First, the appearances. You can find me on recent episodes of Podioracket, The Dead Robots Society, and doing voice work as the German Army in Philippa Ballantine’s Weather Child. You can also hear my fantasy story Buried Alive In The Blues, for which I also did some of the voice work, on the excellent (if racy) anthology series Erotica A La Carte.

For those of you who enjoy my Open Source madness will be pleased to hear that there are new LinuxJournal articles – one is a review of the Indamixx portable recording studio, and the other, which hasn’t yet published, is a review of OpenGear’s new KVM management console. I’m currently stalking a couple more regular writing gigs, so if the internet gods smile upon me, you may be seeing quite a lot more out of me in this vein in the coming months.

Podcast monkeys, you may have noticed the new buttons on the right side of the page – each podcast feed now has an iTunes one-click subscription link, as well as the normal RSS buttons. There’s also now an Uberfeed, which will give you everything I podcast (except Apologia, which you can get here).

You also may have noticed that I’m now podcasting my new novel Down From Ten. This is a comedic country house mystery with elements of romance, horror, and science fiction around the edges – it’s a change of gears from The Antithesis Progression. It’s also listed on iTunes now, so if you’re listening and enjoying it, please leave a review and tell your friends.

I’m also the subject of, and participant in dialog to, a blog series about the doctrinal foundations of Christianity by Scott Roche on the Spiritual Tramp blog. If you like my arguments on Apologia, you’ll definitely find this one entertaining.

I’ve also recorded MORE Reprobates Hour episodes, which, along with all the other special features I have on my hard drive, I’ll hopefully start spooling out here again this month.

As far as writing projects go, Free Will is picking up steam and is now officially on schedule for a November release. I’m also working on a couple more secret projects, which hopefully I’ll have news about soon here.

Finally, I hope to have some good news on sales in the next couple weeks, so watch this space!

This year, particularly the second half, has seen a lot of people turn very pessimistic about, well, everything. Yeah, the economy’s slowing down. Yeah, people like me are scrambling just to make ends meet – when money goes slow everywhere, it hits the arts hard. And yeah, some things just sucked. But you know what? Today’s “awful” is a hell of a lot better than “great” was when my grandparents were growing up. Despite environmental problems, terrorists, crooked investment bankers, and crookeder politicians (yes, in all parties), I’m living in a time when “five-percent unemployment” is really bad. When I was a kid in the early 80s, that would have been music to everyone’s ears. Ditto for crime, poverty, war casualty, plague death, and violence figures almost everywhere on Earth (though some of us are a lot luckier than others, through no merit of our own).

So, yeah, 2008 might have been a scary year. But as I look back at the global “Big Picture” there aren’t a lot of things that are truly scary in the long run – not like there were twenty, fifty, or eighty years ago – not to mention longer ago than that.

On a personal level, it’s been a mixed year, but as I was drawing up this list I can’t help but be staggered by how far the scales tip towards the wonderful. Click on the link to read my self-indulgent recap.

The Bad or Bittersweet

In May of 2001 I started preproduction on a film I’ve spent the intervening years working on. Hunting Kestral, a science fiction action film set in the universe of Antithesis, was officially retired from the active projects list. Of all the things I’ve done in my life, this project has to be the most important so far. I met people I still work with to this day, I learned the meat of the different trades I now call my career, and the process irrevocably altered the story and universe of Antithesis. Perhaps most importantly, I spent some of the most rewarding months of my life to that point in the company of actors who taught me far more about life than I ever thought I’d learn at the age of 24. Unfortunately, I had to admit that on this one I bit off way more than I can reasonably hope to finish chewing in the foreseeable future, so the dream of doing a professional level live-action independent film is something I have to set aside for now. I’m planning on a post-show article on it sometime in January.

My first website, Blenderwars, which had for years been a vibrant hobbyist community, finally died. It was a long time coming, but last May I finally gave in to the inevitable and pulled the plug. We were online from 1999 to 2008, hitting our peak of half a million page views per month in 2002. Some of the folks I met through there have gone on to work with me on various film projects, and have proved to be excellent people all the way down the line.

A lot of death touched my life this year, both first and second degree. I’d say I could have done without it, but the truth is that I’ve lived an unusually long time without someone close to me dying – I was expecting it sooner or later. Needless to say, I’d have preferred “later.”

My nonfiction publishing momentum slowed down in the second half of the year as a result of my podcasting endeavors.

The Unfinished
Filmed and have nearly finished (finally) a short film called “Lights Out” for Project Obsidian. Early 2009 will see its completion. Better late than never.

Began writing The Auto Motive, a steampunk young-adult urban fantasy novel. It’s got a ways to go, but it’s rocking.

Sculpting God: Bedtime Stories For Adults is half done – the final half will see the light of day in mid-2009.

The Good
Saw eight friends and acquaintances get book deals.

Made my first fiction sale: My steampunk story “Cold Duty” went simultaneously to Steampod and ClonePod and did very well among fans of both podcasts.

Finished and garnered publisher interest in book one of the Antithesis series. Plotted, outlined, and roughed out the remainder of the series.

Podcasted the first 15 episodes of the 27 episode audio version of Antithesis, Book 1: Predestination and Other Games of Chance with full cast, full production sound, and an original score.

Did my first professional publicity events.

Wrote a 6 hour miniseries for Canadian TV. The deal fell through, so the script is now in the process of novelization. The resulting novel, Down From Ten, is now 25% done.

Finished Season 2 of The Polyschizmatic Reprobates Hour. Recorded Season 3, and it is now half edited.

Garnered my first cover story in a magazine.

Interviewed (either for podcast or for publication) Michael ShermerM, Cory Doctorow, Elizabeth Pisani, Tee Morris, Richard Carrier, Philippa Ballantine, J.C. Hutchins, Seth Harwood, and Mur Lafferty.

Apologia, a show I participate in, got picked up for radio distribution.

Got to hang out at the Googleplex.

Technically this and the next item both belong in “unfinished,” but they’re here because they are undeniably good. First, I had great fun doing some very satisfying photo shoots with both new models and old, and made serious progress on bringing the long term Sophi and Logos projects together.

Hit BayCon and SteamCon with my friends, and got to moderate a few panels along the way.

Discovered Twitter.

So many other memorable moments of wonderfulness I can’t even begin to enumerate them.

Final word count for the year, including novels, short stories, screenplays, articles, and non-trivial blog posts: ~350,000

Parting Thoughts for 2008

From my very limited perspective on the world, I wouldn’t trade this year for any other. 2008 saw a lot of reconnection with old friends, strengthening of connections with new friends, and meeting more fascinating and decent people than I dare to count – some of them well on the way to becoming close friends. It’s been an emotionally intense year, much moreso than I expected. This time last year I said that 2007 was my best year so far, but I think 2008 surpassed it handsomely, despite the heartbreaks and hardships which I’m sure none of you want to read about here.

For all of you who’ve touched my life this year – friends, fans, colleagues, and fellow travelers – from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

The chapter ends, and always on a cliffhanger. There is only one question:
“What happens next?”

Here’s what this means for you all, my loyal readers:

I’m going to fix and drop Episode 13 of Antithesis tomorrow, probably late, assuming the congestion clears.

I’ll start blogging again, with reports from SteamCon and some other interesting updates, later this week.

The feedback episode will record Wed and drop on Thurs or Fri, after which I’ll slide back into my regular production schedule.

I have a backlog of other blog posts to write, particularly more from the Steampunk Education series and the Entitlement Mentality series. Those I’ll be hammering out between commissioned articles (which I now have a backlog of).

Soon, very soon, a calender will be available for purchase featuring my fine art photography. There will be two versions available – one worksafe and one definitely not.

So, if the Creeks don’t rise, I’m now back in circulation. Thank you all for your well wishes.

-Dan