!) have bought me the podcasting equipment as a Christmas present. So the audio quality of the show is going to suck a lot less than it has done previously. The content and the voice are still going to be hit and miss, but at least when it's crap it will sound pretty...