Matt is still gone, but has sent us a bloody fang as proof of live. Don't ask me, I don't control the boy.  Alasdair Stuart, co-owner of Escape Artists, four time Hugo Finalist (this year alone!), writer of fiction and nonfiction, and good friend joins us this week to talk about a nonfiction writing life and transitioning to a writing life.  Are you watching Ditch Diggers on Twitch? Why not? This Wednesday we have Cat Rambo at 1pm EDT. 

[DD] Matt is Missing! Guest Host Alasdair Stuart

Treat your writing like a blue collar job. Doctors don't get doctor block and ditch diggers don't get ditch digger block, and working writers can't get writer's block. Business and humor.

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This was recorded back in July, but time and things and travel got away with me.  Actually what happened was the fact that I can't spread podcast production across more than one day. If I do, I will forget it needs to be finished. It's not great spending 4+ hours to produce and upload 2 shows, but if I don't, one will fall by the wayside. ADHD brain for the win.  We will be back in september, hopefully with lots of amazing ditch digging.  August 10, 2023 | Season 9 Ep 9 | murverse.com Copyright 2023, Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License

[DD] Birthdays and Gail Carriger 2, Electric Boogaloo

Streamed live, July 10, 2023 Below are some affiliate links that support indie bookstores and may benefit me financially with no cost to you. S9 Ep8 Horny chaotic god energy is what we're all about in today's Ditch Diggers, "Data Wonking with Podmother Gail Carriger" where Gail joins us to talk about sifting through data in self publishing. It is some heady stuff, and we discuss tying your self worth to "bad" data and more!  Gail Carriger: 30:30 (ish): My sense of failure will kick in when a reader says I love Gail Carriger. And I didn't know she had a new book out, that's when I feel like I failed at my job. I am an author, that's the one job I had is to make sure that people who liked me can read my new books, right? That's it.   Transcript  Let's Get Weedy Twitter doesn't kiss well When you have a new book out, your main job is to make sure your existing fans know. We <3 librarians!  Links  Gail's blog Gail's books Matt's site Mur on Focusmate! Mur on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube Newsletter, The Hot Mic Support via Patreon! Or Substack! Theme song by Devo Spice  (check here for all mentioned books) July 20, 2023 | Season 9 Ep 8 | murverse.com Copyright 2023, Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License

[DD] Data Wonking with Podmother Gail Carriger

S9 Ep7 Recorded live on Twitch! Mur's agent Seth Fishman joins us to take your questions, and we fill up an hour FAST. Full transcript available! Seth Fishman: ...the industry is right now, where editors are just, they just have, they're just too busy. There's just not enough people working in publishing. So it's harder for agents to do to sell books is really what we're saying. There's a number of times that were like, were you passing because of this, you don't want to put that like, work into it or whatever. But you know, what the people pass for all sorts of reasons, we get the books into pretty great shape, before we send them out. And I mean, we try to, and if an editor is passing, for those reasons, they're what they're really probably saying is more along the lines of developing of an author versus, like editing an author. Transcript Links  Seth's books Seth's agency, The Gernert Company Matt's site Mur on Focusmate! Mur on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube Newsletter, The Hot Mic Support via Patreon! Theme song by Devo Spice  (check here for all mentioned books) June 21, 2023 | Season 9 Ep 7 | murverse.com Copyright 2022, Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License

[DD] Author/Agent Seth Fishman Answers Our Questions

Streamed live, June 13, 2023 Below are some affiliate links that support indie bookstores and may benefit me financially with no cost to you. S9 Ep6 It's our 1001st episode (not really) and Matt is here to launch the final book in the Savage Rebellion trilogy, and it's a very honest episode. Serious Ditch Digging here, y'all. He doesn't hold back. It's publishing, warts and all. Links to Savage Crowns and other books below! Full transcript available! Matt Wallace: I was like, what if I did 'the Wire' as an epic fantasy? That was my other thought when I started it. So my mother says there are strong women characters, there are, Thank you, mom. And I was raised, but I was raised by a strong woman who's definitely a character. Transcript  (I wanted to do an annotated transcript like the other two podcasts, but frankly, the others are already taking up so much time I can't do three transcripts, annotate all three, record the podcasts, AND write books.)  Links  Matt's site Mur on Focusmate! Mur on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube Newsletter, The Hot Mic Support via Patreon! Theme song by Devo Spice   (check here for book links) June 13 2023 | Season 9 Ep 6 | murverse.com Copyright 2022, Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License

[DD] Matt's Book Launch: Savage Crowns

Matt and Mur welcome Premee Mohamed, multiple award winning author of No One Will Come Back for Us. We talk about chickens, sea cucumbers, conventions and anxiety, and there's a hair flip in there, but you can only see it if you get the video on Patreon.  Links  Premee Mohamed Matt's site Mur on Focusmate! Mur on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube Newsletter, The Hot Mic Support via Patreon! Theme song by Devo Spice  May 15, 2023 | Season 9 Ep 5 | murverse.com | Copyright 2022, Mur Lafferty and Matt Wallace | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License

[DD] Matt is Missing! Guest Host Alasdair Stuart

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