Mick Bordet
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Music

  • The Deserters Eclectic band from the West Coast of Scotland, featuring Mick on guitar and yobstick
  • The Lunacy Board Progressive skiffle-rock Duo featuring Mick on guitar and theremin

Podcasting

  • Every Photo Tells… Fortnightly short story podcast inspired by a photograph that changes every month.
  • Some Other Scotland Mick’s regular podcast series about advanced hidden civilisations, mysteries and clan wars in an alternative Scotland.
  • Wiener Blut An old café, an even older legend and a new threat. Mick provides voice work and music for this podcast.

Writing

  • 100 Word Stories Weekly 100 word short story podcast based on a changing prompt where Mick has a number of stories.
  • Great Hites Weekly short story podcast based on a changing prompt where Mick has a number of stories.
  • Katharina Maimer Mick’s EPT Co-host and writing collaborator.

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Posts tagged Podcast

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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 Some Other Scotland - Tagged Some Other Scotland

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... - Tagged Every Photo Tells...

A Share of the Golden Age

Jan27
2011
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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 - Tagged Nathan Lowell, Wiener Blut

Wiener Blut

Dec27
2010
2 Comments Written by Mick

Wiener Blut LogoMy NaNoWriMo story broke the 42,000 word barrier, but fell short of the 50,000 required to ‘win’. This is not a bad thing, however, as the story is far from finished. The final result is likely to be somewhere in excess of 80,000 words, but before I embark on completing it there is some further planning required as the story took a number of unexpected, but interesting turns that need me to re-visit the original vague outline I had prepared. Next year I will ensure I come fully-equipped with a complete outline at the very least.

A more successful story from NaNo this year is Wiener Blut, a novel written by Katharina Maimer, who you should be familiar with from our ongoing Every Photo Tells… podcast. Wiener Blut (Viennese Blood) is a modern fantasy about two very different worlds, set in Vienna and steeped in the history and traditions of that city’s café culture. Katharina has made the first chapter available as a free PDF download, but is also in the process of releasing it in podcast form, with the first three episodes and a stand-alone short story already released. Here is the short introduction, for a taster of the story:

Wiener Blut - Introduction [ 0:45 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

My own input into the podcasting process has been the editing of the episodes as well as recording all the music. The theme tune is ‘Es wird scho glei dumpa’, a traditional Austrian Christmas song. I have mixed several versions with different instrumentation, though the one appearing in the podcast is a simple classical guitar arrangement. Katharina has also released it in song form, with her singing the lyrics (in German, of course) alongside a slightly different arrangement. You can find this at the Music page of the official website.

I have also been invited to delve into the world of Wiener Blut in my own writing, so expect to see my next EPT story being set in Vienna, as well as a very short story for the 100 Word Stories podcast in the not too distant future.

Posted in Featured, NaNoWriMo - Tagged NaNoWriMo, songs, Wiener Blut

Every Photo Tells… Podiobook

Aug04
2010
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Every Photo Tells… is joining the ranks of podiobooks.com from next week (11th August 2010). The stories there are the same ones from the EPT website, though they have been re-ordered a little so that two-part stories are all presented back-to-back, presented as ‘Book 1′. The main site will continue as before, bringing new stories inspired by photographs, but those won’t appear at Podiobooks.com until another 6 months have passed and they will become ‘Book 2′.

Appearing on podiobooks will, we hope, bring in some new listeners as well as potentially some new authors too. The podcast is taking a break for August (there will be a photo and a single story, but no guest writers) whilst we get the podiobooks version completed, then will return in September. Over this period I’ll be working hard on ‘Some Other Scotland‘, so you can expect that to return to a much more regular schedule – Episode 20 has just been launched and there is plenty more to come.

Posted in Every Photo Tells... - Tagged Some Other Scotland

Captain Jack and Nessie

Aug03
2010
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I did a couple of guest spots a while ago that I haven’t mentioned here yet.

Digital Magic

I played the role of ‘Captain Jack’ in Philippa Ballantine’s Digital Magic podcast novel. It’s just a short few lines in the middle of chapter twelve, but it was good to be asked and made a nice change from the norm.

Scotland Burns

Over at HorrorAddicts.net I voiced a couple of parts for Rhonda Carpenter’s short story about the Loch Ness Monster and the end of days, featured in Episode 37. You can hear just her story at her website here.

Question Time

Apr15
2010
Leave a Comment Written by Mick

If you are interested in what goes on behind the scenes to put together an episode of ‘Some Other Scotland‘, you may like to visit two blogs that have been running interviews with podcasters over the last few months.

First of all, Rich at Random Pimpage has a series called “8 Questions”, where he asks 8 simple, if sometimes a little bizarre, questions to a number of people from the world of podcasting. Since this tied-in with the launch of Every Photo Tells…, you’ll find Katharina’s and my answers together at the site.

On the subject of Every Photo Tells…, we’re now into our third month of photo-inspired stories and already up to episode 8. So far there have been tales of love, assassins, pirates, monsters and even a classic whodunnit. There is plenty more to come!

More recently, a more detailed set of questions were put to me about writing and podcasting by Odin at his View From Valhalla blog. His questions go into depth about writing podcast fiction, techniques and equipment for recording and the goals of podcasting. Since he has had a number of people answering his questions in this “How I Do It” series, I would recommend it as a great introduction for new podcasters to pick up tips from those of us who have been through the learning experience already. My answers can be found right here. Incidentally, Odin also runs a regular review of podiobooks, so if you are enjoying ‘Some Other Scotland’ and would like to delve into other podcast fiction, he has some good recommendations for you to try out.

Posted in Every Photo Tells..., Some Other Scotland, Writing - Tagged Every Photo Tells..., Some Other Scotland, studio, Writing

Every Photo Tells…

Feb14
2010
Leave a Comment Written by Mick

I am very pleased to announce the launch of a new joint venture into podcasting fiction: Every Photo Tells…

Every month a photograph is posted on the website and the hosts, Katharina from the Luscious Leftovers podcast and myself, take it in turn to write and record a short story that is inspired in some way by the photograph. The stories will be podcast twice a month, then a new photo will be posted and the whole process repeats.

In the first month, we have a photograph taken from Edinburgh by Katharina, looking across the river Forth. We’re also pleased that Odin from View From Valhalla has been inspired by the photograph to write a story too, so this month there will be three stories to listen to. If you would like to submit a story based on the picture, full details of how to submit can be found on the ‘About‘ page of the website.

Katharina’s story for this month has just been posted on the site and mine will follow within a week.

Posted in Every Photo Tells..., Short Stories, Writing - Tagged Every Photo Tells..., Katharina, Writing

Waltzing With Werewolves

Jul29
2009
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Wolf

This week’s Great Hites episode includes the biggest number of stories to date, with a number of new authors joining in and existing authors pulling out all the stops to make this a really good stepping-on point if you’ve never visited the site before.

The prompt for the stories was “Silver Bullets; the real reason that some cowboys carried them” and as you can imagine this has resulted in a number of werewolf-westerns as well as a few more unusual approaches. There are 12 stories in total, so Jeff has split it into 4 chunks, but it is all well worth a listen or two.

Two of the stories are mine: “Waltzing with Werewolves” is a 100 word love story set to music in a sort of spoken-song format, whilst “Silver Solves The Dilemma” is a fairly traditional western tale, but with werewolves and a somewhat skewed moral code.

Incidentally, the introduction music for each part that Jeff talks over is the theremin solo from The Ballad of Rufus Amos Adams – the country song I wrote some time ago for the Masters of Song Fu. Follow the link for the whole song.

Over on ‘Some Other Scotland‘ this week, the action heads over the Atlantic to New York where the final scene shows how the influence of the story is reaching far beyond the shores of Scotland, with some devastating consequences. I was delighted to have Philip ‘NorvalJoe‘ Carroll join me as the guest voice for Razer’s American friend Kyle, who provides him with a place to lay low for a while. The two of us also concocted the creepy promo for Great Hites that you’ll hear in the same episode, which was fun to put together.

Live Interview and Chat

Finally, I have been invited to do a live interview and call-in chat with Podioracket.com on BlogTalkRadio on the 10th of August. I will have more information about this shortly, but in the meantime, visit this link to set an email reminder of when the show will be broadcast.

Posted in 100 Word Stories, Great Hites, Short Stories, Writing - Tagged Great Hites, interview, Norval Joe, podioracket, radio, Some Other Scotland, The Ballad of Rufus Amos Adams, Waltzing with Werewolves, Writing

"To The Clouds" – A life changed by the R34 Airship

May11
2009
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R34 at Mineola

Life can take you on interesting detours.

I sat down a couple of nights ago to write the next episode of ‘Some Other Scotland‘, only to find myself some time later digging through the internet for every scrap of information I could find about the R34 – the first aircraft to make a return Atlantic crossing. Why? It all ties in with the first ‘spin-off’ story from SOS, and I was checking some facts from the past before including them in the main podcast so that I wouldn’t end up contradicting myself when I come to writing the off-shoot. It seemed like a logical course of action.

What I ended up with, in conjunction with the latest prompt from Great Hites, was a short stand-alone story providing background for the main character of that story. It is, in effect, a spin-off from the spin-off.

This new story tells the tale of one year in the life of a rigger on the R34 airship, which was based at East Fortune, not far from North Berwick. As it stands, there is no direct link with the podcast story, but the forthcoming special episode will tie the two together.

Pay a visit to Great Hites’ latest episode to read the story or listen to me reading it, along with a number of other short tales read by their authors. Great Hites celebrates a year or podcasting short fiction this week, so drop by and show your support!

Posted in Great Hites - Tagged Some Other Scotland, Writing
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