Matt Sullivan

Time flies here in London; it's not that the speed of life moves any faster, it just seems there there is less time. I consistently feel like I'm missing two or three hours out of my weekdays. Running on a 21 hour a day clock is no fun at all.

Last week was primarily a week of submissions, in that I dispatched a handful of stories for potential publication and am now playing the waiting game to see if any of them pass with flying colours.

The Coyote and Chloe Smells have left home and travelled somewhere deep underground to that secret Editor's Vault, where all lonely and hopeful scripts go under scrutiny for that mysterious and arcane Review Process. Many fail and lie wasted on the immense Heap of Rejectedness; the chosen few end up in The Land of the Published.

Finally ... The Voyage is ready and uploading to the server. This one took a while to get done, and is a not-so-short story, running at over an hour; but I'm pleased with the final result, and as always, Ms. K. did an excellent job reading the tale.

The Worlds Abound podcast is now available through iTunes!

Those good people at Apple have seen fit to add the podcast to their directory, so now you can subscribe to Worlds Abound through iTunes by visiting the Apple music store, or by simply clicking on this subscription link. You'll get all the latest Worlds Abound episodes delivered straight to your door .. er, computer.

A few words to keep you updated on the state of the podcast. While things have been on hold while I indulge in a few weeks of travel, Regina has been busily re-recording The Voyage and is in the middle of her finishing touches to it. So as soon as I get back home, I'll edit, process, splice and dice -- with luck, the second Worlds Abound poscast will hit the ether the week after next.

Fingers crossed ...

The Green Man has been online over a week now, but it'll be while before the next story, The Voyage, is available. When I first thought to create recordings of these tales, I wanted to release one roughly once a month. I figured that a month would give me enough time to write something -- if I had already worked my way through the back catalogue -- and for Regina to record it. Any stories that were long enough to justify splitting into multiple podcasts, then I'd release those parts weekly. But new stories: one a month.

It was great fun recording one of Matt's (see Worlds Abound) stories. The geographical distance (with me recording in London and him editing in Mallow (IE) made the whole project even more exciting.

... I can release The Green Man podcast into the lonely wilds of the internet. I say 'lonely' because, in all probability, there are very few people reading this journal, visiting the Worlds Abound site, or even aware that these things exist. I wonder how long that will remain true. I have software that tells me some of the terms people have typed into Google -- and other search engines -- that have lead them here, and the weird associations never cease to amaze me.

As another weekend -- and birthday ... thirty-four ... where'd thirty-three disappear to? Must have blinked ... -- and I find myself sitting on my oversized beanbag, with laptop in lap, busily trying to pen a few more paragraphs for the story I'm currently writing. This one will probably be called The Coyote, but I'm never sure until I see what it finally becomes. Things I write rarely turn out the way I initially envisage them. It's a good thing, because most of the enjoyment gained from writing is in taking the journey, and it is always more fun not to know where you'll visit; or where you'll finally end up.

Most of today was spent in a haze of tiredness brought on by late nights in work -- four days in a row. Said lack of sleep has been known to cause excessive grumpiness and irritability; however, a Firday spent dozing on the train out of Dublin, building a large roaring fire and then sitting in front of it while watching Flushed Away, eating my first home-cooked meal in weeks, and finally tapping away quietly at the keyboard, while the smell of chocolate cake baking in the oven fills the house.