Dungeons and Dayjobs podcast

Trailer of the Temptress video re-released

2012-01-15T13:13:00.000-08:00

Melinda had deleted her video where she reads my story "Trailer of the Temptress" on one of the occasions when she felt crappy and deleted all her videos & her Youtube channel. (She usually re-opens a few days later, but doesn't upload her old deleted vids.) I found this back-up copy burnt to cd-rom and got her permission to post it on my YT channel, for your viewing pleasure. Sorry, embedding is disabled, but click on the link above to watch. Thanks!

And as long as I got your attention for a moment, you might want to know that Dungeons and Dayjobs is now available in ten ebook formats from Smashwords.com for 99¢, paperback and hardcover from Lulu.com, Kindle edition from Amazon, even on the iTunes bookstore. You can't swing a cat around here (the internet) without hitting some edition of it. Get you one!

Whew!

2012-01-10T18:22:00.000-08:00

That's the sound of blowing dust off this blog. Last post was in 2008. Anyway, I'm planning to upload some more readings, and as soon as it goes live (if they accept it), I'll post links to the Smashwords ebook versions of Dungeons & Dayjobs.

Unfortunately Melinda's video reading of Trailer of the Temptress has evaporated. If I can find a backup copy of it burnt to a disk, I'll upload it to my youtube account where it'll have a longer shelf-life. Meanwhile, if you're new here, there are still some stories below for your enjoyment. Thanks.

My Terrifying, Dry Warrior - Chapter 2: Kidding the Buddha

2008-07-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

"As I fell down the other side of the fence toward the slobbering jaws of the dog, I regretted that I had never tried Campari mixed with Capri Sun."

Even if Gus gets away from the dog, how will he escape from its owner, an ambiguously amiable dude who calls himself "Buddha" and threatens to call the truant officer unless Gus tells him a joke? Listen to Kidding the Buddha, Chapter Two of the five part cliffhanger series "My Terrifying, Dry Warrior" to find out!

[Run time: 17 minutes, 3 seconds. The link above points to VBR 16.4 MB mp3 file (hi-fi). Click here to see other file formats for downloading and streaming.]

My Terrifying, Dry Warrior - Chapter 1: Francis Gives Gus The Finger

2008-03-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

"I've been sober three weeks now. I'm pretty sure I've hit my lowest low and I don't want to go there ever again. It helped me re-focus my life. The event was I missed eleven out of eleven on the fractions quiz. You might get to the third or fourth degree in the Junior Order of the Free and Accepted Millwrights of Fowlerville with C's and D's, but you aren't gonna get to the thirty-third degree."

Will Gus complete his mission, transporting the psychic jewel to the drop point, or will cult assassins cut him down in the prime of his elementary school years? Listen to Francis Gives Gus the Finger, Chapter One of the five part cliffhanger series "My Terrifying, Dry Warrior" to find out!

[Run time: 15 minutes, 30 seconds. The first link above points to VBR 15 MB mp3 file (hi-fi). Click here to see other file formats for downloading and streaming.]

Remember that you can download the full text of this and all stories from the Dungeons and Dayjobs collection FREE from archive.org or you can buy the collection in paperback today!

Chicken Fried Love Interest with Cilantro and Asparagus

2007-12-21T11:34:00.000-08:00

Follow the course of a relationship in the recipes she makes and his reactions to them. Includes five full, tested recipes in the podcast including:

Scalloped Potatoes with Ham
Cuban Black Beans and Rice
Untitled #7 with Split Peas and Rice (soup)
Cheesy Cauliflower and Mushroom Gougere
Chicken Pot Pie with Death Stars Soup

[Run time: 21 minutes, 6 seconds. The first link above points to VBR 20 MB mp3 file (hi-fi). Click here to see other file formats for downloading and streaming. Music at the beginning and end is a slowed version of "Hot Lips" by Bill Brown and His Brownies, which I believe is in the public domain. There's also a half-speed segment of "Got Butter On It" by Jabbo Smith in the middle.]

Remember that you can download the full text of this and all stories from the Dungeons and Dayjobs collection FREE from archive.org or you can buy the collection in paperback today!

Free ebook of Dungeons and Dayjobs!

2007-08-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

My short story collection -- maybe you've heard of it? Dungeons and Dayjobs? -- is now available as a free pdf file or "e-book" as all the krazy kidz kall 'em. You can get it from this page on lulu.com (which requires registering on their site) or from this page on archive.org. Then if you still want your own paperback copy, it's available for sale on Lulu. Buy it today!

Share it with your friends! Print a copy of your own or print a bunch of copies and give them to everyone you know. From what the internet gurus say, obscurity is much more dangerous to a writer's career than piracy.

The Wire Tetragrammaton

2007-05-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

"That graffiti you been seeing the last couple weeks on the desks in your department, it's not your employees doing it. That's the kids. We been trying to catch all the kids that got away on the latest Bring Your Child to Work Day, but three or four of 'em are still loose in the building."

What if you could bend a paperclip into a complex, spring-loaded pattern that enabled it to walk across your desk, write reports for you, brew coffee and do your entire job for you? If you could lose yourself in the cracks at work, what could you find there?

[Run time: 22 minutes, 52 seconds. The first link above points to VBR 22 MB mp3 file (hi-fi). That's a pretty huge file, so if it takes too long to download, click here to see other file formats for downloading and streaming. Music at the beginning and end is a slowed version of "Hot Lips" by Bill Brown and His Brownies, which is in the public domain.]

Trailer of the Temptress

2007-04-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

"When I read the flyer for Meals on Wheels, I never thought I'd be hauling a frozen goat out of my trunk and down a hole in the ground...."

Melinda Ann Smith reads Trailer of the Temptress, about a woman who delivers food to shut-ins, including a troll, an imprisoned sorcerer and a temptress who lost her powers. You can watch a video of her reading this at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfJO4H7sTYo

[Run time: 27:43 minutes. The first link above points to 128 kbps, 26.6 MB mp3 file. That's a pretty huge file, so if it takes too long to download, click here to see other file formats for downloading and streaming. Music at the beginning and end is "Hot Lips" by Bill Brown and His Brownies. Music in the middle is a tampered-with version of "Some Day" by Kathryn Grayson, extracted from the 1936 Lux Radio Theatre broadcast of The Vagabond King.]

Trailer of the Temptress video

2007-03-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

Melinda came through with a reading of ~~"Trailer of the Temptress"~~ which she posted on her YouTube channel. If you have broadband, enjoy the full video. For everybody else, I'll be ripping the audio off it and posting it as part of the regular audio podcast this weekend, if I can figure out how to.

Make sure to subscribe to Melinda's YouTube channel after you hear or see how extraordinarily cute she is.

Update, 15 Jan 2012: Melinda deleted the video above. She occasionally decides to close her channel and delete all videos, then she comes back a while later to start over. I found a copy of her April 2007 reading of the story backed-up on cd-rom. Now it's uploaded to my Youtube channel where it should be more stable, if the good lord's willing and the creek don't rise, and the SOPA don't ruin the internet.
Trailer of the Temptress, Part 1.

Vampire in the Mountain-Tree

2007-02-04T21:02:00.000-08:00

Part Two of "Almost Always, Somebody Lost an Eye."

"This is the story of Gon the restless vampire. Fed up with three hundred years of life on Earth, endlessly sucking blood from humans, all the wars and petty politics of the undead community, Gon dropped out of the vampire lifestyle. ...He moved back in with his parents, who had a big place in Milan. They were so glad to see him back that they held off a few years before complaining about how he should grow up, establish a domain of his own somewhere and resume devouring humans like a normal vampire. After all, vampires cannot expect to inherit castles from their immortal parents." ...

[Run time: 27:11 minutes. The link above points to 128 kbps, 26.1 MB mp3 file. That's a pretty huge file, so if it takes too long to download, click here to see other file formats for downloading and streaming. Music at the beginning and end is "Hot Lips" by Bill Brown and His Brownies.]

Author Blog of the Living Dead

2007-01-19T03:07:00.000-08:00

This is somewhere between pitiful and hilarious, so I'm pushing for hilarious. In the process of signing up to get Dungeons & Dayjobs an ISBN number with the print-on-demand service Lulu.com, they also give you one year of selling it on Amazon. It's not actually Amazon taking any interest in your book. It's Lulu agreeing to list it via "Amazon marketplace", an auction like any shmuck can do, just so it will show up when people look for it on Amazon.

Amazon later started author blogs on their site so legit authors could drum up interest in the related Amazon pages. I started a blog there, feeling all special, and posted a few stories to it. I never had any actual in-store appearances or readings or book-signings to report, so instead I wrote stories about appearing at a vampire's bookstore in Livonia, and battling with my marketing witch. But now that my one year has expired, Lulu is not selling the book as an Amazon marketplace seller, so Amazon took the book page down. Even though you find a dozen book pages saying "This book is not available" every time you search, those are apparently reserved for legit books, not for self-publishing scum. You can't find me by name or by searching for the book title on Amazon now, but my phantom author blog is still available if you get there by direct link. I'm going to see how much trash talk I can get away with there before they delete it. If a book falls down the memory hole of a megalithic commercial website and there's no one around to hear it, is there any point in hosting the author's blog?

The best part is at the top of the page, where it used to give the name of my book, it now reads:
Robert T. Northrup's Amazon Blog
Author of .

Almost Always, Somebody Lost An Eye

2007-01-07T03:14:00.000-08:00

Have you ever made one of those wagers with a deity where you just know a dozen mortals will end up insane or beheaded, daughters marrying fathers, cousins stabbing grandmothers, and almost always, somebody has to lose an eye? Click here to listen to "Almost Always, Somebody Lost an Eye," the first story of the Dungeons & Dayjobs podcast.
[Run time: 17:04 minutes. The link above points to 128 kbps, 16.4 MB mp3 file. Click here to see other file formats for downloading or streaming. Music at the beginning and end is "Hot Lips" by Bill Brown and His Brownies.]

Dungeons & Dayjobs cartoon promo

2007-01-07T02:28:00.000-08:00

Remember the Dungeons & Dayjobs cartoon from 1983?

Hey, look. It's the Dungeons & Dayjobs ride! Wow, neat. Gimme a break. I don't like this. What's that noise? It's the GIANT SUCKING SOUND of our jobs whooshing overseas, just like Ross Perot warned us! ...Nah, Ross Perot said Mexico, not overseas. Whatever. Whoaaaa! (ROAR)

How will the kids adjust to this new world of eyeball-tearing corporate boredom and spiritual stagnation? Listen to the Dungeons & Dayjobs podcast promo to find out!

As you may know, I published a short story collection called "Dungeons & Dayjobs". I figured it wouldn't hurt to podcast my stories from that book for free, and it might catch people's attention who wouldn't have heard of it elsewhere. Giving away copies in other formats doesn't seem to hurt Cory Doctorow's sales. He podcasts short stories and gives away whole books in electronic format while the hard copies are still in print.

I hope you enjoy these stories. If you want more, you could wait for me to post another story, or you can read them all before they show up on the podcast by buying a copy of the book at
http://www.lulu.com/content/182383