Please find attached a podcast interview with Leon Dale (of leondale.com ) about The Human Flag.

Check out his websites for more about The Human Flag.

Link for the podcast is here

Well, I am very happy to know she's alive and hope that she's having a Happy Return Upon the Day.

She is the youngest of my children, and now all three of them have passed that magical 18 number.

Congrats, Genevieve!

Sam at Dragon*Con 2009 from Sam Chupp on Vimeo.

Good thing the goblins were fed before I arrived!

I got to Leon's studio and was impressed at his set-up: professional ring-lights and the like with a neutral background.

Leon gets into this creative fugue when he works, and as he set up the shoot, Janean interviewed me. She asked a lot of interesting questions that had me thinking before I answered.

He did a lot of "product shots" using old books I've written, to warm up.

Basically the whole experience was awesome and made me feel like a rockstar for a short time - a great time, and a great result.

If you're interested in more of his work, check out his photography here.

Lately, they have been undergoing a thoroughly mystifying infrastructure upgrade. They are resurfacing the bus intake area, where the buses drop off and pick up passengers. This means they've had to create a completely separate bus transfer area.

They did a pretty good job of crafting a bus shelter out of PVC pipe and plastic sheeting. They sunk PVC pipe into buckets of cement, and used those as the supports for the structure. They kitbashed a single line as a support for the top. All of this was set up in an adjacent parking lot.

The asphault in this area is abysmal, however. I don't know enough about things like asphault, so I can't really tell you what is wrong with it. Suffice it to say that the surface in the parking lot is eroding away at an alarming rate. In order to address this problem, many large steel plates have been put down over the surface wounds of the parking lot. You've seen these plates in cities covering potholes. They look as though they would make great armor for personnel carriers as well. Anyway, the net effect of these plates is that the bus sways like a schooner on the high seas whenever the driver drives over them. It is a sensation one is not accustomed to when riding a bus, but it is an interesting feeling nonetheless.

All this to say this: whomever got the contract to originally surface this parking lot must've been related to someone important. That's all I have to say about that.

I am constantly and continuously surprised at the total lack of entrepreneurship in and around train stations here. Why doesn't MARTA have little kiosks for people to have a cup of coffee or whatnot while they wait for their train?

Of course, I've been stuck on a train a few times with some individual who had liberally interpreted the gray area between "Transporting Food" and "Consuming it on the Train," so I understand the urge to not make food and drink too available. However, for the most part, the land around most train stops is mostly devoid of restaurants. There are a few notable exceptions, and I'm going to post a link to this really cool website that talks about those exceptions.

I remember when I was living in New York that there was this coffee stand on the street. All you had to do is have a dollar bill ready, walk up to the window, say, "Cream and sugar" and hand them the dollar bill. Or two dollars, I can't remember how much it was, but it was a fairly negligible amount of money. This was a very cool, simplified business. They took beans and water and made coffee. They sold the product plus dairy and sugar, and no BS. If you wanted this stuff, you would go to that window, you would get it. There were no lattes, no half-cafs, no double-cafs, no mochacinno java chips. This was serious coffee for serious people who wanted to get it fast. You could obtain coffee in just about as much time as it took to decide to get some. In fact, if you were walking down the street and saw the coffee stand you could just turn that direction with money in your hand and, in mere seconds, be on your way with a fairly amazingly perfect cup of coffee. Now, realistically these guys did not care about coffee prep technique and I would hate to see the interiors of their urns, but the coffee was good, hot, relatively fresh, and not too bitter. And it was frickin' fast.

That's what I want. Coffee that's a heartbeat away. Not to put down my little French press, which is super delicious, but really, having someone else go to the trouble is very compelling.

That reminds me. I have been thinking about the kind of beverages people find in fantasy and science fiction, the wakeful beverages of those genres specifically. The Liaden books have a lot to do with wine and tea. These people drink an awful lot of wine, and they seem to also imbide a great deal of specific kinds of tea. Really, what you drink in the Liadenverse is very important. It's almost like it's a mini-personality test: are they going to choose the red, the white, or the green? And the fact that the nasty bad Liaden traders make their crew drink fake coffee....*shudder*. That tells you everything you need to know about their inherent evil.

And coffee is a big theme in the stories of Nathan Lowell, Quarter / Half / Full Share, etc. It's coffee making that sets our young Ishmael apart from his crewmates.

In the fantasy realm, klava is a drink that seems to be based on hungarian coffee, the preparation and ingredients of which are not to be believed, really. It is intriguing, however, and I think I might like to try it someday when I have regular coffee close at ready hand and I want to waste some ingredients.

I've made some reference in my gaming and my fiction to some special drinks, but I have not yet put down any recipes. There is a hot Amishkan drink called kafva or kav, which is of course very much like coffee. The Lunargenti and Sydalians love their cider, hard or soft. Distilling alcohols is a favorite pastime of alchemists and sorcerers, and places where magical people are welcomed will have these spirits in bars and the like. I've yet to come up with something truly fantastic, however.

All this talk about drink is making me thirsty. I wonder if there are any fantasy or science fiction drinks I'm missing? Ok, yes, the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Anything else?

Note: Since I first wrote this, it has been announced that MARTA will possibly start doing concessions in some of their stations. More on that as it develops.

Those of you who are used to the old samchupp.com will probably come here wondering "What the heck?"

For those of you who want the same ol, same ol' samchupp.com, click http://samchupp.com/oldsite.html

If you're looking for my old blog, you can find it at http://sambear.livejournal.com.

So, I would encourage all of you of a roleplaying bent to go out and get this game, play it, and feel its awesome.

Here's the link:
http://indie-insurgent.livejournal.com/39752.html

Obama has my vote; it has been recorded and sent on. We may not change history here in Georgia tonight, but I am hopeful that all those who voted for him throughout the country will make their mark, cast their ballot and create an everlasting moment in the yielding sands of time.

No matter what other conflict, trouble, or difficulty I find myself in today, I know that I have done something today dedicated to lasting and sustainable change.

It's a post about two guys, Matt Selznick and JC Hutchins, who both bear consideration should you or your company be up to hiring ONE or TWO New Media Geniuses. It's not like New Media Geniuses are thick on the ground!

Take a look at KJ's post and see what I mean.

I am planning on humbly submitting the completed work to http://podiobooks.com just as soon as I figure out their naming convention and fix one or two of my files.

In re-listening to my work, I think the story hangs together pretty well. I don't know of any loose ends or, at the very least, ends that are annoyingly loose. If you have any questions about the story, the characters, or anything - let me know. I would love to put up a "Q&A" show like some podcast novelists do.

The last half of the book...from about episode 14....is better than the first half. That's the way it is with first drafts. I am going to be going back and revising, editing, chopping off chunks here and there. For my "agent submission draft" I intend to make it as tight a story as I can.

But that is not now. I need some distance from the work to be able to go back to it and treat it like a stranger as I disembowel it and re-arrange it and make it as close to perfect as I can. Don't get me wrong: I am pleased and satisfied with the draft I've turned out. This is a complete story. And the audiobook format means people don't quite so bored with 120K words as they would if they were holding it in their hands. But I want it to be smaller - around 80K words - and tighter, more fast-paced. This may mean cutting some of my favorite scenes. That's OK, that's what editing is about.

I have already begun writing on the project I will call Eulalie. Eulalie is a code name for what I really want to call it, but I am holding off naming the project publicaly until I can afford a domain for it. That may be silly but that's what I want to do. Cynthia says that Eulalie is a very silly name - and I have to agree, but it definitely has a Southern belle feeling, which is what I really like about it.

Eulalie is radically different from Heart of the Hunter in that it is set in the modern day and it is more of a magic realism / urban fantasy / supernatural romance story. I don't want to talk about it too much, because writing about it peripherally diminishes the need to write the novel itself.

I am discovering characters right now who are quite talky and well-formed. A plot has yet to show itself, but that will come. I'm excited about the story and I'm looking forward to working on it. The best part is I have not yet once been tempted to hang White Wolf Storyteller game stats on these characters. This means, to me, that I have finally been far enough away from WW stuff to have my own cool urban fantasy story ideas. Yay!

After "Eulalie" is in first draft form, I intend to write another novel which will be set in the same world as, and have a similar timeline to the novel "Heart of the Hunter." Once you hear the name of the book, you'll start to pick up on a certain pattern. Once again, I want to wait until I have domain name in hand to announce that book. I have plenty of stories I can tell in the Cora-Ni Chronicles and all of them will be contiguous and share a milieu with "Heart of the Hunter."

So, go on over to http://heartofthehunter.com and subscribe, download all 27 episodes, and listen to them. I think you'll have a great time!

What a great first date it was, too. We plan on celebrating after the 15th, when I get paid. I'm tinkin' the new French restaurant in town, but we'll what she wants.

This relationship literally represents my longest running one. And yet, I am just as enchanted with her today as I was 10 years ago.

Here's to you, love! Let's have 10 more! And 10 more! and 10 more after that....and after that, 10 more! (and so on!)

I really enjoyed my time this year and here's why:

• David Moore from The Game Master Show podcast stayed with me, hung out with me, and defrayed the cost of getting to and from Dragon*Con and bought me some meals. Yay, David!
• Hope Evey came to visit unexpectedly, which is a delight past all imagining.
• I got to meet Jack and Theresa Jaffee from 12 Volt Theater. They are a wonderful couple we had a great time trolling the various huckster booths at Dragon*Con together.
• My time on staff at the Podcast Track was pleasant and not at all onerous. I probably would have spent the time there, anyway, so it was wonderful.
• I got to play Spirit of the Century with some cool new gaming friends, plus the aforementioned Jack and Theresa.
• My Second Life panel went well, though we had a griefer kid show up and proceed to heckle us from a prone position in a whiney voice. I guess you have to have the griefer experience to really understand Second Life, anyway.
• Thursday, I had dinner with PG Holyfield and his wife, Liza; Rick and Anne Stringer from the Variant Frequencies podcast, Thomas (cmdln) from The Command Line podcast, Kimi from the Tale Chasing podcast, and her partner Soulhuntre.
• Friday, I had a very loud dinner with Jack, Theresa, Kentucky John, Katsuhiro, and Leon Dale - it was at a diner with karaoke.
• I got to see my friend Gary, his wife and friends of his and another guy from my UGA days: Thom Luthman! Also my old White Wolf compatriots John and Bill Bridges and Andrew Greenberg!
• I ended up the 'con with a fantastic dinner with a whole bunch of really cool podcasters: JC Hutchins, Tee Morris, John Cmar and his wife Laura Burns, Chris the Fixed Kitty from the Adult Space Child Free Podcast (and her partner, Henry), along with Rick and Anne Stringer (who seemed to be bookending the Dragon*Con experience for me!) and Anna  from Washington fromVirginia. Then we got to play some Mad Scientist's University back at the Hilton before it was time for Katarina and I to go home.

And that's that. If I've forgotten someone, let me know and I'll be glad to update this post

A Simple Request

Reviews on iTunes help podcast rankings, which helps make a podcast findable by people who haven't heard them before. Some of my podcasts have reviews on iTunes, and some of them don't. If you've enjoyed them, I would like to ask you if you would please leave a review on iTunes.

It will help other people discover them, and it doesn't cost you anything but a few minutes of your time. I've left a few podcast reviews myself on my favorite podcasts, and it takes a little time for the iTunes staff to release the review postings, so don't expect to see them show up for a little while.

Here are some iTunes links for my podcasts, just to make it easy for you.

• The Bear's Grove
• Heart of the Hunter
• Dragonkin
• The Square One Podcast

This is my funeral for him, in part. This post.

I wish I could've given him a proper Viking funeral, with all the pomp and circumstance, and a 1,001 drunken warriors singing off-key at the top of their lungs, "The Devil's Mad and I am Glad, Glory Halleluah!" Which was one of the songs he used to sing to taunt us when we were ticked off at him.

I loved him. I didn't like him much, but I loved him as much as any little boy can love his Dad. And now I choose to remember all of the parts where we didn't conflict, where I respected him, where he amazed me with his abilities and his powers of fixing things, making things go.

And that which is remembered, lives.

But I wanted to point out only a small sampling of the podcasts that I have really been enjoying:

Double Share by Nathan Lowell. Nathan's got me hooked something fierce. His stories bring a smile to my lips, makes me long for a time I've never had before. He's over on Podiobooks.com - and I am very sad for some of you who don't have the ability to sit and listen to your stories, because that's the only way you can get his work right now. He isn't about to release via Lulu or some other e-Publisher, he's waiting for a traditional publishing situation to happen. That's OK, but it just means that you can only get his stuff by listening to it.

Shadowdance Podcast with my friend Chris Miller and his good friend (and my acquaintance) Michelle Belanger is one of the most reasoned, rationalist podcast on psychic vampires and the occult that I've ever run into. I would enjoy listening to these two discuss their laundry, but when they talk about fascinating topics they're interested in, it makes for a very agreeable listen.

You'll always get a fairly balanced view that includes the skeptical and agnostic of us who aren't entirely sure there's anything magical going on at all.

Listening to Chris talk about his personal experience on the most recent Shadowdance, it just makes me like the man I know even more: he and I have have had many of the same magical experiences, many of the same conclusions have been drawn.

And, by the way, I am still a huge fan of The Sixty One. Finding musicians like Grace Buford (Cylindrian Rutabega) Nance Brody, Scooter Pietsch, and Hannah has been a sanity-restoring blessing.

Check out my imbedded little Sixty One widget in the sidebar for more info.

Until later, big hugs to those who want them!