… and I did – again!

Let me explain. Steve Eley is the mastermind behind a podcast called Escape Pod. Weekly, he offers science fiction stories as a podcast, and I hardly ever miss one of the stories, although I sometimes lag several podcasts behind the current story. The reason being that it’s a podcast, right?

I usually fire up my iTunes once in a while (when I run out of stories on my smartphone), and download new content onto said smartphone.

One more element then has to come into play for me to be able to actually listen to the podcast – I have to be in the car going somewhere. Today was such a day, and it was a good one. Ninety-minute drive back from the mountains, late, the son sleeping in the back so that I could plug in those earphones and work on my mp3s on my phone.

I got nearly two shows done: Escape Pod 115 –Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush all finished and Escape Pod 116 two-thirds done.

The story “Conversation With and About My Electric Toothbrush” was really surprising and enjoyable. The title gives away most of what this story is about, and I will tell no more about the funny twist because I want you to go check it out yourself.

OK, the epilogue of that show also announces that bloggers like me can get prizes that Steve gives away to those who blog about Escape Pod, but this is really not the reason for this blog post – even though it might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Looking at the Escape Pod website again also reminds me that I really should donate to the site – it would be only just for all the enjoyment I get out of it, but maybe I can do even better by advertising on his site for one of my commercial sites.

One reason for the generally above quality of the stories presented is that the author is actually paid for his story. Obviously, this created a cloud of much better stories than those submitted by authors who just want to be published, not caring if they will be compensated for their effort. I actually submitted a story once, and it was fortunately rejected, creating the incentive to work on my writing.