J.C. Hutchins, author of the 7th Son podcast novel trilogy, is starting a project that he calls "Obsidian".  It's based off an alternate history from his final book, where "the U.S. suffered a coordinated terrorist attack, and was plunged into a nationwide blackout. The country devolved into chaos. Power and order were restored two weeks later."

J.C. wants YOUR audio and video from those two weeks!

There's already some content available and some well-known folks are busy conjuring up more...  check out all the details at the linky below.

Become a victim of the OBSIDIAN blackout — and make history | 7th Son: J.C. Hutchins' Podcast Novel Trilogy

As part of his Infected book tour, Scott Sigler is going to be in Houston at Murder by the Book on April 11th.  Some bar stools will suffer later, at Two Rows Bar.  Scott's already hit LA, Seattle, and NYC.  Details are available at upcoming.  Not a whole lot more info than that about Houston... but if you're close, GO!

Over the past few weeks, I've had this niggling little thought zipping around my subconscious nether regions...

"smthng... you're not doing anything useful here and you have no direction".

Nice, eh?  Well, I think I might have finally come up with smthng!  I met Seth Harwood and a few fans of his in Philly last week and it got me thinking.  I know what Seth's up to and I know what Scott Sigler is up to... but I know there's a bunch of other excellent fiction podcasters out there doing stuff that I don't know about.

There are plenty of fiction news sites and plenty of podcasting news sites out there, but I don't know of any that focus on the excellent fiction 'casters (f'casters) out there.  I don't want to wade through 2 weeks of someone's general news posts in order to find out what's going on with the handful of pioneer fiction casters out there.

So, my idea is simply to regularly post what the f'casters are planning.  Which ones will be at what conventions, when and where one of them is giving a reading or pub crawl, what new projects they are starting up that listeners can contribute to, etc. 

If I'm going to be brutally honest about it, I'll have to admit that I'm thinking of starting with 5 or 6 of the big name f'casters that we all know and love...  Sigler, Hutchins, Harwood, Tee Morris, Mur Lafferty, and the likes.  If they're planning on anything else soon, I may toss in a few others I find particularly interesting...  guys like Phil Rossi, Basil Sands, and Nathan Lowell (he's probably a shoe-in... I'm anxiously awaiting Double Share).

I do want to make it clear that this will not be about the podcasts...  I can't improve on their stuff and any comments I have on the content would simply be one idiot spouting off.  I don't need to tell you what Nocturnal is about... Scott can do that better than I.  But, I can tell you that he's doing a book tour right now and should be in Houston on the 11th (personal note: I hate Houston... they rigged the votes for sure...  I just can't prove it yet!)   I can also tell you that JC is working on Obsidian and looking for YOUR content (Mur has done her part, have you?)...  Seth just got back from his book tour...  and Tee and Nathan are both up to smthng, but neither one is dropping many hints.

Anyway... that's the kind of stuff that I think needs to be in one place (along with a calendar).  I haven't found that place yet, so I'm willing to make it.  Yes, it'll be a fair of constant digging around blogs and listening to 'casts on my part, but I do that anyway. ;)  So...

Will it make a web site?

More importantly... will it make a web site that's useful?

Anyone is welcome to leave me some thoughts on the matter.  If you don't want to leave a public comment, you're also welcome to email...  Just click my sig.  Thanks!

--smthng

Ok, so I've spent the last few days getting my online stuff all gathered up.  I'll share with you some of my personas in case anyone wants to hit me up using whatever...

There is a condition though...  if there's anything below that asks for permission, you'd better tell me why you're adding me.  If you just add me and I don't know you, expect to be denied because I think you're a spammer.  With that out of the way...  here I am!

• Google Talk - send me an email and ask, I'm not giving that one out publicly.
• MSN Messenger - smthng@hotmail.com
• AIM - smthngelse1
• Yahoo IM - smthng2002
• Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/people/smthng
• Twitter - http://twitter.com/smthng
• Pownce (not used much) - http://pownce.com/smthng/
• Technorati - http://www.technorati.com/people/technorati/smthng
• Main web site - http://smthng.info

I'll add others as I remember them.

Ok, so it wasn't morning.  It was around noon before any of us got moving.  I packed up Blue and checked out and headed over to Seth's hotel.  I parked Blue on the sidewalk (thanks to the valet crew there for letting me) and headed a block or two away to meet Seth, Scott and Mae for breakfast at "Kaye's"...  a seriously greasy spoon.  You know it's a greasy spoon when the bottom of the plate is greasy too.

After a lackluster omelet, we headed back to the hotel.  Seth checked out Blue for a bit and then wanted a ride...  I gave him the shorty helmet I thoughtfully brought along and we headed up the road a bit.  I was going to scare him, but with his extra weight and all my gear on the back, Blue was itching to pull major wheelies (other bikers will know what I'm talking about).  I didn't want to tell him that the front wheel wasn't entirely on the ground when we hit the main straight. ;)  We got up to a reasonable 70 mph just so he could get the feeling of speed, but with an open faced helmet and a wheelie-prone beastie, I left it at that.

We headed back, chilled in the hotel lobby for a bit, then I headed home.

The drive back was horrible.  I was fine until I hit Baltimore, then it started raining.  I've got the gear for rain, so that didn't bother me.  What sucked was that everyone else forgets how to drive in the rain.  It took me almost three hours to get from Baltimore to Springfield...  I don't think I got over 40 mph or got out of third gear the whole way. 

Anyway... got home, put gloves and helmet on the fan (to dry them out a bit) and crashed.  Sleep was over due and very necessary... I had a lot of work to do on the Jeep the day after (Friday) to be ready for the weekend of wheeling.  I'll write that up later.  Cyas!

On Wednesday, April 2nd, I hopped on Blue (my Yamaha FJR1300) and headed up to Philly to meet up with Seth Harwood for his reading of Jack Wakes Up.  My friend Rob backed out (work) and my co-worker bailed as well ("too cold"), so it was just me.  The trip to Philly was uneventful, but nice.  I rolled into the Residence Inn and spent some time discussing what to do with Blue.  Eventually the valet folks let me park her myself in the garage.

I got all checked in and then walked down to the book store early to find out what the setup was like and if I could find parking (no chance).  I also found out that the shoes I brought sucked, so I bought new ones (sucked less).  Early dinner, back to the hotel, then time to meet up with Seth.

The reading was at Robin's Bookstore, which is a strange and interesting little store.  They have a lot of "weird category" books.  Seth showed up and official reading began.  It was a reasonably small crowd, but everyone was sociable and Seth was quite personable.  He read a few parts of the book, which most of us had nearly memorized. ;) 

We hung around the store for a bit, then headed out to a bar or two.  I forget how many places we ended up at, but the first memorable one was the "Locust Rendezvous".  Nice name, eh?  A few pitchers later (and some really bad nachos) had us looking for smthng else. 

Next stop...  "Irish Pub".  That is it's name, not just a description.  A slightly higher class place, but they had Magic Hat on special, so we chilled there for a bit.  

After the "Irish Pub", we went across the street to Mackenzies (or Macdougals, Macgreggors, or smthng like that).  Better nachos, shepherds pie, better service.  All in all... better!

That pretty much wraps up the pub crawl.  I headed back to the hotel (about 4 blocks away) and assume that Seth and crew did the same.  I chilled out at the hotel, did some online stuff with my Eee and then crashed.