The Questors From Effpiem, Episode 1: The Dead Pan

To celebrate the 100th episode of Jack Mangan’s Deadpan Podcast, a group of its longtime listeners and contributors recorded a fan-created episode. I was asked to contribute some audio fiction, and I did.

“The Questors From Effpiem” is a serialized fantasy story starring members of the community over at the Deadpan Podcast. Deadpan Episode 100 showcases the strength of our community as well as celebrating our host, and the members and spirit of the podcast and its community inspired this story. I am very excited to announce that the first of my story’s six episodes was released today as part of the Deadpan Podcast’s celebratory 100th episode. I’m flattered that it’s at the end of the episode. Subsequent episodes of the story will be released in future episodes of the podcast.

About This Episode

Seven citizens of the land of Effpiem have set out on a quest to recover lost knowledge. After dinner goes horribly wrong, they encounter a friendly psychopomp who tells them they must complete an additional task, but also provides them with a shortcut to their destination.

Voice Cast:

• Jack Hosley as WNDRWolf
• Jeremy from Seattle as Himself
• Justa J0e as Himself
• Ed from Texas as Himself
• Rhettro as Jack Mangan, the Death of Pans (we surprised the real Jack Mangan with this episode, so I couldn’t ask him to record lines for it)
• Ryah Deines as Ryah
• Paul Maki as John Boze

Music:

• Opening and Ending Theme: “Journey’s End,” Guardian Mind Mix
• Battle Music: “New Wave of Terror,” Alter Der Rune
• Travel to the Underworld: “Spirit Man,” Matt Mango

The first two of those songs are available at the Podsafe Music Network. (The other one has been played on the Deadpan Podcast many times before.)

Sound Effects:

• Forest Background Sounds: “evening in the forest,” uploaded by user reinsamba
• Campfire Sounds: “Fire Burning v2,” uploaded by user pcaeldries

Both of these sounds were found at the Freesound Project and are licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License.

Images and Ideas:

• The notion of Jack Mangan as the Death of Pans is not mine. It originates from Cheyenne Wright’s drawing of Jack.
• Justa J0e contributed the joke about Metallica.

Matthew Wayne Selznick’s Brave Men Run Webathon

This truly is an amazing year for novelists who podcast their novels. There are six of us who have (or had) a novel released in print this year:

• First it was Seth Harwood with Jack Wakes Up back on March 16…
• Scott Sigler with Infected on April 1 (which I posted about)…
• Matthew Wayne Selznick with Brave Men Run: A Novel of the Sovereign Era today, July 13…
• Tee Morris with The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant: A Billibub Baddings Mystery on August 8…
• Philippa Ballantine with Digital Magic, also on August 8…
• and last but certainly not least, Mur Lafferty with Playing for Keeps on August 25.

I am excited, gratified, and joyful to be part of a community where there is such close contact and friendship between writers and their fans, and living in an era when it is possible to use the power of the web, podcasting, and RSS to publish your work to an appreciative audience. I cannot wait to do that myself.

The strength, unity, and warmth of the podcast fiction community shone forth especially brightly today, during the eight hours of Matt Selznick’s Webathon. Due to church and house-cleaning responsibilities, I wasn’t present and listening for the entire eight hours, but I still had an absolute blast. The webathon was hosted at Ustream.tv, which gives you a chat window right next to the live streaming video window. We listeners chatted with each other and with Matt, whom we could see and hear in the video. We announced when we’d purchased our copies of Matt’s book, Brave Men Run, from Amazon, and we monitored its rankings on the Amazon chart. I believe the highest it got during the webathon was #67 overall (that is, in the list of the top 100 most popular books), #26 in the Literature and Fiction category, and #3 in Action-Adventure. It was #72 overall the last time I checked. (Edit: It’s up to #65 overall as of 5:30 PM Pacific time on July 13. Woohoo!) That’s quite an achievement, and it could not have happened without all of us rallying behind Matt.

Matt Wallace and J.C. Hutchins just showed tons of class during the chat today. They’re both well-respected writers themselves, but whenever they were in the chat room, they did nothing but give props and praise to Matt Selznick and celebrate his achievements. I admire and respect them for that. Hutch, especially, deserves props for rallying the troops to buy more copies of the book. This is another of the things I love so much about this community: We all support each other without reservation.

Also, during the webathon, Matt Selznick read us short stories written by fellow podcasters, but set in the same universe as Brave Men Run. The only one I was able to listen to all the way through was Mur’s, which was titled “You Must Be My Lucky Star.” I enjoyed it, as always. The WiFi connection at the local Panera Bread, where I spent the afternoon, was being used by quite a few people, so I could only get bits and pieces of streaming audio and video while I was there. We got to hear a special treat near the end of the webathon: a very rough draft of the first chapter of Pilgrimage, the sequel to Brave Men Run. I enjoyed that, too, even though I could only hear some of it.

The chat room had such a wonderful, celebratory, friendly, and supportive mood to it. I really loved being there and hanging out with everyone. During the after-party that continued in the chat room after the live video had ended, someone actually asked me where I could be found on iTunes. I was quite flattered; I guess I blend in well with all the other podcasters already! I explained that I don’t have my own podcast just yet, and directed the person who had asked about me to Jack Mangan’s Deadpan Podcast instead, since that’s where I contribute the most. She subscribed right away. There were one or two other people earlier in the chat who said they were subscribing to it, too, because it came up in the conversation surrounding me. This was the icing on the cake of a truly wonderful day. I love my Podiobooks Tribe.