That’s right! Today’s the day! Scott Sigler’s latest novel, “Contagious,” is now out in stores and available for your ravenous consumption. It is the sequel to his amazing horror novel “Infected”. I know I’ll be picking this up today, and you’d better do the same if you know what’s good for ya. Click on the link below to get your copy NOW! I’m also including a link to “Infected” in case you somehow missed that one too. Once you’re done ordering your copies, head on over to Scott’s homepage to get even more Sigler goodies. You know you can’t get enough.

Terry here, adding to what Justin said. Scott is on a book tour and may be coming to a city near you. If so, you might want to hold off on getting that book and getting it at the store where he’s doing a signing. That’s what I’ll be doing. Supporting my local book store so other great authors might come visit. And I’ll be taking my copy of Infected to be signed. Check the list of stops I’m posting and see if he’s coming near you. Also, check the listings at the specific store to see their policy on getting books signed.

Hey everybody, this is Terry.

We here at the Dead Robots’ Society decided to drop this special request into the feed to make you, our listeners, aware of something, and ask you to do something for the writing community. Every year Writers Digest, the premiere magazine for writers, creates a list of the 101 best writing websites.

We were slow to find out about this, but the nominating period for the 2009 list closes January 1, 2009. We would like to urge you to nominate every writing podcast or resource that you feel deserves to be on that list, including, hopefully, us.

To make your list of nominations, send an email to writersdig@wfpubs.com and put “101 best websites” in the subject line. The categories listed are: general resources, challenges/creativity,  publishing resources, jobs, writing groups and communities, genres/niches, agent blogs, protect yourself and just for fun. I suspect we would fall into the writing groups and communities, but you make the call. Just nominate someone. This is your chance to make your voice heard.

You can see the current list of best websites at http://writersdigest.com/101bestwebsites  

Thanks for taking the time out of your busy lives to listen to us talk about writing. We want to wish each and every one of you a very happy New Year and urge you to get writing. That book isn’t going to write itself, you know. And do you really want to hear Justin gloat about writing more words every month than you? I didn’t think so.

Happy holidays, everyone! We thought we’d try and give you listeners a present by getting this week’s episode out early. Hopefully Santa didn’t damage it on his way down the interwebz chimney.

So, tis the holiday season, and with that comes the close of yet another year, so we thought it would be a good idea to end things with endings. So, gather ’round the fire, sip on some hot chocolate, and snuggle in as we get to The End.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

Amanda wrote:

Today I learned that labels can be very dangerous. I’m not talking about the kind of label you find on a soup can, obviously, but the labels people put on things like relationships, or other people. They can be dangerous not only because of the way your fellow human beings react to them, but because [...]

Read more…

Hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode where the Dead Robots discuss the topics of short fiction and long fiction. What do they have in common, how do they differ, and what lessons carry between the two. Settle in and enjoy.

Also, before we go, we also list the winners of our Second Annual Writing Contest in this episode.

This week Justin and Terry (yes, Ryan skipped out on us, begin the tears and violins now) sit down and speak with JF Lewis, author of the urban fantasy novel “Staked”. JF was a fantastic interview, and we think you’re all going to enjoy this. I know we did.

You can also find him at Write The Fantastic.

Also, we will announce our contest winners on next week’s show. Getting all of them read amidst the holidays took longer than we thought it would, but we know you guys deserved to have us read and carefully consider each and every submition we received. But, the wait is nearly over, so make sure to come back next week and learn who won.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Have a great week!

Hey folks, Justin here. This week the great folks over at the Doomcast asked me to come on their show to talk about the Fable and Saints Row video games, as well as wax on and on about other current pop culture items. If you want to listen to the conversation, you can do so HERE. I hope you do, I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you go back for more. They’ve been good friends to the show, and I think they put together a good podcast about games. Check them out.

Yikes, I can’t believe I let things go so long! Mea culpa…

Well, getting the old writing career going has had its ups and downs. On the downside, I sent my novel “Harbinger” to a small press publisher, but he decided to pass on it. Since it’s only the first in a series of three novels, he felt like it was too much of a risk for a smaller publisher ike himself to take on. I hate it, but I also understand. I’ve since sent the novel off to Tor to see what they think. Their website said it could take up to six months for them to get back to me, so I’m not holding my breath in anticipation. I also had one of my short stories rejected at two magazines. I’ve sent it off to a third one, so I’m hopeful.

But, on the upside, I recently was told that Ray Gun Revival wants to publish my “The Ties That Bind” short story series (an earlier version of it won Honorable Mention in the Writers Of The Future contest), so hopefully in a couple of weeks I’ll finalize that sale. I’m also considering taking another swing at making an audio production out of it. I’d thought about doing that many months ago, but at the time I was busy reediting it, and I didn’t want to take a chance on doing an audio version if the story was going to change later on. Now that’s getting published, I can use the printed version as my certainty that it’s done. I’m also hard at work on my new novel. I’m still deciding what to call it. Right now I’m going with “Digital Decay,” but I’m sure that’ll change as I get further into the writing process. I’ve done a lot of brainstorming, I’ve made some notes, and I wrote a prologue. Now I need to do a little more research, write out an outline, and then I can get started on the real writing. Wish me luck.

As for the podcast, it’s going really well. We’re up to Episode 61 now (I was never sure we’d make it this far), and we don’t seem to be slowing down any. We also concluded our short story contest. The other guys are still reading the stories, so we’ll have the winners announced in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. Been busy, the holidays are in full swing, and my birthday is coming up. Yeah me.

This week the Dead Robots talk discuss the most important, and the hardest, part of any story – the middle. It’s where most of your drama and tension develops, where your characters are made and broken, but it’s also where most writers give up. But take heart! Listen in and join us! Enjoy.