What do you mean who am I? Has it been so long? Hmm, yeah, I guess it has, hasn’t it?
I’m Rob, and I bid you welcome to the sixth episode of Kung Fu Action Tales! Yep, we’re still here, and despite problems personal, professional, technical and supernatural this podcast is not yet dead! Well, maybe not supernatural, but you get the idea. It’s been a long couple months!
Before we get on with tonight’s reading, I wanted to go over a few things. First, this podcast isn’t dead, but will be a little intermittent because with the exception of tonight it’s pretty much turned into a one-man writing show, and in addition to paying the bills this one man is a bit busy writing.
More on that in a moment.
This episode the charming and talented Fiona Thraille has reached into her bottomless magical bag of talents and produced a fun young adult story set in old China called The Little Warriors Without Swords. Fiona, as anyone who listens to KFAT knows, is the voice behind many of KFAT’s most memorable audio drama characters including Sister Cat and Lady Whitcombe. She also holds the title of being the only person so far who has written a KFAT audio drama besides myself- Little Gou and the Four Flowers of Shandong. Outside of KFAT, she was the writer/producer on Red Sands, a detective drama for Pendant Audio, and is also someone I’m fortunate enough to call a friend.
Our reader tonight, like Fiona, is also a familiar voice. You’ll be hearing the vocal stylings of Richard Bartock, who you also heard reading last month’s Gen San-Mi Yorimasa- The Knight. After some other readers didn’t work out, Rick was kind enough to volunteer his voice to this tale, and should be commended for all the takes of it I made him do. When not serenading women with his deep rich tones, Rick is also the writer of the comic Clockwork Gods, a steampunk action story which all manly men would benefit from checking out. (And not a few ladies as well!) You can find it at http://clockworkgods.blogspot.com.
Thanks Fiona for letting us tell Deshi’s tale, and to Rick for bringing it to life. I really love how Fiona manages to put a new twist on the classic tale of a town ruled by an outlaw family and the wandering hero who doesn’t quite save the day. Speaking of Outlaws, if any of you are planning on doing any Audio Dramas or Audiobook readings set in the old west, I sincerely hope you’re writing Mr. Bartok’s name down, because he was born to do westerns.
Okay, so now on to the answer I promised- What have I been working on?
The short and sweet answer is Twin Stars, but before you fans get up your hopes you should know that what I’m working on is the novel form, not more audio drama. It’s not impossible there may be another Twin Stars audio drama or two in the future, but right now almost all my creative energies are about expanding Twin Stars into prose format. I have to say, it’s really quite liberating, and I hope you like what I come up with. With luck, Book One will be finished before the new year, and I’ll be able to dive into Book Two, and of course…Book Three and beyond.
Now, I did say most of my creative energies, but not all- there is one other creative project I have on the go right now, and it ties into both the KFAT website and this podcast in a way. I’ve rebuilt the KFAT webpage to reflect the podcast’s more prose focus, and I’ve also started to release a weekly webserial version of the Inuyama Rebellion. Yep, the same story you heard back in Episode Four is continuing on the KFAT webpage each Monday, so some check it out!
If you’re not into webfiction, however, and you feel like being patient, you can also hear the rest of the Inuyama Rebellion here on the KFATale podcast in the near future, but I wanted to let the text version get well ahead before I released the audio one.
Once the Inuyama Rebellion is finished in either November or December, I’ll be starting a new story on the page, and plan to keep doing it for some time. It’s going to be my way to do creative side stories while Twin Stars occupies my main focus for the long term.
Okay, so that’s it for this show. I’m Robyn Paterson, and I thank you for listening.
See you next month!
The title theme of this episode is Sacred Asia by DJ Svenzo.
