February 16, 2016

Podcast: “The Leviathan Chronicles” Episode 3, by Christof Laputka

Podcast: “The Leviathan Chronicles” Episode 3, by Christof Laputka

This is the third and last excerpt episode of “The Leviathan Chronicles.” If you like what you’ve heard so far [and we’ve been getting rave reviews from other listeners already!], we encourage you to go to Podiobooks and download the entire podcast. The story [so far] is a total of 26 episodes. It’s an easy download to iTunes, with one caveat: the episodes may download for play in reverse order. This is a shortcoming of iTunes – we’re still trying to find the workaround for this. If you do, please let us know so we can share it with other listeners! A final word: The author, Christof Laputka, clearly spent an immense amount of his own money producing “The Leviathan Chronicles.” Please, please tip him. You’ll be hard pressed getting more enjoyment from your five bucks.  And…

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February 16, 2016

Podcast: “The Leviathan Chronicles” Episode 2, by Christof Laputka

Podcast: “The Leviathan Chronicles” Episode 2, by Christof Laputka

As promised, here is episode 2 a three-part excerpt from “The Leviathan Chronicles,” a full blown media extravaganza of a podcast. You really won’t believe your ears. We’re posting the first three episodes this week, Monday through Wednesday. If you find yourself hooked, as we did, you’ll want to go to Podiobooks.com to get the rest of the episodes. Here’s an overview from the podcaast website: “The Leviathan Chronicles is a revolutionary science fiction audio drama podcast featuring the voices of over 60 actors, professional sound effects and an original music soundtrack. Think of it as a blockbuster movie for your ears! There are 25 episodes in Season 1, and 13 episodes in Season 2 as well as several Special Edition Episodes – all available for FREE. You can download each episode here on the website or on iTunes….

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February 14, 2016

Podcast: “The Leviathan Chronicles” Episode 1, by Christof Laputka

Podcast: “The Leviathan Chronicles” Episode 1, by Christof Laputka

As promised, today we begin a three-part excerpt from “The Leviathan Chronicles,” a full blown media extravaganza of a podcast. You really won’t believe your ears. We’ll put up the first three episodes this week, Monday through Wednesday. If you find yourself hooked, as we did, you’ll want to go to Podiobooks.com to get the rest of the episodes. Here’s an overview from the podcast website: “The Leviathan Chronicles is a revolutionary science fiction audio drama podcast featuring the voices of over 60 actors, professional sound effects and an original music soundtrack. Think of it as a blockbuster movie for your ears! There are 25 episodes in Season 1, and 13 episodes in Season 2 as well as several Special Edition Episodes – all available for FREE. You can download each episode here on the website or on…

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February 12, 2016

The New World of Podcasting

The New World of Podcasting

As we conclude the podcasts of my two novels, Wild Blue Yonder and its sequel, Madrone, we enter into a brave new world: a podcast with extraordinary production values. By that I mean what we call in the business “FX” or special effects. A multi-faceted soundtrack to accompany voices, possessing all the sounds you’d expect to accompany a movie but in a sound-only broadcast: in other words, a podcast. What you’re about to hear, beginning next Monday, February 15, is “The Leviathan Chronicles,” a podcast with the most sophisticated soundtrack I’ve yet to hear in all my days and years of listening to podcasts. Nothing even comes close. I would love to share with you all kinds of details about the many people in the cast, the sound engineering, the energy of the script itself, but the creator,…

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November 15, 2015

Why Podcasting Matters

Here at the Fictional Café, you will only find fiction podcasts. These are original productions, whereas a lot of podcasts you listen to are likely to be rebroadcasts of radio shows, or portions thereof. And they are primarily nonfiction, for example almost anything you hear from NPR [no disparagement intended]. Creating a podcast is a collaborative process. Someone with a good voice must be enlisted or hired to read the novel. He or she is going to read the novel at least three times while making the recording. We’re very fortunate to have Leonard Mailloux reading my two novels, he of the mellifluous voice who understands how to read the nuances in. Next, there must be an engineer to take the raw digital recording and polish it up like a shining apple. This means taking out…

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November 4, 2015

New Podcasts: Sample James D. Best’s “Murder at Thumb Butte”

New Podcasts: Sample James D. Best’s “Murder at Thumb Butte”

Editor’s Note: Back in 2014, we published an excerpt from James D. Best’s novel Jenny’s Revenge, the story of a jilted lover out for blood… literally. A seasoned writer, James has made his foray into audio books, and as big proponents of this ever-growing method of experiencing literature, we are excited to share a few chapters from another of his installments in the Steve Dancy novels: Murder at Thumb Butte. Without further ado, here are a few snippets from Best’s scoundrels and scalawags of the old west. * * * Murder at Thumb Butte Chapter 1:   Chapter 13:   Chapter 22:   *** James D. Best is an accomplished writer of western tales, most notably his Steve Dancy novels: The Shopkeeper, Leadville, Murder at Thumb Butte, The Return and Jenny’s Revenge. He blogs about…

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September 30, 2015

International Podcast Day is Today!

International Podcast Day is Today!

If you don’t know a lot about podcasting, today is the day you can learn more at International Podcast Day! This one snuck right up on me, even though I just delivered a presentation last Saturday at the Independent Publishers of New England conference on the subject. I love podcasting. It’s a technology which gives readers a chance to listen to works of interest on their phones, in their cars, while jogging or bicycling – whenever and wherever they want. That’s why you’ll see my novels podcast right here on Fictional Café. Very soon you’ll be seeing many other podcasting offerings here from other artists as well. So jump over to learn more about podcasting at International Podcast Day, join the conversation at Blab, and check out our offerings here at the Café, too! Jack

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March 14, 2015

About the Podcasts

We think podcasts of books are the audio format of the future. Last year, we presented our founding barista’s novel, Wild Blue Yonder, and some other fictional works and old-time radio dramas in downloadable audio files. Jack’s been a DJ and media nut most of his life, so you never know what he’s gonna podcast next. OUR NEW PODCAST This week, we begin the new podcast series of Jack’s second novel, Madrone. It’s the second volume in the Nathaniel Hawthorne Flowers story, and it’s received rave reviews from readers. Now you can listen to it here. We’ll publish one chapter a week for the next 24 weeks. The podcast is read by Leonard Mailloux, a lifelong radio broadcaster and broadcast writing practitioner. Len is Senior Faculty in the Communications Department at Simmons College. Sound engineering by Walking…

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June 10, 2014

F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s Famously Unknown Story

    Few readers have ever read Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s short story, “The Diamond As Big as The Ritz.” Even fewer know it was broadcast on an old-time radio show called “Escape” which ran for several years in the latter 1940s and early 1950s. And even fewer know it was broadcast three times, with three different casts, on “Escape” in 1947, ’48, and ’49. Sam Edwards stars as John T. Unger and Nina Columb as Kismine.  Enjoy a light-hearted fantasy thriller by an author from whom you would not expect such a tale!       Please click the arrow below to listen.

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June 3, 2014

Flash Gordon, A Radio Classic

A few weeks ago, we played a re-creation of a classic short story by Stephen Crane, “The Blue Hotel.” What you’re about to hear is another adaptation: an early radio serial, “Flash Gordon.” This is the debut episode from an original – although bootlegged – script, adapted from the original comic book. The radio program debuted on April 27, 1935, with this episode, “Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo.” The cast is an ad hoc group of faculty and staff, The Lotsa Luck Players of the Fat Chance Radio Theatre, at the New England Institute of Art, circa 2007. The producer is Larry Miller; the production was directed by Jerry Goodwin. Larry and Jerry created and engineered the sound effects. The music is from Franz Liszt’s “Les Preludes,” a piece used again and again in old time radio…

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