The DeadpanMMMMM Gathering: A Review

In Episode 8 of J. Daniel Sawyer’s current fiction podcast, Down from Ten, Katie, one of the characters, says of the retreat she’s on, “This is our heaven.”  This past Saturday night, I felt exactly the same way about the event I was at, albeit to a lesser degree.  I was sitting in the Love Long and Prosper Studios (a.k.a. Dan and Cj’s living room) with a whole bunch of people from our podcasting circle and friends of those people, and we were recording a live Duel of the Fates for the Deadpan Podcast. I love all the people I know from podcasts for who they are online and on-pod, and they’re just as wonderful in real life. When we were all together in one place, doing what we loved, it felt amazing.

The DeadpanMMMMM Gathering was a meetup of several of the regular members of the community over at the Deadpan Podcast comment boards. We decided to have a meetup in the Phoenix metro area over Labor Day weekend because two of those members, Kris M. and Ryah “The Energizer Bunny” D., were coming to town for the North American Discworld Convention. I attended and had a fantastic time. I stayed with the wonderful and gracious Dan and Cj for three nights (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night), and we partied hard all three of those nights. Jack, Ryah, and Cj also got together for meals on Thursday before I got there, and on Monday after I left, so the gathering really lasted five days in total.

The first night I was there, Friday night, I finally got to go to #EVFN (East Valley Friday Nights), which I had been reading about and wishing I could go to for at least a year.  It was exactly what I had hoped for. I got to see Evo, Sheila, and Jack again, plus Kris, Ryah, Debbie, and Eliza Sea, and I got to see Studio 5C, one of the venues in the East Valley where #EVFN has frequently been held before. Afterwards, nine of us walked down the street to the nearest Irish pub, Rula Bula, and had a delicious dinner.

Saturday was my favorite day of the gathering. I went grocery shopping with Cj in the morning, and in the afternoon, I made party favors and watched the 1980 Flash Gordon movie and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, neither of which I had seen before. Then it was time for the barbeque. Dan made delicious burgers, and we had a wonderful group of people there. Before and during dinner, ditto, EssBee, and Vanamonde joined us for the fun via Ustream, which added to the fun.  After dinner, we set up the recording equipment and recorded a live Deadpan Palooza discussion of the aforementioned Flash Gordon movie.  Once again, Vanamonde was a trooper, staying up until the wee hours of the morning to talk with us over Skype. When we were done with that, we took a break, made and took shots, and ate cake. Then Evo and Sheila arrived, and we did our second recording session of the night, this time a live Duel of the Fates. Jack, Evo, and everyone else there were their usual entertaining selves. It was a really, really special experience to be in the same room with these people while they were demonstrating their show-hosting talents. I am immensely proud and privileged to be a part of this group of friends.

On Sunday night, we rented one of the party suites at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel, where the Discworld convention was going on, and hosted a room party. There was beer, pizza, Canadian candy, good music, and good conversation with good friends. When other convention-goers started arriving at the party, I stepped naturally and happily into my role as the Deadpan Ambassador, greeting the newcomers and explaining who we were and what our podcast was about. I enjoyed doing that.

I had to get up early the next morning to get to the airport. The DeadpanMMMMM Gathering was a wonderful weekend of fun that was over all too soon.  More content related to this weekend can be found here:

#deadpanmeet on Twitter (That was the hashtag we used for this weekend. Warning: some tweets NSFW!)

Cj’s pictures from Saturday night

The Deadpan comments board during the event

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.

Launch of “Infected”

Today was the day many people involved in the world of podcasting had been anticipating for a long time. One of the pioneers of the concept of releasing novels via podcast, Scott Sigler, officially broke into traditional publishing not long ago. His first novel, Infected,was launched in bookstores everywhere today. Because I believe in the power of podcasting and wanted to help show the world that podcast listeners can, in fact, translate into sales figures, I went out to my local Borders this evening and bought a copy.

I’ve never really been into horror fiction before (except for Goosebumps books, which barely qualify), but I’ve been listening to the current podcast release of Infected, and I find myself enjoying it, in spite of my general aversion to violence. Honestly, I’m reading it to find out the details of the ending. (I’ve stupidly managed to be spoiled as to the gist of the ending. I started following Scott Sigler’s works after listening to The Rookie via Podiobooks (I liked it even better than Infected), and the interview episode at the end of The Rookie spoils the gist of the ending of Infected, so it’s my own fault.)

I’m crossposting this entry to my WordPress and LiveJournal blogs. I don’t know if anyone in my reading audience on either of those blogs reads horror novels, but if you do, I highly recommend that you read this novel.