Tactical Highlighter #8

This has been a pretty crap week. If anyone has the mystical ability to spend a week in my shoes and was contemplating it, pick some other week. It’s been fairly productive though. I wrote 29,343 words in NaNoWriMo as of yesterday and should be at about 31.2K before the end of tonight. Go me!

Of course, if I ever start thinking too highly of my word count, I’ll remember Nathan Lowell had 44,800 as of yesterday. Gee whiz, dude. Way to make the rest of us look bad.

Anyway, welcome to this week’s episode of Tactical Highlighter. I felt like I did very little listening this week, but still managed to find enough shiny things that I haven’t included all of them. Save some room for dessert, folks.

Audio:
• PodCastle episode: The Small Door by Holly Phillips. This story has a lot of elements I really love, but it’s hard to talk about them without spoiling things. Let me just say it has an ambiguous ending, and things aren’t as they appear.
• Drabblecast B-Side: Jeez Louise by Robert Scotellaro. You hear about the cheeto that looks like some saint or another, the Madonna on the back of a highway sign, or the toast that looks like Jesus? Amateur hour. This is just a wee bit bathroom-humor-esque so if that bothers you, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere.
• Well Told Tales: The Gangster’s New Clothes by George Wilhite. Well Told Tales is a sort of DIY podcast that features a lot of noir and pulp stories with a science fiction element to them. This particular story has almost nothing to do with the old classic The Emperor’s New Clothes, but really shines as an example of something that combines noir and SF together. Plus, it’s a fantastic story.
• P.G. Holyfield has been releasing a series of short stories related to his Murder at Avedon Hill story. The short stories are from a variety of writers and I think this week’s story is exceptionally awesome. It’s called The Old Gods and the Sea and was written by Patrick E. McLean. If you like fantasy or just plain enjoy good stories, you should check out Murder at Avedon Hill’s podcast. I’m not the hugest fan of Fantasy, and I absolutely loathe prologues. P.G. taught me a prologue doesn’t have to be boring and Sword & Sorcery fantasy can be thrilling. Of course, it’s not straight up Sword & Sorcery if that bothers you like it bothers me.

Bonus:
• Symphony of Science created an auto-tuned song from Carl Sagan clips called A Glorious Dawn. The closest thing I can compare the feeling of listening to this song is spiritual ecstasy. You might not like it, but give it a try. They’ve made the MP3 available for free download if you enjoy the song as much as I do.