All posts by jdsawyer

After a childhood in academia, J. Daniel Sawyer declared his independence by dropping out of high school and setting off on a series of adventures in the bowels of the film industry, the venture capital culture of silicon valley, surfing safaris, bohemians, burners, historians, theologians, adventurers, climbers, drug dealers, gangbangers, and inventors before his past finally caught up to him. Trapped in a world bookended by one wall falling in Berlin and other walls going up around suburbia and along national borders throughout the world, he rediscovered his deep love of history and, with it, and obsession with predicting the future as it grew aggressively out of the past. To date, this obsession has yielded over thirty books and innumerable short stories, the occasional short film, nearly a dozen podcasts stretching over a decade and a half, and a career creating novels and audiobooks exploring the world through the lens of his own peculiar madness, in the depths of his own private forest in a rural exile, where he uses the quiet to write, walk on the beach, and manage a production company that brings innovative stories to the ears of audiences across the world. For news and free stories, sign up for his occasional newsletter. Or find his contact info, podcasts, and more on his home page at http://www.jdsawyer.net

The Next Ten Thousand Hours, Ep 04

This week on The Next Ten Thousand Hours, we have an update on the Crudrat crowdfunding campaign, and talk about how to manage rapid expansion when projects get too big to keep in your head. Documentation, wikis, war boards, how they work in a collaborative environment–and how not having them can kill you.

Within you will find:

  1. A conversation on documentation and collaboration.
  2. Reading: A selection from Chicken Noodle Gravity
  3. Kitty’s Corner: I Don’t Watch Television, Really…

We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it!

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Free Will, Episode 04

It’s late. I can’t even deny it. Far too late to even be funny.

Nevertheless, I present you with Episode 4 of Free Will and Other Compulsions, In which Joss makes a decision, Ali makes a discovery, Percy wakes up, and then wakes up a sleeping alien intelligence.
 

 

Cast this week (in order of appearance):
Miss Kalendar as Alyssa Hartman
Kitty NicIaian as Fugitive’s AI and The Answering Service
Nobilis Reed as Jordan, the Nurse
Steven H. Wilson as Percy Scott
Stephanie Sawyer as Cassy Orinthal
and Kim The Comic Book Goddess as VAL
 

This week’s promo: Tales From Sheepfather’s Grove, a progrock concept album from Johannes Luley, an up-and-coming composer who also does the production for Robin Hathaway, who plays the part of Marian Shelley in The Antithesis Progression.

 

 

 

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The Next Ten Thousand Hours, Ep 03

This week on The Next Ten Thousand Hours, we have an update on the Crudrat crowdfunding campaign, and the unexpected consequences of having all your hard work pay off exactly as you hoped–and how to survive them.

Within you will find:

  1. A conversation on dealing with post-project letdown.
  2. Reading: A selection from Ideas, Inc.
  3. Kitty’s Corner: Pumpkins, Pumpkins Everywhere…

We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it!

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Free Will, Episode 03

Well, that’ll teach me to swear I’ll be on time…

Nevertheless, I present you with Episode 3 of Free Will and Other Compulsions, In which the Moon Girl confronts the search party, Bill Shelley has a chat with the President, Joss weighs his options, and a new character steps into our little drama.

 

 

Cast this week (in order of appearance):
Andrea Fender as The Moon Girl
Michael Lemonjello as The Fish Man (Search Team Leader)
Mark Smith as The Jet Pack Man (Search Team Assistant)
Nathan Lowell as Senator William Shelley
Benjamin Roberts as Shane
Kitty NicIaian as the White House Aide
Miss Kalendar as Alyssa Hartman
and J.R. Murdock as General Assange

 

This week’s promo: Crudrat kickstarter campaign. A kickass girl’s adventure sci-fi novel by Gail Carriger for which I’m producing the audiobook.

And this week in the post-show I tell you a bit about our new cast member, and explain a bit about my philosophy of science fiction–particularly young adult science fiction.

 

 

 

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The Next Ten Thousand Hours, Ep 02

Better late than never, right?

This week on The Next Ten Thousand Hours, we lift the veil on the goings-on at AWP in the run-up to the Crudrat crowdfunding campaign. We talk about what it took to put the video feature together, how we survived it, and the methods we resorted to in order to preserve the last wisps of our sanity.

Oh, who do I think I’m kidding?

This week on The Next Ten Thousand Hours:

  1. Behind the scenes on the Crudrat video.
  2. Reading: A selection from Sunday Morning Giraffe, episode 3 of The Lombard Alchemist Tales
  3. Kitty’s Corner: Caffeine, Coffee, and SCIENCE!

We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it!

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Free Will, Episode 02

http://media.blubrry.com/antithesis1/www.jdsawyer.net/wp-content/uploads/antithesis2-ep02.mp3A day late, but not a dollar short, I give you episode 2 of Free Will and Other Compulsions, Free Will is back.

 

 

I proudly present, Episode 1 of Free Will and Other Compulsions.

Cast this week (in order of appearance):
Andrea Fender as The Moon Girl
Michael Lemonjello as the Search Team Leader
Mark Smith as the Search Team Assistant
Nathan Lowell as Senator William Shelley
Danny Schade as Senator Shelley’s Secretary,
Derek Moore as Jim Hartman
Stephanie Sawyer as Cassy Orinthal
George Chlentzos as Dougles Reeves
Kim The Comic Book Goddess as VAL
Miss Kalendar as Alyssa Hartman

 

This week’s promo: Every Photo Tells short fiction and fiction contest podcast.

 

 

 

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The Next Ten Thousand Hours, Ep 01

This week on the podcast, we unveil The Next Ten Thousand Hours.

Popular memetics would have you believe that it takes ten thousand hours to get really good at something–fortunately, there are all sorts of podcasts and video channels and books to help you through that difficult apprenticeship.

But what about once you get to the vaunted ten-thousand hour mark? What then?

In this show, Kitty NicIaian and I team up to explore (or, to be honest, mock and laugh through) this next phase as it unfolds. Every episode will feature segments where we talk about craft and business issues, a section where I share readings of new stories, and a section where Kitty (who, among other things, is a humorist) shares observations on the absurdities of our local version of the universe.

This week on The Next Ten Thousand Hours:

  1. Introduction to the show and the workings behind-the-scenes at AWP
  2. Reading: A selection from He Ain’t Heavy, the nearly-released book 5 of The Clarke Lantham Mysteries
  3. Kitty’s Corner: BART Encounters

We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it!

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Feeds Back Up, Release Announcement

Now that the feeds are working and I’m back on the air, I thought you’d all enjoy a sample of a new work that shares some of <i>Down From Ten’s</i> comedic horror vibe.

It is with great <img align=”right” src=”http://www.jdsawyer.net/blog_pics/ideas_inc_blog.jpg” /> pride that I announce the release of my short novel <i>Ideas, Inc.</i>, which Alasdair Stuart of…well, everywhere…called “Effortlessly funny, cheerfully dark, and tremendously strange” before he went on to say a <a href=”http://www.sfx.co.uk/2013/03/13/blog-ideas-inc-review/”>whole lot more in this amazing review in SFX</a>.

This is a story designed to give you a rip-roaring, white-knuckle adventure with plenty of laughs and scares in a single, breathless evening. Of course, you’re free to take longer reading it, but I warn you: Once you pick it up you won’t want to put it down.

Available now in <a href=”http://createspace.com/title/4118185″>paperback</a>
And in ebook through <a href=”https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/265947″>Smashwords</a>, <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Ideas-Inc-ebook/dp/B00APBE4QK”>Amazon</a>, <a href=”http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Ideas-Inc/book-vKnlLbEmnkSh-28cz92m5A/page1.html”>Kobo</a>, <a href=”http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ideas-inc-j-daniel-sawyer/1113984731″>Barnes and Noble</a>, and a few other places as well.

<blockquote><i>The author of </i>Suave Rob’s Double-X Derring-Do<i> brings you a farce of the tradition of P.G. Wodehouse and Douglas Adams.

Best friends Caleb and Lenny hate each other. Stranded in the middle of upstate New York with two flat tires, one spare, no cell reception, and no idea what to do, they figure they’re pretty much screwed. Fortunately, they broke down right in front of a place that deals in ideas. For the special one-time fire-sale price of seventeen bucks, they can get a pack of seven completely original, brand-new, ultra-premium, never-before-used ideas. But will it get them out of trouble before they’re forced to talk to each other again?

Find out in this hilarious all-night adventure yarn that reveals the terrible truth behind the worldwide pigeon cabal!</blockquote></i>

Pick your poison, watch your back, and remember: the next bright idea just might get you killed.

Read the first chapter free here as a <a href=”http://www.jdsawyer.net/samples/ideas_inc-jdsawyer-sample.epub”>EPUB</a> or <a href=”http://www.jdsawyer.net/samples/ideas_inc-jdsawyer-sample.pdf”>PDF</a>.