Rish's Voice On "Elsie At 30,000 Feet" By Tim Pratt

Rish here.  Marshal Latham was kind enough to send me a story the other day, asking if I would narrate it for his Journey Into... podcast.

When I say "he was kind enough," I mean that "Elsie At 30,000 Feet" was such a good story that I felt truly honored that he picked me to narrate it.  It was an homage, of sorts, to "The Twilight Zone," and the kind of story I would write, if I were just a bit more talented than I am.

It tells of a sort of everyman, Gustavo, who gets on an airplane, and a strange woman, Elsie, sits down in the seat next to him.  She seems simply eccentric at first, but later, reveals herself to be something more sinister.

Tim Pratt wrote my favorite episode of EscapePod ever.  And the two Christmas stories I got to perform over on PodCastle (by him) are my two favorites there.  And now, well, here's a story I loved so much I wish I had it to perform for my own show(s).  But I got to voice the main character, and that's quite enough.  And Christmas came early (along with the end of the world) because Marshal also had me come on as a guest on this episode, and we talk about the story and "The Twilight Zone" (specifically, the 2019 pseudo-retelling of "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet").

Check it out at THIS LINK.  Tell 'em I sent you.

Rish and Marshal Review "Sword of the Valiant"

You are surely aware of the podcast Marshal Latham and I do about Star Wars, the Delusions of Grandeur podcast.

But we also, from time to time, do a show called "Outfield Excursions," where we review a movie either chosen by us or our listeners. In the most recent episode, we talk about SWORD OF THE VALIANT: THE LEGEND OF GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT.

It's a dreadful low-budget Fantasy from the early Eighties . . . with a wonderful cast of famous faces, the famousest of those, Sir Sean Connery.

Oh, Connery is magnificent in his scenes, as usual, and it's a joy to chat about him (and get to re-voice some of his lines later in the show). The movie itself is not worth seeing, but the cast, and a couple of scenes, are certainly worth talking about.

Check it out AT THIS LINK . . .

And know that if you support Marshal Latham's "Journey Into…" channel on Patreon, you can help choose the next film we discuss.

TGMG 234: February Sweeps Challenge (Part II)

So, February came and went, with an extra day thrown in for good measure. Did Big and Rish sweep?

Did you?

Download this mutha by Right-Clicking HERE.

Rish Performs "An Infinite Number of Idiots" on StarShipSofa

Rish here.

If you don't follow my personal blog, you wouldn't know that I recently got an assignment to narrate a story for StarShipSofa, and then (somehow) screwed up and sent the producer of StarShipSofa my unedited recording instead of the finished one.  They sent it back to me with a "Hey kid, this needs to be edited" memo, and I therefore made a dread prediction that that would be the last time I was asked to do a story for them.

Well, the episode featuring that story has already dropped, with zero fanfare from me (or anyone else), so I guess I better mention it before it's gone.

"An Infinite Number of Idiots" by Robert Jeschonek is told from the point of view of an alien civilization that gets visited by a (pretty recognizable) group of interstellar travelers.  The visitors barge into their lives, make value judgments on their society, interfere with their customs and observances, and their captain relentlessly attempts to seduce the narrator's wife.  It's also a surprisingly dark story, despite how I'm presenting it.

So, HERE'S THE LINK, if you're interested.  If not . . . well, maybe they will ask me again.  I won't bet on it, though.

February Sweeps, The Final Week

We've made it to the end. February is over, and, amazingly, both of us managed to write every single day of the month. Pretty cool.

So, after day twenty-nine...wait, twenty-nine, that can't be right. Hold on...oh, well, the calendar says that there are twenty-nine days in February. I always thought there were less. I guess that's my public school education at work for you. Anyway, here's what it looks like:

Rish: 47,952
Big: 33,603

Not much of a contest, but it never was a contest to begin with. The goal was to write every day. We bot achieved it. My personal goal was to write 1,000 words every day, and I achieved that. If you want to look at our daily count, it looks like this.

Rish 1st: 1458 Big 1st: 1078
Rish 2nd: 1018 Big 2nd: 1160
Rish 3rd: 1335 Big 3rd: 1119
Rish 4th: 1531 Big 4th: 1137
Rish 5th: 301 Big 5th: 1088
Rish 6th: 1536 Big 6th: 1609
Rish 7th: 2063 Big 7th: 1007
Rish 8th: 1120 Big 8th: 1025
Rish 9th: 1245 Big 9th: 1189
Rish 10th: 1625 Big 10th: 1191
Rish 11th: 1452 Big 11th: 1067
Rish 12th: 2877 Big 12th: 1176
Rish 13th: 844 Big 13th: 1049
Rish 14th: 1702 Big 14th: 1416
Rish 15th: 1336 Big 15th: 1015
Rish 16th: 678 Big 16th: 1062
Rish 17th: 1381 Big 17th: 1026
Rish 18th: 2303 Big 18th: 1161
Rish 19th: 3166 Big 19th: 1014
Rish 20th: 1438 Big 20th: 1375
Rish 21st: 2308 Big 21st: 1145
Rish 22nd: 2001 Big 22nd: 1143
Rish 23rd: 884 Big 23rd: 1307
Rish 24th: 3154 Big 24th: 1122
Rish 25th: 1077 Big 25th: 1057
Rish 26th: 2440 Big 26th: 1312
Rish 27th: 1605 Big 27th: 1077
Rish 28th: 2424 Big 28th: 1248

BONUS ROUND!

Rish 29th: 1650 Big 29th: 1233

Rish had a lot of high numbers. Those were the days when he really pushed himself. When he was feeling bad or depressed, he told himself that he had to work extra hard to combat that, and it tended to work. He had big days, finished many stories, and felt more worthy because of it. Sadly, for me it didn't work that way. When I had hard days like that, I just cheated on my diet, and left my writing until 2:30 AM before finally forcing myself to write so I could go to bed. Then I woke up feeling more tired and crappy the next day, and more likely to cheat on my diet and leave my writing till even later.

But we both made it, and are pretty proud of ourselves for doing so. Rish says that this past month was his most productive month as a writer ever in his entire life. He wrote eight stories in February (or at least finished eight stories, I think some of them had been started before February). He almost wrote a whole NaNoWriMo worth of words.

I wrote another 30,000 words toward my goal for this year of 300,000. It's coming along well. I'm above the 90,000 word mark now, and I really think I'm going to make it. When I get to the end, it's going to be doubly glorious compared to that time I made the goal to run 500 miles in a year. I don't know how I'll celebrate at the end of the year, but I'll have to think of something. Most likely, when I get there, I'll want to celebrate by taking a day off from writing finally.

Going forward, we're still both going to be writing frequently. Rish has a goal to publish a story a week in March, which is very admirable, because putting out the writing that he does is Rish's biggest stumbling block. So, forcing himself to do that will be another stretch for him. He's going to grow so much as a person that he'll need bigger clothes to fit into.

My goal is to just keep on writing. That's my focus this whole year. A writer writes every day. Somebody once said that. So, I'm going to be a writer.

Keep an eye out, because there'll be a TGMG wrap up show as well soon.