On January 17th I had the pleasure of attending a special exhibition by the Benevolent Order of Mountain Artists (BOOMA), hosted at The Danforth Gallery. The show was called “Exquisite Corpse”, which sounds rather morbid, but the concept behind it is actually quite fun and the end result is extremely cool. More details after the jump…
It’s after 1 A.M., and the ghosts are awake.
I’m walking westbound down Cavendish Street, from the residential neighborhood toward our few little blocks of downtown. It’s blasted cold and the wind is howling like the demons that used to plague this place, but I’m out here because the dog needs to go to the bathroom and it takes her a good half-a-mile walk to get her bowels loose. God only knows why she won’t go in our nice fenced-in yard, but I guess when you’re a twelve-year-old retired ranch dog you’re bound to have picked up a few eccentricities. Whatever her reasons, a walk is the only thing that will do, and loving a senior animal means you do these things because at this point you’re just not going to change them.
The dog trots down the pavement on her too-short little legs, her back end bouncing with every step. With her plush double-coat she laughs at winter, while I cinch up the mouth of my hood and wrap my scarf tighter around my face. If it were only the cold, it wouldn’t be so bad — she and I have braved colder nights than this together — but the hood and the scarf cut off my peripheral vision, and that’s not a welcome thing on nights like this.
As I said, the ghosts are awake. Living people don’t belong outside on nights like this, and everyone but me and the dog seems to know it.
If you’ve listened to my podcasts, especially the feedback shows with Dan Sawyer, you know that I’m a huge fan of the writings of Tee Morris. Tee was one of the original podcast novelists, along with Scott Sigler and Mark Jeffrey, and Tee’s Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword was one of the two works of audio fiction that inspired me to try my hand at it. (The other was Listening Library’s full-cast rendition of The Golden Compass.) I’ve been watching Tee’s work since then with great interest, cheering him on and waiting for his big “breakout hit” that would get him the attention he deserves.
This may be his moment. More after the jump.
Hello, everyone!
Some of you who’ve been following me for a long time may remember that chrislester.org used to look very different. When this was just a private blog for my own scattered ramblings about the world, I found that I didn’t have that much to say. But a lot has changed since that old site went dark.
For one thing, publishing isn’t what it used to be. With vendors like Smashwords and Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing providing a direct link between authors and readers, there has never been a better time to bring my fiction to a broad audience.
There also has never been a better time to be in audio production. Making audiobooks and moving them around used to be expensive — remember those huge boxes of CDs that used to fill the shelves at Borders? — but with the widespread availability of broadband Internet access and 4G phone connections, people can not only easily access audiobooks, they can even stream them directly to their handheld devices. We’ve become sort of inured to this, but when you stop and think about it, it’s pretty incredible. And with audio content easier than ever to access, that means that the demand for it is increasing — and that means big opportunities for authors and producers to reach a vastly increased audience.
This year I’m focused on breaking out from the world of podcasting into the exciting, expanding world of professional audio production. I’ll share my journey with you here as it develops.
And, of course, if you enjoy my rants and ramblings, there will be some of those here, too.
So welcome aboard — and as we say in Metamor City, keep it on the bright side!