Tags
Cast of Wonders, Now Cydonia, Parsec Awards, Podcasts, Rick Kennett, The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, The Road to Utopia
Posted on behalf of Rick, by Rowena:
Over the past few years I’ve been having some success with podcasts, finding them a more receptive market than traditional print or even traditional e-print. Most of my fiction submissions these days go to these audio web productions, particularly as they’re open to reprints. A good way to recycle the back catalogue. Most of them pay token amounts or are freebies, but that’s OK. I’m in this more for the fame than for the fortune. Though I’ve never really considered my work as Young Adult, Cast of Wonders, a podcast which specializes in this sub-genre, has accepted several adventures of my gay space girl Cy De Gerch. (Because they’re YA I only send them the stories where the Sapphic element is non-existent or very low key, though it’s surprising what will pass for YA these days.) A couple of the Cy stories have also been done on the more adult orientated Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine.
Round about the middle of last year I happened upon a list of podcasts nominated for the 2013 Parsec Awards, what I think of as the podcast equivalent of the Hugo. (Are there Hugos for podcasts?) There in the single reader category was my Cast of Wonders story, “Now Cydonia.” Gosh! Further down in the multiple voice-actors category was my Dunesteef story, “The Road to Utopia Plain.” Golly! But as they were listed there among more than a hundred other worthy contenders I entertained no false fancies. A couple of weeks later Cast of Wonders emailed to say “Now Cydonia” had made the finalists. Looking, I was astonished to see “The Road to Utopia Plain” had also made the finalists. Now I was doing nothing but entertaining false fancies.
Anyway … both stories won in their categories. False fancies fulfilled. A week later on YouTube I saw the awards ceremony which had been held at DragonCon in Atlanta, Georgia. The one for “Now Cydonia” was presented by Sylvester McCoy, the last actor to play Doctor Who in the original series. As a child of the sixties who’d watched Dr Who from the very beginning, all I could think as I watched the presentation and heard my name uttered by the man himself was, “Sylvester McCoy … he’s rather short, isn’t he.”
My novel The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is now available via Amazon in both ebook and old school dead tree versions. Ernie Pine the Reluctant Ghost Hunter gets chased by a Thing … on several occasions. Hair raising! Skin freezing! Heart stopping! Mind boggling! Foot tapping … er, yes, there’s a couple of songs in it including that well known romantic ballad “I Enjoy Being a Ghoul.”
Blurb for The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
“I hate ghosts! I’ve played follow-the-leader with a bunch of dead men, fronted up to a demon with all my runes round the wrong way, been half strangled by a book illustration, nearly killed by a bunyip in a launderette washing machine. So when Raissa invited me to a séance I was sure was a fake but turned out to be real, I knew there could only be trouble for Ernie Pine. And there was – wedging a witch, an apprentice magician, an alcoholic Vietnam veteran and me all too literally between the devil and the deep blue sea …”