I recently started a series of videos on YouTube called "Safe Danger". If you haven't seen them, this URL
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkK8IwbGZak

will take you to the page of the latest (which I hope is also visible below) and from there you can navigate to the rest using my channel (angrypyjamas).

Safe Danger: Low-Risk, Non-Extreme, Peril-Less Adventures in Suburbia. "Ice". Ultra-low-risk thrill seeker, Mike Bennett investigates whether or not wearing socks over your street shoes helps foot traction on snowy, icy roads.

Happy New Year!

It's quite late here and I really should go to bed because I have to work in the morning (I'm going back for a spell). However, I thought I'd just drop a line to say that Underwood and Flinch Episode 4 is now live at Libsyn and iTunes.

It's strange being back in the podcast novel format after being so long in the short story set up of Hall of Mirrors. With a short story podcast, you drop one episode and it's done, with a podcast novel, you show people an onion and peel a little off with every episode. Of course, for the listener, it's not always clear where things are going: if it were a paperback, they could just turn the page and know what's coming next, but with the podcast novel, it's all utterly (and sometimes perhaps frustratingly) mysterious.

Episode four throws the audience off-balance from the comfortable footing that they have got used to with episodes 2 and 3; but everything happens for a reason. Nothing is without consequence, especially acts of diabolical evil, which must always have... repercussions

After months of slogging at the typewriter - well, laptop, but romantic images of frenzied fellows in Parisian garrets linger - Underwood and Flinch, my second podcast novel, has begun at www.underwoodandflinch.com

The first episode can be found at the other end of this URL:
http://...com/7ttctu

And in case you don't know, there's a 'prequel story' to the novel in the Hall of Mirrors podcast called Night Crossing. You don't need to hear it before you begin the podcast, but it wouldn't hurt if you did... honest ;-)

Hall of Mirrors 18: The Green Man, is now live. Here is a link to the MP3 media file (though I don't know if MySpace will allow it)

Hall of Mirrors: The Green Man

If you subscribe through iTunes, you may need to re-boot your subscription since I've been absent for so long :-)

Hope the world is fine with you
Cheers for now
Mike

Sometimes 8: The Human Chair, is now live here:
Sometimes 8: The Human Chair

Features the story The Human Chair by Edogawa Rampo
and music from Lene Lovich

Hello there
Just a quick note as I munch on a lunch of cheese and crackers. Damn these are good. Should I eat more, I will that give me, er, problems later? Cheese can be a double-edged sword, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I'll put them aside for a moment while I bring you up to speed on novel 2. I recently started getting up at 5am to work on it - some 2 hours before I need to get up - because it's the only thing brutal enough to focus me on the task. If I try and write after work, I always manage to find other things to distract me (like this).

So, is the new regime working? Yes it is, I get between 1 and 2000 words a day down, and I'm now closing on the climax to the second section of the story. It's a three-act thing, like One Among the Sleepless. I'm actually finding the whole thing quite exciting at the moment. It is, in my humble opinion, better than One Among the Sleepless. It's also better than anything thus far in the Hall of Mirrors. I'm telling you this because I don't want you to think that my absence from podcasting is spent just eating cheese and crackers and having problems later. In fact, today's the first day I've had cheese and crackers in years. Later, when I've eaten too many and I'm howling in the bathroom, I'll probably remember why it's been so long. Is this too much detail? Of course it is, forgive me.

Oh, and talking of podcasting, I'm going to put something out soon. Not sure what, could be a Hall of Mirrors episode, could be a Sometimes episode. Either way, I need to get something out soon, just so as people don't think I'm dead.

And on that note, I'm going to get some more cheese and crackers and a cup of tea. Some thrill-seekers go swimming with sharks, others leap off buildings and pull their chute a few feet from the ground; me, I go back for more cheese and crackers. Call me crazy, but I'm addicted to the rush I get when I open the fridge.

If One Among the Sleepless were to have a soundtrack, then one song that would necessarily feature would be Bert Kaempfert's version of Autumn Leaves. This was the track that Mick and Sally danced to after last orders were called at The Black Pig.

At the time I wanted to put the track on the podcast episode, but I only had it on vinyl and couldn't - not to mention that the fact that I'd be breaching copyright laws etc etc - so even if I could have, I wouldn't have legally been able to.

Now, however, thanks to the miracle of modern turntable to MP3 technology, I have an MP3 of the song which I can post here on MySpace on a specially-made site. Again, due to copyright laws, the song can't be downloaded, but you can listen to it, and even be its friend. Oh, I daresay I'm still breaching copyright by putting it here, but what the hell, you can't buy it on CD or MP3 anywhere on earth, so I figure I'm just doing the late Bert a favour.

Here's the link:

http://www.myspace.com/lastordersattheblackpig

Ahhh, eet eez soooo romantic  

If One Among the Sleepless were to have a soundtrack, then one song that would necessarily feature would be Bert Kaempfert's version of Autumn Leaves. This was the track that Mick and Sally danced to after last orders were called at The Black Pig.

At the time I wanted to put the track on the podcast episode, but I only had it on vinyl and couldn't - not to mention that the fact that I'd be breaching copyright laws etc etc - so even if I could have, I wouldn't have legally been able to.

Now, however, thanks to the miracle of modern turntable to MP3 technology, I have an MP3 of the song which I can post here on MySpace on a specially-made site. Again, due to copyright laws, the song can't be downloaded, but you can listen to it, and even be its friend. Oh, I daresay I'm still breaching copyright by putting it here, but what the hell, you can't buy it on CD or MP3 anywhere on earth, so I figure I'm just doing the late Bert a favour.

Here's the link:

 http://www.myspace.com/lastordersattheblackpig

Ahhh, eet eez soooo romantic 

Hall of Mirrors 17: Give Me a Hundred is now live.

MySpace disables my external links so there's no point in posting one here, but if you go to my website (www.mikebenettpodcast.com) you'll find links.

I hope you enjoy it.

Hello
I've been off work this week, 'work' being writing and podcasting. I've been hosting a cousin and a friend who came over to visit. We had a jolly time, but now it's back to the job in hand. The first matter ont he business agenda is getting the new Hall of Mirrors episode up.  

On the last Sometimes, I mentioned the possibility of doing older stories that weren't horror. People have been very encouraging about my doing so, and so I've recorded the very first story I ever wrote (excluding the things I wrote under duress in school). 'Give Me a Hundred' is that story and I hope to post it inside 24 hours. That may not happen though, as builders are tearing up our apartment tomorrow and for several days to put in a new heating system. It's tough enough recording when a bird is singing or a bus goes by, a pneumatic drill is an altogether different pain in the arse.

In other news, the novel has also been neglected, but I'm getting back into the thought process as we speak. I have a technique: I record loads of songs for the soundtrack of the non-existent movie of the film of the non-existent book, and it psyches me. I've been playing this soundtrack for the last hour and I'm ready to get back in the saddle just as soon as I get Give Me a Hundred online. What is that soundtrack? Here's some of it:

Matt Monroe - I Will Wait for You
Soy Marco - Alberto Iglesias
Killing Joke - Invocation
Second - Segunda Vez
Garbage - Crush
Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch
Carl Orf - O Fortuna
Marilyn Manson - If I was Your Vampire
Nine Inch Nails - The Four of Us are Dying
Leonard Cohen - A Thousand Kisses Deep

It's like a wheatgrass, Red Bull and lighter fluid cocktail for the uninspired mind because it summons the scenes that in turn summon the words that will hopefully fill the book. Aspiring writers - try it: envisage your movie; add your soundtrack; write your book.