Three years ago, we ran our first story. That story was "
Another Man's Run" by
Matt Wallace. It is hard to believe that Variant Frequencies has been going so long. When we first started, this podcast was intended to be a showcase of the writing by Matt Wallace and Anne Stringer. Over those three years, it has evolved into a three-time Parsec Award winning anthology featuring many different authors.
In the beginning, we had no idea what to expect from Variant Frequencies. Podcasting was still pretty new, and there were very few podcasts that did fiction stories. Now there are many great podcasts out there that do that.
Variant Frequencies has done exactly what we wanted it to do. Matt and Anne's work has receive excellent reviews. They both have published work. Matt's book, "
The Next Fix," is an anthology of stories that have mostly appeared on this podcast. Some of his stories have even been purchased for film production. There will be more about that in the future.
Our story today is by an author that many of our listeners will be familiar with. It is written by
Jack Mangan.
Jack Mangan is an author, podcaster, musician, father, etc., born in New Jersey, but now residing in Arizona. His "
Jack Mangan's Deadpan Podcast" features interviews, commentary, comedy skits, original music, and a great deal of community-contributed content. Jack's "
Spherical Tomi" was among the first wave of podcast novels, and was the first number one title at
Podiobooks.com. His fiction and non-fiction writings have appeared in numerous online, print, and podcast venues, including such prestigious outlets as Interzone Magazine, Tales of the Talisman, the Amityville House of Pancakes anthology, SFReader.com's yearly "Best Fiction" contest, the Wander Radio podcast, and the Beam Me Up Podcast and terrestrial radio show. Jack has also lent his vocal and writing talents to countless new media guest appearances and performances. He seeks to shake up perceptions and provoke independent thinking, through music, comedy, writing, and his outspoken, sometimes controversial views. More info about Jack Mangan and his work at:
http://www.jackmangan.com.
We have an all star cast for this one.
CAST:
Heather Welliver - Sometimes Co-host of
Grailwolf's Geek Life.
Heather sings with the band, The Shillas. The Shillas music can be purchased at
amiestreet.com/theshillasMost recently I narrated for
The Drabblecast the story Daydream Nation
Paulette Jaxton's Form Letter Rejection Theatre
www.flrtpodcast.com I am featured in the Stories: Socks Today, Thanks For The Memories and Regarding The Barry Fitzpatricks Navigator.
My favorite narration I've done so far is "Longing For Langalana" by Mercurio D. Rivera which is Transmission #4 at
www.transmissionsfrombeyond.com where you can also find my reading of "Heartstrung" by Rachel Swirsky
I have read several stories for the various Escape Artist's podcasts including
Escape Pod,
Podcastle and
Pseudopod.
I played the part of Ann, Wil's wife in Philippa Balentine's
Chasing The Bard.
As far as upcoming, I am excited to say I will be reading the main role of Ciris (think Billy Ray Cyrus) in P.C. Haring's podcast novel "
Cybrosis" which is in production now and will be coming out later this year.
Kreg Steppe - Kreg Steppe is Husband, Father, Podcaster, Web Developer, amateur photographer, and sometimes cartoonist.
He Co-hosts Technorama (a Tech, Science, and Scifi Podcast) with Chuck Tomasi at
http://www.chuckchat.com/technoramaHis blog and links to his work can be found at
http://www.spyndle.comJohn Cmar - The best voice in podcasting who doesn't have his own podcast. John's blog is
Saint Nickanuck of the Tundra. John is Associate Program Director, JHU/Sinai Medicine Residency Program; faculty, Infectious Diseases at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore.
Matt Wallace - If you are a regular listener, the you know
Matt Wallace.
Cameo appearances by:
J.C. Hutchins - J.C. Hutchins will make his print debut in June 2009 with Personal Effects: Dark Art. Hailed as "the future of storytelling" by CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker, "compelling" by director Gore Verbinski and "impossible to put down" by Final Destination writer Jeffrey Reddick, this new supernatural thriller series combines the experience of a traditional novel with an Alternate Reality Game. The book is now available for pre-order at
Amazon.com.
J.C. is also the award-winning author of the free 7th Son audiobook thriller trilogy, the most popular "podcast novel" series in history. The trilogy's first novel, Descent, will be published in Fall 2009 by St. Martin's Press. Learn more — and download the trilogy for free — at
7thSonNovel.com.
J.C. Hutchins has been featured by The New York Times, The Washington Post, OMMA Magazine, Blogger and Podcaster magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, and the BBC.
Chris Lester - Chris is a self-proclaimed “mad scientist in training.” He has been telling stories for about as long as he can remember, and credits a writing contest in elementary school for introducing him to his muse. Chris is the creator of The Metamor City Podcast, a sci-fi/fantasy series where magic meets technology in a city of dark wonders.
Trained as a biologist at the University of California-Santa Cruz, Chris received his master’s degree in 2004 and promptly went out to try to start a career in the middle of the worst job market the American scientific community had seen in half a century. After three soul-sucking years in corporate America, he is now working as a science teacher at a charter school in Oakland, CA. When he isn’t writing or planning lessons, he enjoys role-playing games, playing piano and guitar, sketching and digital painting. He misses his family’s three Shiloh shepherds terribly. You can find out more about Chris at his personal web space, www.chrislester.org, and explore the world of Metamor City at
www.metamorcity.com.
Seth Harwood - Seth Harwood grew up in the Boston area, graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2002 and currently lives in Berkeley, CA with his wife Joelle and their dog. He teaches writing and literature at Stanford University and the City College of San Francisco.
In 2005, about a month after getting married, Seth and Joelle landed in San Francisco, where he started writing Jack Wakes Up. After almost 9
months of working on the novel, he decided he was ready to podcast it. In July 2006, the Jack Palms Crime Podcast Series was born. As JACK WAKES UP was followed by A LONG WAY FROM DISNEY, JACK PALMS II: THIS IS LIFE, and JACK PALMS 3: CZECHMATE, his podcast audience grew into a sizeable world-wide following, as covered by the San Francisco Chronicle
here.
When Breakneck Books published JACK WAKES UP in March 2008, Seth's online audience (the Palms Daddies and Palms Mommas) jumped all over Amazon.com and bought enough copies to raise the book to #1 in Crime/Mystery and #45 overall in books.
JACK WAKES UP was subsequently purchased by THREE RIVERS PRESS (Random House) and will be re-released in May 2009.
Seth’s other jobs have included commodities floor trading clerk, bartender, copy-editor for Avon Products, rare book cataloguer, librarian, English teacher, and freelance journalist.
His stories have been published in Post Road, Ecotone, Inkwell, Sojourn: A Journal of the Arts, and The Red Rock Review, among others, as well as in the online journals Storyglossia and zeek.net. His story “White” was nominated for a Pushcart prize.
For the new blog, look no further than the home page. For the old blog, the archives,
check here.
Neil Stringer - Neil's biggest role to date in podcasting has been the part of Ferus from
The Failed Cities Monologues by Matt Wallace. Neil will be returning to that role later this year.
Scott Sigler - Scott is the author of INFECTED and CONTAGIOUS, major hardcover thrillers from Crown Publishing. He landed his book deal by giving away multiple novels as free, serialized podcasts that generated a large online following and saw over 4 million downloads of the individual episodes.
Scott reinvented book publishing when he released EARTHCORE as the world's first "podcast-only" novel. Released in twenty weekly episodes, EARTHCORE harkened back to the days of serialized radio fiction and picked up 10,000 subscribers along the way.
His next podcast novel, ANCESTOR, drew 30,000 listeners and saw 700,000 episodes downloaded by fans. The buzz caused Sirius Satellite to pick up the novel, making it the first audiobook serialized on the satellite network. When ANCESTOR was released in print from a small independent publisher, it hit #7 overall on Amazon.com despite no marketing, no advertising and no media coverage.
Scott's innovative use of technology puts him at the forefront of modern-day publishing, and has garnered brand-name exposure among hundreds of thousands of fiction fans and technology buffs. He's been covered in the New York Times, NPR, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, The Huffington Post, Business Week and Fangoria.
Michigan native, Scott lives in San Francisco with his wife and dog.
http://www.scottsigler.netI want to say congratulations to Scott for his achievement of making the New York Times Best Seller List. That is so amazing. Scott is showing the power of giving away your work on podcasts. And, I'm confident that many more podcasting authors will be getting there too.
There is one thing that we would like to ask of you. Variant Frequencies has had a fantastic three years. This year, we want to take it to the next level. One way that we can do that is to get more notice on iTunes. We would love it if you would take the time to comment about VF on iTunes. The comments that we have are excellent, we just need more. Thanks.
"Creature of God" by
Jack ManganA botched deal. A quietly menacing, unholy, fatherly crime boss. A waking nightmare of small-time criminals, gothic bars, and neon churches. Johnny finds himself immersed in a dark, sinister underworld, struggling desperately to hold on as his humanity slips away.
Variant Frequencies
Copyright 2009 Rick Stringer and Matt Wallace
http://www.variantfrequencies.com