In this first interview show,  Heather Roulo interviews  Amity Green, Kimberly Steele, R.E. Chambliss, and Jennifer Rahn.

Listen to the audio:

or download the file.

Here’s the release information from the publisher.

The Wickeds 
A Wicked Women Writers Anthology (Volume 1)
Available now at Amazon.com

Edited by Hollie Snider

HorrorAddicts.net presents thirteen horror tales from up-and-coming women writers.

This diverse collection of revenge, torture, and macabre is sure to quench any horror addict’s thirst for blood. Between these covers reside werewolves, demons, ghosts, vampires, a voodoo priestess, headless horseman, Bloody Mary, and human monsters that are perhaps the most disturbing.

With an exclusive interview of The Wickeds by Sapphire Neal. Lock your doors, bar your windows, and enjoy stories from: H. E. Roulo, Jeri Unselt, Linda Ciletti, Emerian Rich, Amity Green, Hollie Snider, Jennifer Rahn, Michele Roger, R. E. Chambliss, Arlene Radasky, Kimberly Steele, Laurel Anne Hill, and Rhonda R. Carpenter.

Proceeds will be donated to LitWorld, a non-profit organization that uses the power of story to cultivate literacy leaders around the globe.

H.E. Roulo is a sci-fi and horror writer. A former co-host, she rejoins us for specials and guest blog posts. Find out more at heroulo.com and see her in person at BayCon in May.

ePublish Unum created by Evo Terra and his partner Jeff Moriarty have just opened the first class to the public. It is an online class with only 6 people in each session.

The class will take you through the steps of taking that content you already have and publish it in an ebook format. Full details are <a title=”Get the full details here!” href=”http://epublishunum.com/offerings/workshops/quick-and-the-read-written-content-to-published-author-in-six-weeks/” target=”_blank”>here</a> lets just say that if you have ever thought of becoming a published author this course will guild you through the steps.

Only six students are allowed in the class to keep the individual attention we give students high. It’s a mix of live, in person video lectures via the magic of Google+ Hangouts, and specific assignments given and due each week. It’s highly structured with clear milestones, and students should all hit PUBLISH at the end of the sixth class.

In this course you will get:

Six live, weekly instructional sessions

Up to one hour of live instruction via Google+ Hangouts. The group meets at the same time each week, and we will discuss practical applications, give real-world examples, and then work with each of you in turn to get you through the work necessary.

Professionally crafted curriculum materials

We’re working with an experienced instructional designer to make sure the course work we give you is based on sound educational practices. This isn’t just the two of us goofballs throwing out our opinions. Though there’s plenty of that!

Weekly homework assignments

Wait… this is a good thing? Yes, it is. It will be much better than the homework from high school because this is work on YOUR book. Everyone works at a different pace, but our specific assignments are designed to take between three and five hours a week, keeping you moving forward towards having your beautiful, final, published book.

Small course size for interactive discussions

We want to give each of our students the time and attention to ensure success. That’s why we’re limiting the size of the class to six people. SIX. That’s it. Six of you will get personalized instruction each week to keep you on track through whatever is needed to hit that PUBLISH button in six weeks.

Connection with other Authors

We’re building a class for authors, and are looking for participation and interaction. We want people who will participate, share their own ideas and challenges. More than your instruction and your ebook, we want you to build connections that will help as you publish and promote more books down the road.

Know someone who could benefit from this class? They will really appreciate it if you’d direct them to  http://goo.gl/ CB2Uh to see if they’d like to be a part of this powerful course.

Nominating a show is simple. Visit www.parsecawards.com. To be eligible this year the podcast must have aired, or if it was a novel to have completed, between May 1, 2011 and April 30, 2012. Check the website for eligibility and category definitions, but don’t worry too much. The nominated shows and authors will be contacted and will verify their eligibility and category.

Once shows have been nominated by fans, the shows are contacted and asked to submit samples. The samples are reviewed by a steering committee which selects finalists. Finalists are then judged by a group of judges from outside podcasting and winners are announced.

Join in the excitement, show your love, and nominate your favorites.

In barely related news (but we’ve been wanting to mention it), long-time podcaster Mur Lafferty, one of the original co-founders of the Parsec Awards, is up for a John W. Campbell award this year. Good luck Mur!

Listen now

or download and remember to subscribe to Podioracket’s feed

Interviews

The Mask of Inanna by Alicia E. Goranson
Horror/Dark Fantasy Family Safe Audio Drama

Website: http://www.themaskofinanna.com
Twitter: @maskofinanna
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Mask-of-Inanna/249989415021695
Alicia E. Goranson is a Boston author and playwright. Her novel, Supervillainz, is a 2006 Lambda Literary Award finalist and winner of the 2004 Project QueerLit Award. Charlie Jane Anders, editor of  io9.com, says, “Alicia Goranson’s superpowers include searing vision, a powerful voice, and the ability to leap over genre boundaries.”

Matcher Rules by Mary Holland
Futuristic Fantasy
Podiobooks release date April 11, 2012
Website:  http://www.mary-holland.com
Get it at Amazon today!
Mary Holland writes social fantasy and science fiction. She has degrees in sociology, art photography, and library science and she has worked as a corporate librarian in Silicon Valley. She lives in the Santa Cruz mountains in California with three cats and one husband.

News

The Parsec Awards begin taking nomination on April 15th, 2012. Go to the website, grab one of the promos, and then spread the word and nominate you favorite podcast. http://parsecawards.com/

Brian Rathbone has a new Paranormal Mastery release. Lure is the first book in the Sam Flock Adventure series. The ebook is currently available everywhere for .99 cents. Click here to get it at amazon.

Our friend Ian Rutter has just release the acclaimed podiobook The Faeries of Birchover Wood – Book 1 – The Bad in ebook format. This fantasy is excellent for younger listeners.

Get it on Amazon for only $1.99 and if you are a Prime member you can get it for free! Or listen to it from Podiobooks.com.

Contests

The Masters of Macabre Contest is accepting entries. Time is almost up to take a stab at horror. Gentleman, entries close April 11, 2012. Head on over to the website for all the details.

Crossing The Line: What happens when you don’t fit neatly into one genre?

OK, it’s a story that has robots, mutant monsters, gunslingers, wizards, demons, giants and witches. It happens in a post-apocalyptic world neighboring our own which is accessed by a number of portals and gateways including the ultimate gateway; death. There’s time travel, Beatles music, psychic stand-offs, six-shooters, sorcery and action galore. Oh, and did I mention that the Emerald City of OZ makes a guest appearance? So you tell me – what genre does this fall into? Can I muddy the waters a little more and mention that the writer is renowned “horror” author Stephen King?

If you haven’t guessed it by now, the work described above is King’s Magnum Opus, his seven (soon to be eight) volume Dark Tower Series. This is just one of many works in our ever expanding literary universe that fails to fall neatly into one genre category. And to be honest… I love it.

As a writer, I sometimes find that my own work is a little hard to pin down to one specific genre, especially when I am trying to describe it to someone, query an agent, or post it in an eBook outlet. The best I have come up with is “speculative thriller”, but I wonder if I am doing the work justice or potentially shooting myself in the audience-grabbing foot.
Name any literary genre and you probably have specific images come to the forefront of your mind. Horror = blood, fangs, monsters and things that go bump in the night; Sci-fi = Space Ships, laser guns and aliens of every shape and size; Thriller = Lawyers, spies, evil corporations and plenty of twists and turns for our every-man or every-woman hero. If you dive down into the sub-genres, you get even more specific and, dare I say, more pigeon-holed; Sword and Sorcery, Gothic Fiction, Steampunk etc.

As an author, you want to find your audience by quickly indentifying your work in the market-place by genre. On the other hand, you don’t want to alienate potential readers who may overlook your work because they don’t identify themselves as “that kind” of reader, nor do you want to displease readers by luring them into your book under false genre pretenses. So I pose the following questions; 1) How do you accurately determine the genre (or genres) that your story, novella or novel fits into, and 2) How do you describe it if it fails to step in line with any one particular genre or another.

As a case study, I offer up my most recent novel ONE WAY (available on Podiobooks, iTunes and wherever fine eBooks are sold). Here’s a breakdown of the plot:
ONE WAY follows Barry and Jenny Griffith on the night of his would-be murder as they try to escape not only two serial killers, but destiny itself. It also alternates timelines to follow a newly widowed Jenny Griffith from the morning she learns of her husband’s murder through her journey of learning how to cope with the death of her true love. Along the way she meets a demure grief counselor who teaches her how to slip the bonds of time and “chrono-locate” back to the dark night her husband was taken from her. Will she be able to stop of pair of serial killers bent on torturing and murdering on the highways late at night, or is the past unchangeable?

So we have time travel, romance, and heart-pounding chases from demented killers. How would you classify this based on this brief description? (No, seriously, I am looking for suggestions here).

Let’s start with the time travel, a classic science fiction trope dating back to the H.G. Wells and beyond. Although I would say that this story happens within a window of four years of our “modern time”, so people expecting to see a bright, floating-car laden city or travel back to the old west and beyond will be disappointed. Other than the time travel this book bears no resemblance to its laser gun wielding, hyper-space jumping cousins in that genre. Would I be leading people astray to put it on the sci-fi shelf?

How about horror? Serial killers, chases through the snowy Maine woods (like King, I am a “Mainer” myself), knives, guns and plenty of blood to spray around would certainly put one foot into that dark, cold literary landscape, right? But no monsters, vampires, hockey masks or other familiar symbols of the genre show up. Not to mention this one is admittedly a little “soft-core” by some standards and may not satisfy the bloodlust of some horror fans. Beginning to see my conundrum?

Let’s try one more; romance. A loving wife goes through hell and back to be reunited with her husband in an attempt to change his fate so they may be live a long, love-filled life together. I certainly added enough mushiness and lovey-dovey stuff to convey a love story. However, there is no bodice ripping, love-making by roaring fires or rose petals to be sure. Plus, not many guys I know would openly peruse the romance rack at a book store (bricks & mortar or on-line).

Soooooooo… What do you think? I would really like to hear from readers and writers alike on how important genre categorization is to you and whether you think all this “line crossing” is a help or hindrance to a writer trying to market their work. In the mean-time, I think I am going to stick with “Speculative thriller about a woman who travels back in time to save her husband from serial killers” and see how far that gets me.

Now here is something different from a Podiobooks.com author.

Oleg and Rhonda spoke a few months back when his book was just being produced. It is now complete and he has a video. Since Oleg is from the Ukraine, our Skype connection wasn’t of high enough quality to do an audio podcast interview in the usual style. But we wanted to offer a blog post showcasing his fresh release of the YouTube video produced for the audio book.

Oleg holds strong beliefs about the idea of apocalyptic storytelling, In his work you will find information that ranges from doomsday and alien attack to political upheavals in our world today. In his stage play turned audio book, The World of Unicellular, the apocalypse has already happened and we in the 21st century are living in the aftermath of Christ’s return to earth while dealing with the effects of the Antichrist.

Oleg suggests that you ponder these questions. Who is this Antichrist? What are signs of a doomsday? What measures will be undertaken by aliens against the fallen mankind? In this book you will find answers to these and many other questions.

Slotted as a mystery, this play-turned-book is more of a rage against the ravages that our world faces today.

Oleg Seriy produced and scored the music for this YouTube video.
Listen to the Podiobooks.com book. Oleg’s website can be found here.

What if HEAVEN turned out to be just as dangerous as HELL?

Intrepid adventurer, Dayson Snow, has spent his life battling the greed of multinational corporations. When he arrives in Washington, DC with his long-time love, the spirited Yumi Mihara, he finds himself in a race to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Africa.

But Dayson’s plans go awry when he accidentally crosses paths in DC with hired killer Jean LaFourche, the recent recipient of a strange and macabre miracle… and in his attempt to stop LaFourche’s latest assassination, Dayson pays with his life.

But his real troubles have only begun… Find out how much trouble as the series continues in Volume Two and Voulme Three for only $2.99 each.

Also, two weeks from now Michael McGee is releasing two collections of travel stories to add to the dozen book titles he already has on Amazon. These are stories like surviving the SARS pandemic in Beijing, fighting off monkey thieves in Thailand, dancing with Geishas in Japan, etc. Check out all of his books today on Amazon.com.

Listen now

or download and don’t forget to subscribe to Podioracket’s feed

INTERVIEWS

Travis Heerman

Social media: On Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Website and blog at  www.travisheermann.com

Bio: Freelance writer, poet, novelist, screenwriter, podcaster, English instructor, poker player, biker, roustabout. Author of two published novels, plus Rogues of the Black Fury, forthcoming from E-Reads, a metric ton of role-playing game content for AEG and EVE Online, and short fiction pieces in anthologies and magazines, such as Cemetery Dance, Historical Lovecraft, Library of Horror Press, and others. He taught English in Japan for three years, where he stood out like a space alien with his head on fire, but he now lives in much larger world than before. He’s camped out in Nebraska, nursing his long-cherished dreams: a NYT best-seller, a produced screenplay, and a seat in the World Series of Poker.

Travis will be attending World Horror Convention in Salt Lake in March.

Tio Jorge by Vincent Meis

Website: www.vincentmeis.com

Bio: I grew up in the Midwest and at an early age I began writing plays, which I cajoled my sisters to act in. In the 1980’s and 90’s I published several pieces, mostly travel articles, in several different magazines. In recent years I have finished three novels and a number of short stories. All three novels are set at least partially in foreign countries—Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. I currently live in San Francisco.

Why Ya?

by Philip E. Carroll

I’m fifty-one years old. I have three children aged 7 to 25. I have two grandchildren. By day I’m a mild mannered certified orthotist.

“A what?” You ask.

An orthotist. I got my training in the army. They taught me how to shoot a rifle, sew and use a band saw. I make braces. I’ll brace anything but teeth.

Before the day job, during lunch and in the evenings I try to be a writer, and my preferred genre is teen/young adult urban fantasy.

When Rhonda asked me why I write YA fiction, I had to admit I didn’t have a clue. I’d never really thought about it. So I thought about it.

I got my start writing through the Great Hites podcast. It was a almost weekly prompt based writing contest. Each week I would take the prompt, sit down with it, and just start writing. It was very organic and unplanned. Consistently, my characters turned out to be in their teens or early twenties.

Stephen King says in his book on writing, “On Writing”, that we write because we enjoy it. Very few will succeed at making a living through writing fiction. So the rest of us must find a reason to keep doing it.

I’ve always enjoyed telling stories. My twin brother and I would put on puppet show and try to get neighborhood kids to pay to see them.

We had bunk beds, and at night we would lie in our beds and make up stories. We each had out cadre of characters complete with voices and attitudes. We would spend hours telling freeform stories, usually an offshoot of a movie, tv show or book. Even when we went through an uncomfortable phase of hating each other in 7th through 9th grades, we still told our stories.

Perhaps my story telling stayed at that point, with Roger and our gang of teenage characters living the lives and experiencing the adventures we couldn’t.

One of those hip pocket rules about writing is, “write what you know.”

I remember those teenage years better than any point in my life. I remember the frustration of being skinny, unpopular and shy. I remember the bullies who chased me from English to Science every day in seventh grade. I remember the awkward fascination with girls, the painful desire to experience, but the nauseating fear of communication.

The teenage years are filled with adventure, growth, experience, potential and excitement.

I’ve lived a lot. I’ve been to Africa, Mexico and Hawaii. I’ve seen the wealthy and the destitute. I’ve been in the Army and on the tops of mountains. Married for thirty years, I’ve raised a daughter to adulthood and have two children with special needs who joined our family through adoption.

Life has been an adventure. But nothing I’ve seen or done has ever compared to the stories Roger and I told as we lay in our respective beds.

–

THE PRICE OF FRIENDSHIP is family friendly teen/ya urban fantasy.
Download the free, serialized podcast at Podiobooks.com.
Find out more at www.thepriceoffriendship.blogspot.com
Follow Philip on Twitter @PhilipCarroll

About the author:

I began writing in October of 2008 with my entry in The 100 Word Weekly challenge #129. Since, I have written 172 consecutive drabbles for the weekly challenge, six novels, including four Nanowrimos, and countless short stories, some for benefit anthologies. THE PRICE OF FRIENDSHIP is my first published novel.

This blog first appeared at our own H.E. Roulo’s personal blog and is being reprinted here at reader request.

Writers looking to be published often ask how they can find markets for their short stories.

The very best site I’ve found for learning about anthologies and other publishing opportunities is duotrope.com. There, they let you search, sort, and track markets. Speculative fiction writers can also use ralan.com. Horror writers might find the Library of the Living Dead forum useful, especially Other Publishers if you’re looking for a mix of opportunities.

Usually writers looking to publish are in one of two situations. Either you have a story and don’t know what to do with it, or you’re looking for ideas of what to write that someone will want. Duotrope.com will help you in both cases.

If you have an existing story you’re trying to get published then do a search on duotrope.com. You put in the genre, length, and what kind of payment level you’re looking for (from non-paying, token, through professional rates) and it will find fits. Then click on each match and use the link to the actual website. Find the market’s Submissions page to make sure your piece is a good fit with that market. Always follow the submission guidelines. I don’t say this to make you freak out, and possibly drive you to not submit at all. That is not the solution. Just pay attention to what they want, and the closer you match their needs the more likely you are to be selected.

If you are looking for interesting markets to write stories for, then I suggest looking at the calendar of themed magazines and anthologies on duotrope.com. I subscribe to Duotrope’s weekly email that lists these by the date they close. That way, I can see what’s coming up that I might like to submit to. I’ve found that anthologies give you the best odds of being selected for publication. You know precisely what they’re looking for and need right now.

Duotrope is also the site I use to track all my submissions. Using the information provided by all the other authors tracking their submissions, Duotrope creates metrics on numbers of submissions, how long it’s taking to get replies back, and what percent of submissions are being accepted. It makes me feel more in control than just waiting forever and hoping they’re actually going to reply at some point. Duotrope tells me if my wait is unusually longer than what other authors are suffering.

This is how I learned about the Live and Let Undead anthology looking for stories about working zombies. I already had a short story about zombies working outside the protective dome on a poisonous planet, but it was too long to meet their guidelines. Once I cut down the word count to fit, I knew I had a good shot at being selected. Now my story “The Killer with Eyes of Ice” is one of 18 stories in the anthology that just came out on Amazon.com.

I’ll also be in a couple other anthologies coming out this Spring. In addition to what Duotrope tracks, I’ve created a spreadsheet listing all my works and all my dream markets.

Once you know other people in the field and start making a name, it is easier to be invited to write. And wouldn’t we all like to have the work come to us for a change?

Would you like more tips on publishing? Indie writing? Kindle Publishing? Let us know in the comments whether this is what you’d like to see from Podioracket.com.

Heather Roulo is the co-host of Podioracket.com and the author of the podcast novel Fractured Horizon. She has stories scheduled to appear in three anthologies in 2012. Visit www.fracturedhorizonnovel.com for more tips on publishing from H.E. Roulo.