Science Daily: “With the latest advances in treatment, doctors have discovered that they can successfully neutralise the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The so-called ‘combination therapy’ prevents HIV from mutating and spreading, allowing patients to rebuild their immune system to the same levels as the rest of the population.”
Month / October 2007
But It Took Him Considerably More Than 14 Minutes to Move On
Chronicle of Higher Education: “Fourteen minutes. That’s how long it took Prestigious University Press to reject my proposal to edit a book of new essays on an early-modern philosopher. Apparently that’s the time it took the acquisitions editor to receive my e-mail message, open the 10-page attachment, make a professional judgment, and then write back with a curt one-sentence rejection stating that my proposal was ‘too specialized’ for the press’s successful series of handbooks on individual thinkers. That’s also how long it took me to go into the kitchen, eat a sandwich, and return to my computer to find his reply.”
You know, most of the time, a writer doesn’t get any kind of reply at all.
(via John Fox)
A Grand Radio Project
A few perspicacious readers have correctly divined from my post last week that I am indeed interested in doing something on the radio drama front in relation to the short story and that my feverish intake of all things old-time radio has spawned something of a side project. Let me just say that emails have been sent, authors have been contacted, and that scripts are being written.
Rather than keep the details mum, I’d like to invite any interested parties to contact me on this. If you are a voiceover talent, a musician, an author who would like to see her work adapted into a thirty-minute production (at the moment, the project is being helmed by volunteers, which means nobody’s making money at this), a radio writer willing to deal with a hard but encouraging story editor, an audio geek, a sound effects guru, or you’d like to jump on board with this in some other capacity, drop me a line and I’ll see if we can get you on board.
The current and wildly ambitious plan is this: I’d like to do an initial set of ten thirty-minute radio dramas — a tough and socially conscious (but not didactic) contemporary anthology series in the vein of Quiet, Please and Dimension X. Why ten? Well, the idea here is to conduct a mass casting call of talent, find out where their particular character strengths lie, and then cast them accordingly to the roles in the ten scripts we have at our disposal. Each drama would be meticulously rehearsed and then recorded over the course of one day. Trust me on this. You will be challenged, but this will be fun.
I’m shooting to get the initial slate of ten up over the course of ten weeks sometime in early 2008.
Ideally, these dramas will be based on previous material, although I have about twenty or so original story ideas in outline form. I’m now writing one script, a satirical story about disaster and religion, which I’m now about halfway into. At the moment, I’m serving as story editor and director. And I’m hoping to give other writing talents an opportunity to not only see their short stories presented in compelling dramatic form, but also, if they are interested, to either adapt their stories or possibly create new ones.
If any of this interests you, you can email me at ed@edrants.com. Please include samples and a brief history of what you’ve done. If you have a pitch for a story you’d like to write that would be acceptable for a thirty-minute production, email me and we’ll volley. I’ll try to get back to everyone within a week or so.
Penguin Audio Afraid to Embrace the Present
The New York Times‘s Andrew Adam Newman reveals jittery spirits at Penguin Audio. Set to offer audio books through eMusic (disclosure: I have freelanced for them), Penguin Audio bailed out at the last minute, fearful of pirates taking the non-DRM MP3s and disseminating them across the Internet. But Random House Audio publisher Madeline McIntosh begs to differ, pointing out that there have been no pirated versions of eMusic-distributed audio books found on pirate sites (at least, not yet).
I’m wondering if Penguin Audio’s “piracy” claim has less to do with uncollected revenue and more to do with enforcing unduly crazy control mechanisms. Penguin Audio may be foolishly trying to enforce autocratic market options on a free market. After all, offer the files only as a DRM option and you control the precise circumstances in which a listener can enjoy an audio book. But the listener will desire to enjoy the audio book on the computer, the iPod, the home stereo, and nearly any appliance that she sees fit to listen. Restricting how a listener decides to enjoy an audio book runs contrary to the “customer is always right” basic business principle.
If this is indeed Penguin’s stance, this would also run counter with the portable nature of regular books, which can be borrowed, swapped, sold at the Strand, or enjoyed in multiple atmospheres. Penguin is also missing out on a few unanticipated promotional options. Even if a small portion of audio books are pirated, there’s also the possibility that a listener might want to buy the book she’s listening to. Indeed, if the audio books become omnipresent, this may translate into a small customer base wanting to purchase the book.
So while Random House Audio struts its stuff on the parquet, Penguin Audio appears content to be the diffident boy at the junior high school prom afraid to ask the girl to dance. Which is a great shame, as there are a lot of interesting titles in the backlist.
Deborah Solomon, Racist
That inarticulate imbecile is at it again. Deborah Solomon apparently didn’t get the news that graphic novels have been around for some time — possibly, since the 1920s — and is racist enough to assume that Marjane Satrapi, by way of having brown skin and writing about fundamentalism, must be a Muslim. I guess all that supposed research that Solomon puts into these “questions” doesn’t involve basic fact checking.