No not really but hey I think I could watch a reality show with Mondy in it.
But seriously 1500 books.
Kirstyn has moved house to somewhere in the wilds of Ballaratia, consequently they had to break into Dave’s house (co-host on the much underrated Shooting the Poo podcast).
This week’s episode covers Infinite Jest and House of Leaves and is complemented by the wonderful personalities of aforementioned hosts.
Go and download this Ditmar Award winning podcast. Or play from the player below:
The first regular season Last Short Story podcast is out. There were two previous “pre-season” podcasts produced by Coode Street Studios as part of a “testing of the waters” both for the casters themselves and the audience.
In this Episode Ian Mond and Jonathan Strahan discuss the December 2012 issue of Clarkesworld and the January 2013 episode of Lightspeed.
You can stream from the player below or download here.
There’s honest and frank discussions of the works contained within those to publications. So if you plan to read them its probably best to do so before the podcast. You will find the stories for free online, but please consider subscribing, you’ll get them in the much more readable ereader formats.
The stories discussed in from :Clarkesworld #75, December 2012 and Lightspeed #32, January 2013. All the Clarkesworld pieces are available online, some of the Lightspeed stories are yet to tick over to free online status.
Did you enjoy this post? Would you like to read more? You can subscribe to the blog through a reader,by Email or Follow me on twitter.
So Episode 26 is a non fiction episode where they tackle Gary K. Wolfe’s Evapourating Genres and James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon , a biography by Julie Phillips.
Now despite it being non-fiction centred, I found it to be one of their better episodes (not that they aren’t all pretty good). Their discussion on first authors and criticism got me thinking.
And of course they do mention my new podcast Adventures of a Bookonaut so maybe I might be slightly biased.
The Sheldon biography sounds very interesting as well and I’m not really one for biographies.
Anyway go to the show notes here for some more detail. You can download it as an mp3 here or stream from the player below.
Apart from Paintwork our two hosts are fairly scathing. One theme that seems to come through quite strongly is the value of structural edits and an editor with experience in this area.
Enjoy,especially Mondy’s rendition of the Summer of ‘69.
In this episode, which must bring them nearly to their second anniversary, Kirstyn and Mondy cover Angelfall by Susan Ee, Anticopernicus by Adam Roberts and The Dark Wife by Sarah Diemer.
Next podcast they will feature The Black God’s War by Moses Siregar III, The Silence of Medair by Andrea K Höst, Paintwork by Tim Maughan.
I would have liked them to take a good look at Tor Roxburgh’s Light Heart of Stone, because it’s a really inventive, Australian work that I think falls under the guidelines above (though perhaps because it’s also a print publication it doesn’t – still its published by it’s author).
I am sure they had mountains of recommendations anyway.
Enjoy the podcast. Download it here or play below:
I think the concept of turning the Not if You Were the Last Short Story on Earth project into a podcast was a stroke of brilliance. The idea of brining in extra commentators to combat burnout and keep opinions and tone diverse, even more so.
Mondy and Jonathan have been podcasting a pre-season, a testing of the waters, so to speak. Personally, I think they could just do away with the concept of a preseason and just go with it. I think the concept is good. I am already more inclined to listen and checkout short works when presented in this medium.
In this episode Jonathan and Mondy are joined by original co-conspirator, Tansy Rayner Roberts in discussing the collection After by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.
You can play direct from the player below or download here…which is a good thing of course. And I couldn’t even complain if I wanted to, as I do contribute to the problem field.
So keep your ears open or perhaps go and subscribe to the podcast and work your way through the back catalogue.
But wait there’s more.
Mondy Ditmar and Chronos award wining Ian Mond of Writer & The Critic/Shooting the Poo Podcast and Hugo Nominated Jonathan Strahan of Coode Street have teamed up for an audio version of the Last Short Story Project (yes, the audiophile Mr Mond graced us,skype podcasting community, with his presence). You can check out and subscribe to their new podcast here.
You can stream below or download it here
Great if you do chores or mow the lawns while listening, like me
…I have a lot of lawn.
Anyway a number of things appear to contribute to the length of the podcast
I am sure they are throwing down a challenge with this cast.
The books were
But enough of my prattle.
or play below:
It was a little disappointing to hear many of the locals who attended various events at Embiggen over the weekend say something akin to “This bookshop is great, I never knew it existed”.
It is by far the coolest damn bookshop I have ever been into, run by people that have put their money where their mouth is to bring their customers the best in Science, Philosophy and Critical Thinking. Melbournians don’t know what they are missing.
But on with the show:
One thing you don’t get to see obviously, is the facial expressions of the hosts, it being a podcast. The look on Mondy’s face at Deb Biancotti’s continued declarations of love was hilarious.
Enjoy, the Writer & The Critic talking with most of the Twelve Planet Authors at Embiggen Books.
I have spent a number of hours on a Sekrit project today that will be revealed in due course.
There have been some good gender and publishing posts with a focus on the local scene. I draw your attention to the following:
Number crunching 10 years of the Ditmars
I was sitting with Jules last week watching The Voice on fast forward (we record it then zip through all the boring bits) and I suddenly has this urge to number crunch the Ditmars. Admittedly, it was an urge sparked by the recent Ditmar ballot which can be found here.
…
I was also only interested in the three fiction categories – Novel, Novella and Short Story. I did consider throwing in Collected Works / Anthologies but decided against it because what I wanted to look at was whether female writers were being recognised in Australia.
This is what I discovered [read on]
That was from the incorrigible Ian Mond. Edit: Check out his second post as well. Next is a breakdown of gender related statistics on Speculative Fiction novels published by Aussie authors in 2011 by the wonderful Tsana D.:
More Gender-centred Statistics on Australian-Authored SFFH Novels in 2011
After my earlier post about broad gender distributions in Australian novels last year, Tansy valiantly volunteered to add target age groups and genres to the mighty list of SFFH novels published in 2011. She sent the spreadsheet back to me and I poked Numbers into generating statistics and made some pie charts. Yay, pie charts!
First, because for some reason it didn’t occur to me to post it last time, the distribution of books published by different types publishers (large, small press and self pub). You can see which publishers I counted in which group in the earlier post.
[read on]
Ah, the Kirstyn and Mondy show. I could listen to these two talk about gardening1 and I would be happy, such is their rapport.
This episode starts with some interesting gender discussions prompted by listener Mark Webb. Mondy plays the unwitting male perfectly 2 ,asking those questions that some male listeners may be thinking but are too afraid to ask, for fear of looking stupid.
The discussion proper is on
You can download here or stream below:
1. Not a big fan, like vegetable gardening but hate mowing lawns↩
2.Taking one for the team↩
Only one more day of me hassling you for funding
I have been nominated to run in this years fan fund for the National Science Fiction Convention to be held in Melbourne.
If you appreciate the work that I do in Australian Speculative Fiction Fandom and you have a spare $5, you can vote for me here and help send me to the National Conference.
Warning: Do not drink/eat and listen to this podcast at the same time – potential choking hazard.
In this instalment Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond invite UK author Robert Shearman (the guy who wrote Dalek).
They chat about his recent adventures at the Adelaide Writers’ Week (where I briefly met him) but discussion about Ian’s sleeping habits competes for the highlight of the show. 
Once they get past Mondy’s legendary snoring, the books they discuss are Houses Without Doors by Peter Straub (Kirstyn’s choice), and Queenpin by Megan Abbott (Mondy’s) 
Here’s the download link or you can play it in the flash player below
Normally I don’t mind spoilers if the book they are covering has peripheral interest or whose likelihood reading is so low down my TBR list that I will forget what they have said.
I suppose since they have gone to the trouble of mentioning the times that spoilers may occur, I could half listen to it.
Any who and without further ado here is the podcast:
In this episode Kirstyn & Mondy discuss The Silver Wind by Nina Allan at 35:30, and The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood at 59:45. Final remarks begin at 01:43:00
Mondy and Kirstyn dish up their last show for the year. Kirstyn refuses to get into a feminism 101 lecture and Mondy is reasonably well behaved (well so far, I'm only about 20 minutes in).
They cover The Tiger’s Wife and We Need to Talk About Kevin, both winners of the Orange Prize.
Or
Play in the doovalacky below:
The regulars Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond team up with writer and podcaster John Richards.
Check out there show notes here
or stream direct (take a chance).
On the way to the Port Pirie Art prize today I had the joy of listening to the Outer Alliance Podcast, specifically their Spotlight #90 where Julia interviews the Writer and the Critic’s Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond.
It’s just shy of 2 hours long and true to form Mondy’s open and frank discussion style is prominent(ie this podcast contains rude words and unfettered opinions)
You can stream it below or download it direct here.
And just popping up in my reader as I have returned is the Live and Sassy Podcast Episode 1 – Featuring well known Speculative Fiction Editor Jonathan Strahan and Twelfth Planet Press’ Alisa Krasnostein. In their words :
Once a month we aim to catch up at our favourite (or not) coffee shop, grab a coffee and chat about all things in the SF&F publishing world.
We recorded our first episode a while ago now and in it we talk about the Borders bankruptcy, all things ebooks, the SF Gateway project and make wild predictions about the future of publishing.
So you can stream them below or download direct here.
