Consider, if you will, what would happen if you had an obnoxiously perky Sith in training.

A free book? There’s no such thing as a free book! What’s the catch?

No catch. It’s free. But, Mur asks that if you like it you purchase it from Amazon.com on August 25. She’s making a run on Amazon and really needs us all to pitch in and help her get noticed. She, like so many others, has a book contract now. But podcasting novels are still a new medium for delivery and we need to show the publishing industry that this makes a difference. 

Martha and I have read the PDF version multiple time. We help Mur by making the PDFs and doing layout and formatting. We also did a little editing. All of this was to help Mur make the best product possible. We bought the first version of Playing for Keeps when it was self-published on Lulu.com. And now we’re joining her for her run on Amazon and we’ll be buying multiple copies of Playing for Keeps as published by Swarm Press.

Mur has delivered countless hours of enjoyment and encouragement to the pod-o-sphere. She has also inspired and rallied people including me. It is not an exaggeration to say that if Mur wasn’t here I wouldn’t be either. I wonder how many other people to whom you listen, read, and watch are here because they were inspired by Mur Lafferty. I’m guessing the number is larger than you think.

So be ready to place your order from Amazon.com for Playing for Keeps on Monday August 25. Be there! Aloha.

• Beverage roundup
• Black Adder
• Quantum Leap
• Don’t mess with the librarians
• PROMO: Christiana’s Shallow Thoughts
• PROMO: I Should Be Writing
• Cataloging duels of librarians
• Fear the weeding policy
• Kitties!
• I AM Survivor Dad!
• “The dark goddess must dine on tears!”
• PROMO: Metamor City
• PROMO: Reality Break
• Tee Morris in a barrel
• Double Trouble (links galore)
• Free PDFs have over 50,000 downloads!
• Why haven’t they been Boing Boing‘d?
• Don’t whine Tee
• If you want me to post your PDFs you have to ask me
• If you’re going to buy, please do so on 8/8/08 on Amazon.com
• Getting voice parts for future podcasts of Digital Magic and Pitcher’s Pendant
• Tee and Pip talk about the plots of their upcoming books
• Pip and Tee trapped in the same body
• Erotica a la Carte
• Tee will be organizing live events at Balticon 43
• MUSIC: Girls, Skirts, Boots, Bikes by The Buck Brothers

• Cat vs Wookie
• Kraken’s Quest
• Le Canard for snails
• Norm’s Beer
• PROMO: Double Share by Nathan Lowell
• PROMO: Pieces podcast anthology
• Catching up on older podcast fiction
• The review of 7th Son Obsidian
• Unicorns
• PROMO: Murder at Avadon Hill by PG Holyfield
• Review of the story’s released as of the date of this recording
• The opening up of an author’s universe to become a shared universe
• New voicemail line is 1-206-666-2843
• The Morevi anthology?
• Soccergirl’s Obsidian video was awesome
• The easter egg we did for Mur Lafferty’s Playing for Keeps based on a real story
• Hating on weathermen
• Aug 25, 2008 Playing for Keeps is being released by Swarm Press
• Aug 8, 2008 Digital Magic by Philippa Ballantine and The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant by Tee Morris will be released by Dragon Moon Press
• MUSIC: Playing for Keeps by The Beatnick Turtle

All Books available from Amazon.com

Lazy show notes:

John Cmar

Sci-Fi Laura

Commandline

Andrea

Heather Welliver

Marcus Grailwolf Bailey

Greg Wright

Martha Holloway

Paul Fischer

We talk about Balticon, public safety, wireless broadband, attention deficit disorder, and much more.

Recorded at RavenCon.

Today: Voices from the Future

Guests include Tee Morris, Marc “Grailwolf” Bailey, Heather Welliver, Brand Gamblin and his girlfriend Allison

• Plug galore – It’s so annoying I’m not giving anyone links, so there!
•  I Will Swallow Your Soul
• A little review of Farpoint Convention
• Erin Gray
• Sonic Boom thinks the studio has a revolving door
• Marc’s convenience store sickness
• Burger King chip
• PROMO: Stranger Things
• PROMO: Aliens You Will Meet
• Scott Sigler needs antibiotics: help him with his Infection
• Pimpage/Bell abuse
• More questions for Cthulhu
• Thank you for your service to your country
• Live Calls for Cthulhu at Balticon
• Would you want to see a live Hey! Want To Watch A Movie?
• Stop The Noise!
• Morevi spoiler alert
• Be on the lookout for J.C. Hutchin’s Obsidian

MUSIC: Shoot Him Down by Babylon Bombs

Lazy Show Notes

Music: Shoot Him Down by Jenny Beck (@Music.Podshow.com)

We did it before and we are doing it again.

Scott Sigler’s new print version of Infected gets released on April 1st, 2008. Over the next few days, his publisher has allowed him to give away copies of the PDF version of the book for free.

We are helping him do just that.

For more information on Scott and Infected, visit www.scottsigler.com

If you want share the file with friends, get them to download it from this page or from:

randomhouse.com/crown/infected/downloads/infected_novel.pdf

By getting the file from that link, it’s proving to the big publishers that we podcasters have a clue about what we are doing.

This file will only be active for a few days, at which time the link will become inactive and you’ll have to go to the bookstore to read the story. Which you should do anyway.

Spoiler free and Spoiler laden reviews.

PROMO: Fear the Froot

Xmas wrapup

Jared Axelrod’s Avante-Garde Dinner

Slice of Soup

Cocktail of Pot Roast with Cranberry sauce

Recovering from the cookie disaster

Marc and Heather’s Xmas

PROMO: Nocturnal by Scott Sigler

PROMO: Better Late Than Never

We spent several hours with MAinPA over Xmas

MAinPA and Leann Mabry will be doing a panel called, “Don’t be that guy” at Balticon

How to not be creepy, with the hot women of podcasting

What women want from men, by Heather. The 2 minute version.

I will suck the love out of you!

Heroes Season One: Major Spoilers

Sylar should have died at least 3 times

Paul doesn’t buy the cheap way they let him live

They work so hard to make all the situations work, except when people leave the bad guy alive

The writers didn’t put enough effort into leaving Sylar alive when the characters in the scene should have killed him

Sylar’s regeneration powers haven’t been completely defined

We think the writers paid too much attention to the fans. Sylar was kept alive because the fans on the ‘net wanted it.

Better ways to handle Sylar’s survival

We’re passionate about wanting to fix it because it’s so good and we love it so much

How Neil Gaiman handled a similar situation in Anansi Boys. Anansi Boys audio book was written for and read by British comedian Lenny Henry.

Sylar needs to die

MUSIC: Coed Naked Drunk Christmas Shopping by Beatnik Turtle

To some the number 99 represents the many names of God. But as a black
snowfall blankets the Failed Cities on Christmas Eve, the arrival of 99
mysterious steel chambers is the catalyst that sets a series of far from
blessed events in motion. From bullets and bata sticks to a life-and-death
hostage situation to high-speed battles up switchback mountain roads, eight
people become links in a deadly chain that will either tether innocent lives
to safety or strangle any hope for their future. And as each part of the
story unfolds, we learn that above all things, Christmas in the Failed
Cities is a feverishly struck balance between the constant threat of
violence and the briefest, most bittersweet moments of joy.

THE FAILED CITIES: HATH A DARKNESS by Matt Wallace is a freely distributed
.PDF produced and illustrated by Rick Stringer, and available exclusively
from Variant Frequencies. We’d like to encourage all our listeners to
download, print, enjoy, and pass along this unique piece of the Failed
Cities universe as a thank you for your continued support and enthusiastic
participation in our podcast.

And don’t forget to revisit THE FAILED CITIES MONOLOGUES, collected in its
entirety on Podiobooks.com

Happy Holidays from the entire crew of Variant Frequencies!

In this episode of TDAH, we report from the World Science Fiction Convention in Yokohama, Japan. If you’re a Godzilla fan, you can’t afford to miss this one. Great Godzilla questions will be answered, such as what kind of women he like, his favorite recreation, why he really stomps Tokyo, and who is true love is.

Watch it here!

TDAH is up for The Best Video Blog of 2007. Please vote to help our friends at TDAH continue their rise to fame and fortune.

Junkies – it’s time for a new novel. Not a short story, not a “novella,” but a full-blown, balls-out, tits-swingin’ novel that will have you crying like a little punk every Sunday when the episode finishes. NOCTURNAL is that novel.

And on top of that, I’m running a contest where YOUR NAME can be the name of a victim in NOCTURNAL. All you need to do is go to the brand-new scottsigler.com and register a full profile. Go there, then look on the left-hand side. See where you’d log in? Create a profile. FILL IN ALL THE FIELDS to win! If you don’t want to fill them in, no worries, but only complete profiles are eligible to get ‘dat ass killed and be immortalized in the pages of NOCTURNAL when it’s printed in 2010.

• Yusuf The Wonder Neighbor
• Calls you never want to get when you’re on the other side of the planet
• Our LOL Cats Contest ( link )
• High Fiber Cat
• PROMO: Asian Variations, a free download album
• PROMO: Christian Ellis‘ The Sounds of Awesome
• PROMO: Better Late Than Never Podcast
• We summarize the movie Princess Mononoke
• What’s the hero’s name?
• We talk about how the movie makes us feel and how awesome it is
• FarPoint Media’s big announcement (Special thanks to Summer Brooks, Mike Mennenga, and Jeffery Willerth for their hard work)
  
• MUSIC: Black Heart off Asian Variations by MoShang

Best Novella: “A Billion Eves”
by Robert Reed
(Asimov’s October/November 2006)

Best Novelette: “The Djinn’s Wife”
by Ian McDonald (Asimov’s July 2006)

Best Short Story:
“Impossible Dreams” by Tim Pratt
(Asimov’s, July 2006)

Best Related Book:
James Tiptree, Jr.:
The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
by Julie Phillips (St. Martin’s Press)

Best Dramatic Presentation,
Long Form: Pan’s Labyrinth

Best Dramatic Presentation,
Short Form: Doctor Who
“Girl in the Fireplace”

Best Editor, Long Form
Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Best Editor, Short Form:
Gordon Van Gelder

Best Semiprozine
Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, and Liza Groen Trombi

Best Fan Writer
Dave Langford

Best Professional Artist
Donato Giancola

Best Fanzine
Science-Fiction Five-Yearly
edited by Lee Hoffman, Geri Sullivan, and Randy Byers

Best Fan Artist
Frank Wu

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of 2005 or 2006
Naomi Novik