Audio trailer for Rukis’ and Alector’s comic Red Lantern. Direction, editing and sound design by Rahne Kallon, voices by Rahne, yours truly and Sparf, and music by the awesome Fox Amoore, who also did the sensational theme to Heathen City.
Rahne did a great job putting this together. I’d previously collaborated with him on his adaptation of Cruelty and the reading of his story for the Bad Dog Book Club.
Projects like these remind me why I love this community :)
Source: furaffinity.net
The Turboencabulator.
A friend showed me this, and I had to try it for myself. After all, I can do The Eye of Argon, so…
Recordings from last night’s Ustream Writing Clinic
What started as a neat little idea for a fun evening reading and discussing stories turned into quite a fantastic evening with a healthy crowd of listeners and participants.
Altivo Overo, Buck Hopper of the Furry Basketball Association and Skip Ruddertail of Bad Dog Books became impromptu co-hosts of the online equivalent of a very productive writing panel, where we read and discussed seven story samples sent to me from writers across the world — as far away as Jakarta, Indonesia. And with one exception (he didn’t have Skype, alas!) we got to converse with all of them.
Over three hours, with ABSOLUTELY ZERO technical issues, all totally unrelated to my beloved Mac platform and wholly to blame on Ustream, Skype and the temperamental concoction of apps and services I had to use to be able to talk to people. I’ve just spent ten hours cutting it together and making everyone seem far more clever, awake and attractive than we were at the time, all for your enjoyment.
First we had Altivo Overo, who brought us a delightful sample of his work “Blue on Blue”, which can be found here: http://www.furrag.com/viewstory.php?sid=590
Then a pi-rat story (rats who are pirates!) from PS Lion, a fellow European who burned the midnight oil with me.
Next was Buck Hopper, with an awesome interior monologue from his namesake in the FBA: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/5241802
Download now or listen on posterous
Cybercoyote couldn’t join us, unfortunately, so Buck Hopper, Altivo, Skip Ruddertail and I could say horrible things behind his back about his story, “The Last Flight of the Midnight Express”.
Download now or listen on posterous
Tango, AKA Rebelsheart, seems to be an anime fan whose tale of converging universes seemed particularly upsetting to my fragile recording setup, and most of the Zero Technical Issues occurred here. But that’s okay! It just means you get to hear it explained three times in a row.
And all the way from the beautiful island of Java, Sulartenem gives us a story with waterscooters and fish, and critically reviews the three words of Bahasa Indonesia I can say, but don’t understand.
Download now or listen on posterous
Last but by no means least, Don Iago AKA Siphedious teaches me how to pronounce his name and closes the session with a noir stream-of-consciousness that Buck rightly described as a ‘crackling read’.
Download now or listen on posterous
I’d like to thank all the authors who sent in their work, everyone who listened in and my impromptu co-hosts.
And for those who asked whether I’d do this again in future: absolutely. It was too much fun not to. Keep an eye out!
Meanwhile: please enjoy.
- Alex Vance
Let’s sing a damn song!
There was a time when people whistled their way to work and headed home singing, when the music in a shop came from the shopkeeper. A time when the ‘national throat’ was well-lubricated through daily exercise. Radio didn’t kill it, but it did give us as a people an excuse not to belt out a tune any more.
Nowadays too many grown men and women shy away when invited to join in. They bashfully abstain, ashamed of their rusty, unpracticed voices. Who can blame them? They hear pitch-perfect auto-tuned studio-engineered hi-fi songs every day; how could a mere mortal measure up to that?
Who cares, say I.
If we just stop being so childish and shy we might get a bit of practice in, and the streets will sound a lot livelier with couple of verses being belted from an open window. And so will this dreary internet of ours.
So shut up and sing. Even if it’s only when you’re alone; under the shower, vacuuming the floor, cleaning your gun collection. You’ll get better, and you’ll appreciate music more. You can join in when a song goes up even outside of the drunken comfort of a karaoke bar.
Listen to me: I dare you.
I dare you to grab your phone and download Audioboo, whip out your MP3 player, whatever you might have that can record audio and sing your favorite song.
Right now if you can. Later if you must, but before you go to bed, give your ol’ larynx a good workout!
Mess up the words? No sweat. Keep going. Hum a few bars if you have to. Make it to the chorus and belt that shit out, and keep repeating the one verse you can remember. Miss a beat? Take a breath and pick it back up. What do yo think Mick Jagger does when he messes up on stage? Do the rest of the Stones pause and start over? Nah, man.
You know you wanna do it. You already know, right this second, what you want to sing. So why not, just this once?
Maybe you’re at work now, or on the bus, that’s fine. But when you get home… plug a headset into your computer or whatever, discharge your lungs and post it proudly on the internet. Blast it onto YouSpace or MyFace or toss it in a tweet and tag it with #singadamnsong. Just go for it.
And of course, I’ll put my raw, scratchy throat where my mouth is.
Here’s my favorite song to sing: De Stad Amsterdam, which is a Dutch translation of Le Port d’Amsterdam by Jacques Brel. I’m not nearly as sweaty as he is, but damn I love that song.
Who’s next?
Give me a poke when you post yours. I’d love to hear it!
- Alex
FC ‘08 Writing Panel #3 - Meet the Editors
The third furry writing panel I gave at Further Confusion 2008. The turnout was a bit slim as the panel was planned on the very last day and most people had already left, but good fun was had nonetheless.
I was joined at the table by two fellow editors. There was our own Ben Goodridge, who edited the first volume of our non-erotic fiction anthology ROAR, and Quentin “Cubist” Long who edits ANTHRO, the online anthology.
Pretty much all the attendees were writers, which made for an interesting and diverse set of topics.
FC ‘08 Writing Panel #2 - Narrative Techniques
In early 2008, in the strange land of California, a slightly younger me gave his first furry writing panels in person, to standing room only.
The previous one was concerned with the Fundamental Story; this one delved into the judicious use of a few more advanced narrative techniques, including surprise/suspense, tragedy, sentimentality, and that most terrible and terrifying of techniques: the joke.
The audience was wonderful, and a delight to speak to. In attendence were authors Ben Goodridge, Teiran Dragon and André “Badger” Blaireau, each of whom had a book published by Bad Dog Books.
Among many fine, insightful, and sometimes hilarious others.
FC ‘08 Writing Panel #1 - The Fundamental Story
In this episode, we hear a recording of the first writing panel taught by Alex Vance at the Further Confusion convention in January 2008 in the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, California.
In this panel, Alex discusses the Fundamental Story. Also known as the hero’s journey. Lightly touching on Vladimir Propp’s ‘Morphology of the Folk Tale’, the session quickly spirals out of control with a deconstruction of a bizarre hybrid of The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.
Sadly, the recording failed after only half an hour due to a technical malfunction, but the portion that is recorded here, at least, should hopefully prove informative.
“The Walking Mountain” by Ben Goodridge, audio edition of the British, steampunk, furry War of the Worlds
An oldie but goodie, recorded for the Bad Dog Books podcast when I still ran that.
The Walking Mountain (which first appeared in FANG Volume 2 in 2005) was Ben Goodridge’s endearing, if not outright hilarious take on a speculative-fiction classic.
Still very fond of this one! It was a delight to record.
