The House of Grey Blog

Collin and I have been feeling the pressure to finish up The House of Grey for some time now. And while that is well underway, I looked back and realized that we let this pressure get the best of us. The forum has been neglected and lately the blog only has updates on the next episode and the episodes themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I get that The House of Grey is a great story and we’re working on it as fast as we can, but at the same time it is just the beginning of something much larger that we want to share with everyone. So in light of this reinvigoration, here’s what’s going on outside The House of Grey that y’all can look forward to:

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Ok, so we heard from a lot of you about the episode not being on iTunes and made an executive decision. The Finale of The House of Grey will be an epic 3 episode experience starting with episode 40 which I loaded tonight for Podiobooks.com to release. Look for it sometime tomorrow on iTunes. Parts 2 and 3 of the Finale will be released as episodes 41 and 42 respectively.  I committed Collin to finish up 2 and 3 before Christmas so any encouragement you want to send his way via Facebook, twitter, email, or by commenting feel free to do so.

Enjoy!

So 40 is being honed as I type. Collin is wrapping up the story, crossing his I’s and dotting his T’s…or something like that. We’ll both be off at the end of the week so I can put the thumb screws to him and hopefully have this out too y’all very soon.

Our wonderfully talented friend and fellow author (who has a very alluring reading voice I might add) Starla Huchton just added her tale The Dreamer’s Thread to Podiobooks.com. If you haven’t started listening to the story from her feed, head over and grab it from Podiobooks.com. She is crazy talented, the book has a serious who’s-who cast of the podcast universe, and it is a wicked good story to boot.

Remember way back when, we asked all of our fans to drop us their short stories? Well, since we are close to the end of The House of Grey, I am piecing together all of the tales we will be featuring. This will be a side project from Collin’s normal writing and will feature a number of our fans that have put their own fantastic yarns down on paper. We’re working with another local artist for the music, but you can get a preview of her work by heading over to her site.

That’s it for now. Have a great Turkey Day!

Seriously, who thought up this real job thing anyway? Can’t we all just be independently wealthy? I guess if that happened, who would shovel the snow off the sidewalk, right?

So here’s the deal…this thing called a real job kicked into high gear this last 3 weeks or so. Prior to that Collin was playing ManTracker finding him a real job. I tried to convince him that real jobs were no fun, but he wasn’t having any of it. But enough with the excuses already!!! I just sent Collin the edited chapters (notice that chapters was plural…). That means, he will clean them up tomorrow, I will lay them down tomorrow afternoon, and if Saturn is aligned in the house of Capricorn, then you will have the second to last episode by sometime Thursday or Friday. It’s a scary one, so it seems a little serendipitous that Halloween is at the end of the week too.

And in further news, Collin is frantically scraping the bottom of the magical storytelling barrel to get all those yums yums of awesomeness into the last episode of The House of Grey…at least the last one of the first book. So we are working as hard as we can. We’re supposed to get like a foot of snow here in Denver over the next 2 days, so maybe Collin will be snowed in and he can forgo that real job nonsense and finish up early. Hey, it could happen!

Hang in there…

Yep…it’s official. The House of Grey is up for the Best New Speculative Fiction Podcaster/Team award.  If fact, many of our fellow Podiobooks.com authors made the short list.  So Collin and I will be visiting the greater Atlanta area over Labor Day weekend at Dragon*Con. If any of our fans hail from there, give us a shout out and we can hang out. Super big huge thanks to everyone that has supported The House of Grey. Without you folks, we’d look pretty weird standing in a closet reading a book to no one.

Collin hits the Bar Exam on Tuesday. Send good vibes. After he regains consciousnesses, the last four episodes of The House of Grey will drop in rapid succession, so get ready. It will be both intense and sad. Intense that the flood gates of answers will unleash their retained waters and sad that the book will be finished :’( .  Oh but don’t worry my friends, we have lots more to come. Tournament of Blades, a few other Modern Fantasy Thrillers, the short story contest, and so much more.

On a final note, by the time most of you read this, HoG will have surpassed all of last month’s downloads. We’re talking over 13,000 just in July. Again, we can’t say thank you enough. I think we’ll have to start learning other languages just so it doesn’t sound so redundant! Let’s see…. Gracias, merci, arigato….

So the results are in. We took the emails, the comments, the replies, and the posts and these top 5 shook out.  So kick back and enjoy a walk down memory lane.

Speaking of the Parsec Awards, I sent off the nostalgic compilation to the committee. What can you do now? Well, send out good waves of karma, think good thoughts, if you happen to stumble upon a steering committee member or final judge send them cookies… ya know, the usual

As for episode 35, well the Parsec Award thing ate into my production time more than I expected (I mean how doyou come up with just 1 hour of good stuff from The House of Grey), so I have the corrections from Collin and it should drop tomorrow.  Now, just as an FYI, Evo (co-founder of Podiobooks.com) is on vacation this week and while he committed to getting episodes out, the guy deserves a huge break so it might not hit iTunes and Zune until a little later.

With that, enjoy!

That’s right, the modern fantasy thriller you have all come to love is in the running for the Parsec Awards. We’ve actually been nominated for quite a lot of categories including:

• Best Speculative Fiction Story (Novella Form)
• Best Speculative Fiction Story (Novel Form)
• Best Audio Drama (Long Form including Independents)
• Best Writing-related Podcast AND
• Best New Speculative Fiction Podcaster/Team

Collin and I are thrilled about the nomination and need your help!!!! We need to submit to the Parsec Awards Steering Committee a sample of the 6 best scenes from The House of Grey. The scenes can be chosen from anywhere in between the “Prologue” (Episode 1) and Sage & Paparazzi (Episode 31). So here is what we need from you… think about your absolute favorite scene (or scenes) from the book. What scene has just made the book for you thus far? What scene had you rolling on the floor, holding your breath, covering your mouth in surprise, or shedding a tear (laughter or otherwise)? Once you’ve picked it, comment on this post with what it was (try to include the episode number, but if you can’t just describe it as best you can)

The submission to the Parsec Awards needs to be in by June 28th so you need to get your comments in by June 25th so I have time to compile the sample! Once I do, I’ll post it so everyone can enjoy.

SPREAD THE WORD. Tell everyone you know that listens to the book to come and tell us about their favorite scene. If they don’t listen to the book yet, put it on their iPod, burn them CD’s, drive them to work and play it for them in your car, share your earbud with the person sitting next to you…then have them tell us what their favorite scene is.

I also created a new thread in the Forum for the nominations so you can post it there. Collin, Hilary, and I will also be talking this up in our town hall on Monday, 6/22.

Come to the Forum, Sign up and comment!!!

Wish us luck!!!

Episode 33…on its way to being finalized. Should be on schedule for later this week (mid week if all goes well… but since I am here in Cincinnati and my luggage is somewhere in Chicago… who knows what the week holds)

Strange Condition- Playing at Herman’s Hideaway June 6th and the Westword Music Showcase (great show every year) on June 13th

80,000 downloads- that’s right, The House of Grey went all Octogenarian!!! Seriously though… we say it all the time and will never stop saying it… you are the folks that made this happen. Keep spreading the word, cuz if my calculations are correct… we’ll hit the BIG 100K before the last episode… then we’ll have to do something special… I’ll set my minions to the task of coming up with something

CS

I will freely admit to feeding Collin’s… ahem addiction to Twitter. Notice the “tweet” button at the bottom of this post? Yep, now it’s easier than ever to RT (Retweet for all the non-Twitterified folks) updates. Just click on the button, sign in to Twitter, and the blog post fills in for you. Pretty snazzy huh?

So it’s really not French class, but we did want to reach out to all our non-English speaking fans and make life a little easier. I added a Translator widget that will convert the blog into 41 different languages. Like I said, pretty snazzy right?

Ok, ok, ok, on to the important stuff. Episode 32 will be out by the end of the week. I might have to call on the powers of Castle Gray Skull, but it will be there!

You’ve heard us mention the up and coming changes to Podiobooks.com, commonly referred to as Podiobooks 2.0.  And just because I am a glutton for punishment, I offered my vast knowledge in all things corporate-bureaucratic-red-tape, otherwise known as mad training manual writing skills, to the developers and they actually bought it.  So as those changes occur, I will be updating the tutorials and how-to’s for the new site and maybe possibly give you guys a sneak peek.

Lastly, Christiana Ellis, one of our fellow Podiobooks.com authors, has her book, Nina Kimberly the Merciless, coming to print through Dragon Moon Press on May 15th. I added her audio trailer below so you can check it out.

CS

The Website of Strange Condition 

I just wanted to drop everyone a line to let them know what is going on here in the next few weeks.

Chris and I are heading back to Vegas!!! Actually Chris did not go the first time, but he is coming this time around and we are super stoked. We are actually going to be working with the kids for two days in mid May doing some project planning and English lectures.  We are also looking to get some local media in hopes of promoting the ideas and use of WEB 2.0 for the classroom. This trial classroom experience with the kids has been great so far. He hope to take it to the next level by doing a potential charity for the school depending on the PROJECTS they submit at the end of the year. If you want to get involved go to the forum, sign up and interact with the kids. We have some really great ones.

I want to take this chance to thank Hilary and her school.  I don’t know where this is all leading, but this experience has been really great to be involved in.

For the trip in May (May 20th to be exact). I will give additional information as we get updates and  as we get closer to our visit. That being said, if you live in the area COME AND SEE US. RSPV and we’ll hit up a resturant or something. Send us a message on the blog or the forum. We love our fans so we feel this could be a great opportunity.

Strange Condition — is performing in the Denver area and I want you to go. This band is AMAZING. Go and see them you will be a fan for life.

I am on TWITTER. I know…I know i promised I wouldn’t do that, but hey this is a GREAT WAY for us to keep track of each other. If you get the TWITTER Deck (Just google Twitter Deck) then the system becomes really easy to use and manage. I actually really enjoy it. I enjoy hearing from you fans; you have no idea how much and I think this is another great way to do it. Connect to me (and chris through me) on the side there. We have a cool little widget that allows it.

Hey all, I checked my horoscope in the Weekly World News and sure enough, something about Saturn being in the 4th house of Neptune’s orbit as Venus completes her something-or-other. Anyway what that equates to is that I’m having issues getting 29 to load correctly to Podiobooks.com and I’m working hard with Evo to get it up there ASAP. I know some of you previously mentioned jogging with your computer strapped to your back…hopefully it doesn’t come to that. If you need the new stuff, like yesterday, grab the site feed (click the “Get Your Fix” button over there on the right) throw it into iTunes, Zune, Juice, etc. etc. etc.  and 29 will come through.

Everyone burn sage or open a fortune cookie…maybe that will speed things along. We’ll keep you updated.

CS

So episode 28 is so close to being ready for release…again another 2 weeks worth of content poured into 1 episode!! Should be here by the end of the week.

Collin and I are invited to a jam session with Strange Condition on Thursday. We are going to check out their tunes and finalize the selections that could be used for Tournament of Blades. If you haven’t already, head over to their MySpace page  and take the poll over there on the right hand side of the blog.

As you can see from the prior post, Mr. Earl had the pleasure of speaking to the students of Valley High School.  I’m working on the Press Release for the event and will distribute it later this week.  Look for it on Digg, Stumble, Facebook, and all those other sites and up its presence by voting for it.