I also spoke over at The Dead Robot’s Society, a great podcast on writing. I spoke with the guys about voice acting.

Enjoy!

There are many links in this episode that should be listed here and I just don’t have the time right this second to put them up so get your pen handy.  Soon there will be a post link to hear about what’s going on with my health and et al.

Enjoy

Feel free to email, leave a comment, or call in with other questions.

Tee Morris is a beloved founding father of the podcasting community; co-creator of Podiobooks.com, writer of four social media books, and the first novelist to serialize his novel.

On the 5th of January 2010 Tee found himself facing raising his daughter (with the alias of Sonic Boom) alone, after the sudden, shocking death of his wife Natalie.

The podcasting, writing, and social media community gathered around and within days had raised over $10,000 to cover funeral expenses and other pressing bills Tee was facing. This response was incredible, and showed just how much Tee has touched the lives of others.

However now, as a community we are turning our attention to Sonic Boom’s future. She is only five now, and relying on Tee to provide everything for her. We have the aim of providing a trust buffer for her, so that she can go to college if she wants.

Nothing is going to replace her mother, but the funds raised will give more opportunities . So writers, podcasters and creative types of all stripes are offering up items for auction.

This event will be a webathon run by Podcasting’s very own Rich Sigfrit, with a plethora of special guests and fun. Rumor has it there may even be a studio audience.  It will take place live online at 10amEST  February 27th 2010. Watch the event here

We’ve already got over one hundred awesome auction lots, with more rolling in daily (from 3 chapters read by Agent Laurie McLean, signed books and podcasts, a handwriting analysis course, clothing, to artwork by the man who voiced Pilot in Farscape) – so follow us on twitter (boomeffect)  or subscribe to this feed to keep an eye on the goodness. And if you can’t make it, you can always make a proxy bid.

But unless grandma is visiting, the cat needs to go to the vet, or a meteor visits our fair planet, you should try and be there.

You wouldn’t want to miss the Social (Media) event of the season after all!
So join us 10am EST 27th February 2010, and let’s make a difference in the life of this most awesome of little girls.

Here’s my lot for the auction!

SB015- Custom made audio promo

Promos are hard! Finding just the right words, music in 60 seconds to draw people to your product or promo can be harder than finding a needle in a haystack warehouse. So why not get someone else to do it?

The lovely and talented Kimi Alexandre will take the burden off you. This auction lot is for 60 second audio promo with background music. Kimi will help write the copy if there is none, voice, edit, and produce it.

What could possibly be simpler?

This item will be auctioned in the Bespoke items timeslot on February 27th.

Can’t make the event?  Then place a proxy bid

Donated by: Kimi Alexandre
Current highest proxy bid: $US50

My plot wall has taken on the same connotations. I stare out at it and where I use to see possibilities and exciting scenes…I begin to freak out at the possibility of writing them.

“They” aren’t kidding when they say fear is a huge factor in letting success pass you by. I don’t know who “they” are…but I’m sure they are out there and I’m sure they say it.

So what am I afraid of and how silly do I feel for being afraid in the first place? The answer to the last question is “I feel tremendously silly and foolish.” What I am afraid of is a little harder to answer, but we’ll give it a try.

• Fear of disappointing people – What if I do something that disappoints my teacher, my family and friends, my readers
• Fear of failure – what if I never manage to push myself to accomplish my weight, writing, etc goals?
• Fear of success – I would have said this wasn’t the case but when I think about it…I am..what if I finish this book and I can’t crank out another one?

Those are my main fears and I must find a way to get through them. I went over to check out Milli Thorton’s site “Fear of Writing” and am looking into her book. What do you do to over come your fears?

You’d be surprised how often the right sidekick can take a good story and push it to the next level for me.  I see it as the author’s opportunity to make a serious impression on the reader, because a funny, mean, horny, cute, or sarcastic sidekick is often the thing I remember most about a book.  Here’s an example of how the right sidekick can make even an untried urban fantasy standout from the crowd…

Over at Dirty Sexy Books we have an online book club.  Each month we tackle a new genre, we nominate books within that style, and then we vote on a single winner.  Our theme for February happens to be urban fantasy, so we put together a list of eight contenders.  The list is great, if I do say so myself, but it’s never easy for us to pick a winner.  We’re often flying blind, and while we appreciate good reviews, we rely on the covers and blurbs heavily.  I think it’s safe to say that our February winner was picked in large part because of the sidekick. 

Our winner is Spellbent by Lucy A. Snyder.  The cover is particularly striking, but what’s even more rare is that it shows the sidekick, a ferret named Palimpsest.  Isn’t he cute perched on the dragon-snake-thing?  This is not the first ferret sidekick I’ve encountered in an urban fantasy (Kat Richardson’s Greywalker series comes to mind), but showcasing the ferret on both the cover and the blurb has piqued our curiosity.  It seems like such a small thing, but in this case it made the difference. 

While most books don’t feature their sidekicks quite so prominently, they can make mundane scenes magical.  Take Midian in M. L. N. Hanover’s Unclean Spirits.  He’s a cursed vampire who resembles a rotted corpse, he chain-smokes, and he cooks like a gourmet French chef.   I enjoyed his grumpy and gruff observations so much that when he did not make an appearance in book two, Darker Angels, the sequel felt flat by comparison. 

Sometimes a good sidekick can even be an inanimate object.  I particularly enjoy UF series where the heroine wields a weapon with its own name.  Kate Daniels has Slayer, and Dante Valentine has Fudoshin.  This tradition goes back to Tolkien’s The Hobbit when Bilbo acquired Sting (or even farther back if we include Excalibur).   Even when the sword doesn’t have a name, such as Merit’s katana in Some Girls Bite, I like it when the heroine treats it with respect.  I’ll never forget when Merit received her red lacquered beauty, and the way she introduced herself to it with a little speech.  I find that sharp steel is a girl’s best friend in many urban fantasies.

While animals or supernatural beings make particularly excellent sidekicks, boring humans need not apply.  If they’re present, I figure they serve the same purpose as the red-clad crewmembers on Star Trek; they’re dead men walking. Even the most beloved characters are never completely safe though, and sometimes it enhances the story to kill off the sidekick.  I know, it sounds cruel, like taking a pot shot at Bambi, but it injects emotional drama, danger, and a sense of purpose into the plot. 

These kinds of decisions should never be made lightly, and this is why I read stories instead of writing my own.  There’s always a risk that you’ll alienate the readers if you remove one of their favorites, but that can also happen when trying to introduce new characters too.  I recently finished White Witch, Black Curse by Kim Harrison, which is the lowest rated book in the wildly popular Hollows series.  After I finished the book, I read back through the Amazon reviews, and a lot of hot, angry criticism was directed at the introduction of a ghost character who had a shared history with the heroine.  It’s interesting that Ms. Harrison introduced another new character in the same book that met with the opposite reaction.  Nearly everyone loved the small, cute gargoyle, but the ghost guy was persona non grata. 

Now personally, I have seldom met a sidekick I didn’t like, but Ms. Harrison’s latest book shows that there are exceptions to every rule.  If I could conjure the perfect sidekick it would be funny, fierce, and otherworldly.  I don’t care if the humans bite the dust, but when the trusty sword breaks, or when the faithful sidekick is slain, I’ll shed a few tears and wonder who will take their place.

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Rebecca runs the blog Dirty Sexy Books and is a book lover who has taken her fascination with sublime storytelling and pushed it to new and unhealthy extremes.