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Autopsy of a Lollipop Lady

Feb05
2012 4 Comments Written by Mick

SpinTunes is back!

After sitting out the last couple, I’m back in the game with twist. As “Drei Viertel Drei”, Katharina and I entered our song “Lollipop Lady” into the first round. The challenge was to write a song about a childhood nightmare that featured rubato, so we worked up a song about a little boy and his fear of his local lollipop lady (or crossing guard for those of you outside the UK). Here it is:

Thirty-four entries were made into the first round, with some really strong competition. My personal favourite was Rebecca Angel’s song “Monster’s Lullaby”, but there were several really good songs and a healthy number of pretty good (if needing work) songs. Our song came in at position 28, which sounds worse than it is, because we suffered badly in the public vote by not really doing too much promotion of the song. It wouldn’t have made that much difference, but it could have been enough to see us into the second round. One of the great things about SpinTunes over Song Fu is that each judge (5 in total, plus ‘Spin’ himself as backup judge) provides a review as well as a score. This, from Denise Hudson, really made me laugh:

This is terribly weird and really interesting. Psychological and troubling. I don’t really like it, but it’s because it BOTHERS me. And it’s not because it’s not well done. It’s because you are creepy.

or this…

As I hate this more and more and swear never to listen to it again, I put it higher in the rankings.

The general consensus amongst the reviewers is that the chorus and pre-chorus are much better than the verses. They were certainly more fun to write the music for, letting loose the creepiness, but they actually didn’t come together like that until the mixing stage. When the song was still being recorded, the verses were actually the strongest part, but that may have been because of some fairly severe tempo changes in the choruses that made them quite tricky to record certain parts for.

We’re out of the official competition now, but can still produce “shadow” entries. We already have lyrics and a little music worked out for the next challenge: a slightly dark and sad love song. Keep an eye on my Twitter feed for more regular updates.

All 34 songs from round one are also available from Bandcamp. You can listen to the songs below or download the whole album – a great way to get hold of some creepy and fun songs without spending a cent/penny.

Posted in Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes - Tagged , ,

Glimpses

Nov20
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Mick

A few months ago the team at Podioracket launched an anthology podcast featuring writers of Podiobooks.com stories. This is the second of these collections they have produced, though this one differed from the first by showcasing stories that were spin-offs from existing podiobooks.com titles. The idea is to give people a taste of some of the books available on the site, perhaps interesting them in tales that might not otherwise have appealed to them based solely on their descriptions. I thought this was a great idea, having already written a number of stories in the same world as “Some Other Scotland“, and knew straight away what to write.

In the early days of SOS, I wrote a short story that appeared at “Great Hites” called “The Cave pt1″. It was prompted by the ‘polar bear’ news item that came up and was set about 4,000 years ago, providing an outside view of a historic meeting. There was always going to be a second part to the story and ‘Glimpses’ provided the opportunity to tell the rest of the tale. This new story is set in the same time period and focuses on a meeting between the clans and the advanced civilisation featured in the main storyline. Throw in a mind-controlled polar bear and some bad attitude and you know that it’s not going to end in cuddles. If you haven’t been following SOS, then this story gives you a flavour of the main story, but if you have then this is probably the most ‘essential’ of the Spin-offs I have written.

The story has been available in audio form at Podiobooks for months (there is an audio promo below), but has just been released in eBook format. You can find it in a range of formats for all e-readers, or to view on your computer, at Amazon(for Kindle users) and Smashwords(in many formats).

You can find out more about the book on Goodreads or Shelfari – please leave a review if you enjoy any of the stories. We really want to get the news out there about the collection.

Until the end of December, sign up to my newsletter to receive occasional news about my writing and music, and you will receive a voucher code to enjoy a copy of the Glimpses eBook for free. That’s 11 great short stories that will introduce you to new worlds and new authors, without spending a dime/penny/cent.

Glimpses Promo [ 0:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Posted in Featured, Podcast, Short Stories, Some Other Scotland, Writing - Tagged , , ,

Creativity and Marketing Models

Aug15
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Mick

Over at Chocolate Scotch, Sue Taliaferro is running a series of guest posts on the subject of Creativity, Art and Inspiration. She has featured viewpoints from writers, musicians, podcasters and artists in varying media, with almost fifty posts online and more to come. My post on the subject appeared a couple of weeks ago and is focused on the tools available and the filtering processes involved in creating something new.

At the other end of the creative line is an article by Julia Sherred at Geek Mom about new music marketing models. There you’ll find a range of opinions from musicians working on getting their music out to the public (including me), using some of the tools available online. There are some interesting ideas included and many are applicable beyond just music distribution. Worth a look.

Posted in Music, Writing

The Highland Coo Song

Jun21
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Mick


Here is a new song, written for the SpinTunes challenge. It’s a happy little ditty about life in the food chain. A previous challenge from SpinTunes was ‘write a sad song about birth’, and this was the polar opposite: ‘write a happy tune about death’. Not an easy topic, by any means, but then that’s the point of a challenge. There have been some really good songs written for this round, though the tone is certainly a little darker than usual. Visit the SpinTunes Album page on bandcamp to listen to the tracks or to download the whole album for free.

I have started using Bandcamp for my own recordings, as I believe it offers the best experience for listeners. You can listen to the track right here and if you like it, download it straight away in whatever format you like – from high quality FLAC files to standard mp3s. Lyrics and artwork is all included, so when you view the song in a suitable player (e.g. an iPod touch or iPhone) you can view all those as the songs play. You can also choose to pay whatever you like, so you can download it for free, or pay something to encourage me to write more! All the music is also released under a Creative Commons licence, so you can download it and share it with your friends. If you liked it, then chances are good that they will too!

Posted in Featured, Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes

eBooks

Mar26
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Mick

Donau Blues CoverThe Wiener Blut experience rolls onwards and I’m pleased to announce the availability of my entry into this world, “Donau Blues”, as an eBook from Amazon UK or Amazon US for the Kindle, or from Smashwords for any other eReader.

If you have use Goodreads, you can also add it to your shelf and download it directly from their site, using the following button:

Donau Blues

The short story has been available previously only in podcast audio format from Every Photo Tells…, but you can now read it at your leisure on your eBook reader of choice.

If you enjoy the story, Katharina has also made her short story “The Ladder” available in the same format, as well as the whole novel of “Wiener Blut“. Have a look at the links below (click each cover) – short preview copies are available to give you a flavour of the story if you want to try before buying.

Enjoy a trip to Vienna!

The Ladder cover
Wiener Blut cover

Posted in Featured, Short Stories, Writing

Comical

Mar03
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Mick

Every Photo Tells… has just been featured on an ongoing web comic strip by Thomas Reed (@trreed). Click on the image below to see it in its full glory along with plenty more from Thomas:-

Posted in Every Photo Tells..., Featured, Podcast

Tryptophan Synthetase and other Songs

Mar03
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Mick


There is an album’s worth of songs that I have written for various Song Fu and SpinTunes challenges over the last few years, just kicking around the internet. As time passed, the quality of the songs improved, but they are all really just demo-quality tracks, so I’ve never really wanted to put them out in any sort of official format.

However, they do form a thematic album of some sort, so I’ve pulled them all together and stuck them into an album on last.fm. All the tracks are free to download, though you can only play short clips on the website itself. It’s not ideal, but if you want them they are all there.

The songs are presented in reverse chronological order, meaning that they get older and rougher as the playlist progresses. Highlights for me are ‘What is wrong?’, the song that features one of the longest words in the English language (the official chemical name for ‘Tryptophan Synthetase’) in a sort of mock-opera style, the ridiculously so-happy-I-could-punch-you fun of ‘Happy People’ and the rather silly charity song ‘Big Red Nose’

What is wrong? Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Happy People [ 3:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Big Red Nose [ 2:52 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Posted in Music, Song Fu / SpinTunes - Tagged , ,

Some Other Podcast

Feb02
2011 1 Comment Written by Mick

Some Other Scotland
Between Every Photo Tells…, Wiener Blut and numerous other activities, my attention to Some Other Scotland has been spread rather thin of late. Okay, very thin. I am in the process of sorting this out.

First of all, a new episode of the podcast series was posted yesterday and it features something that was set up back in episode 4. Admittedly, because of the nature of the podcast and its audience-influenced plot-lines, at that time I had no idea what it was set up for, but once I did, it was just a matter of sitting on it until an appropriate time. The pace will be stepping up a gear or two over the next few episodes, as a result of this event. I have already started writing the next episode, so keep an eye on Twitter and Facebook for updates.

Polls

There is a new poll, ready for you to vote on. In the past I had to rely on third party poll sites that were either awkward to work with or didn’t do what I want them to do. The new, integrated poll fits the design of the SOS site, lets me include links on each poll item so that you can visit the original news items before making your informed decision to vote for the three things you’d like me to inflict on the characters. The new system even lets me provide a poll archive, so clicking on the ‘Polls‘ menu item will show all the polls from the past. Unfortunately this ability will only be available from this week’s poll onwards, but I hope you find it useful.

Wiki

Over on the SOS Wiki page, there have been a number of additions to bring the wiki up to date with the plot, such as discovering the name of the ‘Sidhe‘, adding in new locations, characters and items of technology. There was a spam attack on the wiki a few weeks ago, which slipped past because of some settings that have now been changed. It is a really useful resource for listeners of the podcast and don’t forget that anyone can register as a user there and make their own additions to the information there.

Subscribe!

There are a number of existing spin-offs that I will be dropping into the feed as well, in between regular episodes. In the past these have been spread around all over the place, but I am keen to bring them all into the main feed. For a while there has also been the ability to choose a special feed, for example if you are a podiobooks.com listener, but would like to grab all the spin-offs to enjoy. It was never very clear how this works, though, so I have added a Subscribe page that lists the special feeds you can access along with a nice shiny iTunes button to press if all that sounds too complicated and you just want to listen to the whole podcast.

Some Other Scotland
Posted in Podcast, Some Other Scotland - Tagged ,

A Year of Stories

Jan30
2011 2 Comments Written by Mick

This weekend we hit two milestones over at Every Photo Tells….

First of all, we published our fiftieth short story on the podcast. That’s rather impressive, considering that we would have been happy to have been publishing our twentieth by this stage and that is due to the writers who have been inspired by our monthly photographs to write stories of their own.

Thank you to everyone who has submitted a story to us since we started. We have had some really positive feedback about how we are treating people’s stories and listener numbers continue to climb steadily, so we must be doing something right.

Secondly, February sees the start of our second year of production. Yes, it has been a whole year since we started the podcast! By the end of the month we will have included a total of 52 episodes in our feed, effectively one story per week.

We’re already looking forward to compiling ‘Book 2′ for release on podiobooks.com, as well as some other new ideas for the website.

Posted in Every Photo Tells..., Podcast - Tagged ,

A Share of the Golden Age

Jan27
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Mick

Owner's Share coverIf you have been following Some Other Scotland and/or Every Photo Tells… and are looking for more podcast fiction, then I can recommend Nathan Lowell’s Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper. The ‘Share’ series of stories concluded yesterday, though there will be more stories in the future set in the same universe. I have heard it described as science fiction for people who don’t like SciFi, but like the best of the genre it is focused on the characters more than the science. You won’t find space battles, weird aliens or endless technobabble, but a gentle trip through the career of a newcomer to space travel, making his way up through the ranks from the equivalent of a deck scrubber to captain and beyond.

Mr Lowell reads the stories himself and has a very relaxed and clear delivery that is easy on the ears, but if you’re not a fan of podcast fiction, the series is also being released in book format.

Thanks to Nathan for providing such a great series for free download at podiobooks.com and I look forward to future explorations in the same world. He will also be appearing in later episodes of Wiener Blut, where he plays a major character who is important in the second half of the story.

Posted in Featured, Podcast - Tagged , ,
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