Last week, I was interviewed by Pro Se publisher Tommy Hancock for the Pulped! podcast (which, as you might imagine, is all about pulp fiction). We discussed the relaunch of the Doc Wilde series, the Kickstarter I’m currently running to help with that (which ends April 28th), self publishing vs. traditional publishing, and other pulpy things. While my radio face is only slightly better than my internet face, I think the interview came out pretty well, and you can hear it at:
When both the big bookstores in her community folded, author Ann Patchett stepped forward and opened her own small bookstore.
In a very charming appearance on The Colbert Report, Patchett offers proof of my argument that the apocalypse brought to the bookstore industry by ebooks and Amazon is actually favorable to small local bookstores. Where Borders fell and B&N stumbles, small stores can now take root and give good old fashioned service to their communities.
In time, they’ll incorporate infrastructure allowing them to infinitely expand their stock by selling ebooks on-site and actually printing books on demand (as with the Espresso Book Machine, which is pretty amazing).
I wrote at length about how ebooks and digital distribution are good for readers, writers, and booksellers here, and if you have any interest in the topic, please give it a read.
You can watch Patchett and Colbert here.
This Sunday (August 16) I’ll be interviewed on the monthly science fiction show on WREK radio. We’ll be talking about Doc Wilde, and perhaps about saving the world, we’ll see.
Here’s the blurb from WREK:
The Science Fiction Laboratory on WREK Atlanta (91.1 FM) airs the third Sunday of every month from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. This Sunday, August 16, 2009 we will broadcast, among other things, an interview with author Tim Byrd and a discussion of our favorite pieces of the quickly developing vampire mythology. For listeners not in the Greater Atlanta Metropolitan Area, we stream online at http://www.wrek.org; just click the play button in the upper right. We also stream the show for two weeks after the broadcast. You can access the archive by clicking “Listen to our 14-day archive!” on the left side of the WREK homepage and finding the correct date and time of the show.
Old Bat’s Belfry, which earlier reviewed my book, has now posted an unusual interview with me, with decidedly non-standard questions:
What quirky habit do you have that often gets you teased by your peers or family?
Well, being a writer, and not having to report anywhere to do my job, I am routinely derelict about shaving. So I maintain varying levels of scruffiness, sometimes all the way up to what many call a beard, but I deny that, telling them it’s not, it’s just a really deep five o’clock shadow. I don’t like beards. They itch and they’re soup magnets.
For the rest, go here.
I did a short interview with MOVParent.com, the website of Parent Magazine, and think it came out pretty well…
MOVPARENT: If you could go back in time and tell your high school/middle school self one thing, what would it be?
BYRD: “Keep your eyes on the prize and write, write, write.”
I decided to be a writer when I was five; forty years later, my first book is coming out. I procrastinated, put lots of time into things I didn’t get much satisfaction out of, and didn’t have enough faith in myself. So I’d encourage the younger me to get on task a lot sooner so he wouldn’t have to struggle quite so much, or at least could struggle instead to build a longer writing career.
The full piece is here.
I was slated to be on Alpha Waves, the Internet science fiction radio show tonight, one of three guests discussing pulp fiction, as I mentioned in this post. But I realized that I’d agreed to it without remembering that tonight was also the debut event of my friend Terra Elan McVoy’s first novel, Pure. I checked with the guys at Alpha Waves, and they cheerfully agreed to prerecord my segment. Thanks for the flexibility, guys.
So, this morning I called in via Skype and host Nick Chase and I discussed Doc Wilde and pulp fiction for a while, and it was a good time, even though it was my first time doing this sort of thing. I just listened to the full show with my son, and I have to hand it to the hosts, they do a great job. Eric Mona of Planet Stories and writer Gareth Michael Skarka were interviewed in the segments before mine, and were both very informative and entertaining, leaving me wondering if we’d get to my bit and I’d be all like “Uhhhh…dopey me…” in comparison.
Well, I’m pleased with the way it turned out. That being the case, I’m actually going to tell you where you can find it if you want to listen to it:
This coming Friday, April 17th, I will be on the Internet radio show Alpha Waves talking about pulp fiction and Doc Wilde:
You’ve been to Airlock Alpha, the best science-fiction news Web site on the Internet. Now listen to the online radio show that comes with it, featuring hosts Wayne Hall and Nick Chase along with great guests from all over science-fiction. Alpha Waves airs every Friday at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on BlogTalkRadio!
The theme of the evening is pulp, and other guests will be Erik Mona of Planet Stories (a publisher of classic science fiction and pulp), and writer Gareth Michael Skarka, whose love of pulp fiction resulted in the roleplaying games Thrilling Tales and Mars (which recreates old-fashioned sword & planet adventures ala Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars tales), as well as the pulp anthology also called Thrilling Tales (which features a new adventure of classic serial hero Commando Cody, precursor to The Rocketeer). Gareth’s also a friend.
So if you want to listen and see if I can actually converse in an intelligent manner, remember: Friday, April 17th, 8 pm EST, at this link. [NOTE: As I write this, the listing on their site has me as “Tim Boyd.” But really, honest, it’s supposed to be me, Tim Byrd. I’m only known as Tim Boyd in Brooklyn. I’ve emailed them to let ’em know.]
Under An Outlaw Moon 