Author: Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.

Dragons’ Truth is now a Podiobook

Dragons’ Truth is now available in an additional format.  Sticking with the idea that it’s reasonable to charge money for physical products and that digital products should be available free (or at least published under a CC license), the downloadable version of the audiobook of Dragons’ Truth is available for free through Podiobooks.com.  As with the E-Book versions of my novels, you are welcome to pay for the digital copy if you like (see modernevil.com or the Kindle store to pay for the E-Books; more options coming soon), through the donation link at podiobooks, and I’ll get 75% of whatever you donate (the rest goes to running the site & feeding to all the people who download and don’t donate), or you can just grab the entire book for free and enjoy it without spending a penny.  The whole book is available there now.

So, the formats Dragons’ Truth is now available in are:

Digital, for free under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License<:

  • E-Book in any of (currently) 7 DRM-free formats
  • Episodic Podiobook subscription

 

Physical, for $:

  • Paperback book for $12.99
  • Audiobook on 4 CDs for $24.99
  • Audiobook on 1 MP3 CD for $12.99
  • Kindle E-Book, list price: $8.35 (usually available for $6.68)

 

You can also listen to the first chapter of Dragons’ Truth for free without signing up for a Podiobooks.com account by visiting dragonstruth.com.  If you enjoy what you hear, please consider buying the audiobook on CD, on MP3 CD, or in paperback.  If you don’t want to pay full price, there are usually stores listed at AbeBooks or in the Amazon Marketplace that will sell you new copies of the paperback at a significant discount (and I still get my share of the wholesale cost – though obviously, ordering directly through modernevil.com is the best way to support me as an independent creator, I understand the need to be frugal), and you still get a “real” book instead of data on a disk.

Oh, and one more thing: If you do decide to read the book for free online, or listen to the audiobook for free through Podiobooks.com, could you please take a couple of minutes and review it?  You can rate/review it at Podiobooks.com directly, Amazon reviews are always helpful, blog posts are great, even a < 140 character review on Twitter or Plurk would be good.  I will gladly link to any reviews, blog posts, SM profiles, et cetera from both dragonstruth.com and this blog, so please let me know if you do write something about any of my books.  (Even if you just talk about what you didn’t like!  I can certainly work to improve future releases.)  Oh, and be sure to tell your friends, too.  I’m sure they’d enjoy it.

OR: Why I can’t stand your University friends

(Original title:) Insufferable Idiots Academics

So, I know I didn’t blog about it before we left, but Mandy and I are on “vacation” right now.  We had considered a long road trip, including the RoboGames last weekend in SFO, plus fun road-trip attractions such as Hearst Castle, Yellowstone (her father lives near there), Devil’s Rock, Mt. Rushmore, et cetera… but decided (primarily because of money) that we would instead go straight to Laramie & Cheyenne, WY where her family and friends live, and come straight back.  Not just saving on gas, but on admission to attractions, inevitable hotel costs in SFO (it’s reasonable to sleep in the car overnight at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere, or a WalMart parking lot in a small town, but less so in a major city like SFO), and the additional cost of so many more days of eating on the road (we’ve been eating a LOT of PB&J, but one can only take so much of that…), we decided that whatever much fun those things might be, for less than 1/3 the cost we could still visit her family (I’ve never met Mandy’s mother, and Mandy wants to meet her new niece while still a baby) and buy Rock Band, which has already provided more hours of entertainment than one day & night in SFO (ie: the cost of just a night in a hotel room and a meal for two in SFO).  Anyway, we looked at maps a bit and the “fastest” route (per Google Maps, and our own reckoning) straight to Laramie and back is about 2200 miles.  So, I fiddled around, got us off interstates for the most part, added interesting stops like Roswell and Los Alamos, NM, and Moab, UT (read: Arches and Canyonland National Parks) to the route, and still came up within 1/2 a gallon of gas of the original 2200 miles, with less stress (ie: aggressive interstate drivers) and prettier views, and things to look at.

Right now, we’re in Laramie, WY, where Mandy’s friends from University live.  She did two Bachelor’s degrees here at University of Wyoming, and lived with some of these people for much of that time, so they’re “like family” to her.  I’ve met Tessa before, she came to Phoenix last year, she’s pretty nice, we get along fine, we have things in common and can speak intelligently about a variety of topics freely. Today we hung out with her, walked around part of “historic downtown” Laramie together, and had a nice day of it.  Tessa’s sister seemed nice, if quiet, as well.

Then there are the others.  The boys.  Linus and Flynn.  We have a lot of shared interests.  They do an online comic (I’ve done 12 different online comics at various times, myself, plus collaborated on several others), they’re mac users, sci fi geeks, Linus is interested in religious studies, philosophy, Japanese culture, et cetera, and Flynn is an artist as well… And these are just a few of the things that came up in conversation in a couple of hours today; from talking with Mandy there’s a lot more that we (theoretically) have in common.  Even a lot of political and economic ideas, which I rarely can speak about without raising ire.  And yet.

And yet, most of the time today, when they got to talking, all I could do was keep my mouth shut. Continue reading OR: Why I can’t stand your University friends

little ‘o this, little ‘o that

I’ve been feeling a bit down, lately. Getting things accomplished is somewhat more difficult in these emotional doldrums.  I’ve been feeling disjointed and unfocused, often even conflicted when it comes to how to proceed with my individual stories and pieces of art.  But I’ve got a bit done.

I put Chapter 1 of the Dragons’ Truth audiobook up at dragonstruth.com.

I added a link to dragonstruth.com over at teelmcclanahan.com, and re-arranged the page a little.

I’ve been waffling for the last week or so on exactly what colors to use for a piece I sketched out, but I spent a few hours working on it in Photoshop last night, pre-visualizing various color schemes, and came upon something which should be both in line with my original thoughts and interesting to look at.  I threw the first coat of paint on it tonight:

coat of black paint

I also started and finished another painting this week.  I’m calling it “things i’ve lost“, and I’ll post later with more images and information on making it:

things i've lost

Yes, that’s my hair.

What else?  Hmm…  I’ve uploaded Dragons’ Truth to Podiobooks.com twice now; I’m told it should go online Monday.

Oh, and I’ve been Plurking a lot lately.

Quick June ’08 First Friday post

  • Pre-paying for two months on Roosevelt Row with reserved corner space: $70
  • Materials for building a portable “Gallery Wall” to show art: ~$100
  • Cost of re-ordering business cards after giving away 300+ last month: $64
  • One and a third gallons of gas for the generator (ie: lights): $5.36

And that’s just the new stuff this month.  That doesn’t include costs like canvas, paint, ink, and other supplies that made the art, the cost of having books published, printed, and shipped to me so I can offer them, or the roughly $600 (off the top of my head) I’ve spent on creating the audiobook version of Dragons’ Truth (which I forgot to take any copies of with me tonight). Some of those costs I don’t have to pay again; the printer for printing audiobook packaging & disc labels, the portable wall, the setup costs for books, the audio equipment for recording audio books, et cetera. Still, there has been quite an outlay of money to get things up and running, and the bulleted list above only represents the obvious, new, and direct costs of doing the Art Walk since doing it last month.  There’s just one more bullet to add:

  • Total revenue from sales of books and art at the Art Walk, tonight: $5

F_ck.

Unfocused, energetically mushy

From me, on Twitter, a few hours ago:

“My mind is all mushy. Too much free energy, perhaps. Too many little things bouncing around and off each other. I need a lens.“

Signs I have not been blogging enough: It’s June 4th, and there are no June blog posts yet!  Tragedy, I know.  This is why I’m not a “blogger” as they say.  I just don’t care enough, especially about posting on any well-defined schedule.  I want to post when I have something to say, not to have to come up with something to say because it’s time to post.

Unfortunately, right now, I don’t have much to say.  My mind has been … swimming, lately.  Ungrounded.  Unfocused.  A lot of incomplete thoughts and ideas and plans floating around, but none of them sticking.  Nothing really coming together.  Not enough focus.  Ooh, maybe a list will help:

  • Write a study guide, annotated edition, and/or companion to Dragons’ Truth
  • Paint some new paintings
  • Figure out how to use manipulation of relativity for 1/2-done, broken story
  • Write 3 or 4 new time-related stories
  • Get over fear of marketing
  • Get ready for First Friday Art Walk
  • Work on Sin Eater book
  • Decide how you want to record Lost and Not Found & prepare for it
  • Do some more videos
  • Do something with your mess of a hair-do
  • learn bookkeeping/accounting/something
  • clean
  • play more Rock Band
  • twitter more
  • plurk more (or …less?)
  • edit existing time-related stories
  • work on painting of “The Phoenix & The Lobster” as it is being called around here
  • put together a mailing list
  • figure out some new ways to market books
  • buy some pegboard hooks
  • wire up more paintings
  • speaking of which, select the paintings I want to take with me to the Art Walk
  • start a new poetry journal
  • blog more
  • add dragonstruth.com to teelmcclanahan.com
  • add Chapter 1 of the D’T audiobook to dragonstruth.com
  • link to dragonstruth.com from the listings for D’T on Modern Evil Press
  • cry
  • write study guides for the time-related stories
  • figure out why ASU hasn’t re-admitted me yet
  • do I really want to go back to school in the Fall?
  • is it actually a good idea to go further into debt?
  • I know it’ll help keep the bills paid, and I’ll end up with a Fine Arts degree, but… I worry
  • last month I only had $175 in revenue, and over $600 in business expenses: WTF?
  • the bulk of that was to be able to make the audiobooks, but so far: Zero Sales
  • probably because of very little marketing
  • probably because I don’t like marketing
  • bleh

I don’t know.  I don’t know.  I just don’t know.