Also picked up a copy of his Through the Last WH while I was there. And about 4 other books, including Podthology! Woot!

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Gutter Sistren whipping boy, innoventor of words, Life Coach to the Damned.

Loved this story!

* * Head Biker Babe & [flickr-photo:id=4891502501], Dead Sexy Dealer, The Juicer, Co-Founder of the Gutter Sistren & Proud Member of GirlCo. * *

If anyone is looking for this tale it has now been wrapped up in the "Bethany And The Zombie Jesus: A Novelett"

aka nilling

Sorry but I could only handle 2 episodes before turning it off.  Had great potential but for crissakes - teach that boy some editing skills.  I keep looking at episode 3 podcast but until I finish The Starter and The Leviathan Chronicles (the FDO mentioned it recently and it roxx) I'm probably not going to try it again.  The story is good, he just really needs to spend some time with our future dark overlord and learn some editing...

****** If only Sigler would do a book on escaping an interplanetary prison, I'd be in Vegas the following weekend.

of the podcasts, I agree that they are not even close to what the FDO puts out, but that's easily overlooked once you really get into the story.  However, if you are referring to the short passages with breaks in between, that's the way he wrote it.  Jake Bible's Dead Mech is a Drabble Novel - a "new literary form" created by his design.

If you want a taste of something that's not in drabble form, you should give this a listen.  It's a collaboration by our FDO and Jake on an episode of The Crypt.

It may take a little getting used to, especially if you are an avid audiobook and/or podcast listener, but I urge you to continue listening to Dead Mech.  I don't think you'll be disappointed.

* * Head Biker Babe & [flickr-photo:id=4891502501], Dead Sexy Dealer, The Juicer, Co-Founder of the Gutter Sistren & Proud Member of GirlCo. * *

Beat me to it...

aka nilling

I really did enjoy the collaborationg Jake did with Scott. I dowloaded the podcast, but had a similar experience to Baboom Thunderbuns; The audio production was so autrocious that I couldn't even finish the first episode.

Then again, that's really not all that rare for me. I'm kind of an uber Nazi. That's what happens when you work in the field. You hear dumb ass mistakes and say, "Dude, how hard would it have been to fix that?" Authors who do poor production/sound quality simply aren't taking the time to do things right.Yes, it takes a *long* time. Often 5-10 times as the actual recording process if you want it to come out perfect, and especially if you want to use sound effects or an essemble cast.

Yet what I seem to be reading is that the print/Kindle novel does not suffer from any of the flaws that the podcast has. I have no idea if it still has Drabble, but it's certainly worth investigating. I need to go back and listen to those CRYPT co-author episodes again. There were several I wanted to check out, but I'm not positive which ones. Fairly sure David Wellington was at the top of the list. Thanks for the advice guys!

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I can certainly appreciate your perspective on this Belladonna but I still think it is editing.  Don't get me wrong, I liked the concept and the story enough in the first couple of episodes that I wanted to re-edit it and fix the mistakes. 

Episode 1 was filled with dead air.  Even had like 2+ minutes of dead air at the end - a clear indicator that he was working in a new medium as it is a common mistake.  He has sounds to break between each segment, same as Sigler does, but the sound break was annoying and there was silence till the next segment.  Simply needs to be tightened up even if he chooses to keep the sound effect.  Note that another author gave him feedback and he killed that sound effect in the 2nd episode.  At that point, find some time to fix the first one so you grab your audience and hold them.  We don't get 2nd chances for a good first impression.  That goes for me making a strong stand like this when I'm new to the junkie forums.  I'm taking a risk, but in my case, I don't have all future listeners to my podcasts, or purchasers of my books on the line.

The 2nd episode he fixed the first problems but created a new one with switching back and forth between Story arc A and Story arc B.  He was flipping back and forth every couple of sentences.  There wasn't  enough time to get engrossed in the story to support using that method, and in audio it was VERY confusing for awhile.  I would have cut the transitions in half so that each section gave enough time to get engrossed.  We don't get the advantage like in print where you use ******** in between each transition to make it clear that we're jumping around so you have to take a little extra care in how you present it.  I think the FDO discovered that and builds the foundation for each of the story arcs before doing any quick changes between them so you are pulled into that segment and know where you are before moving on.  Once again, I think you could re-edit the 2nd episode and allow it to capture more of the audience into the story before moving on.  Perhaps the Drabble form works in writing but for new listeners it was disjointed and painful. 

Lastly - I did listen to The Crypt.  I love that we got exposed to other authors and podcasts, AND I very much loved the stories.  Can't wait for the rest of it to be written and produced.  I specifically enjoyed the Jake Bible collaboration which is why I explored the Dead Mech story.  I am not bashing Jake Bible as an author.  I only wanted the podcast to be a little better.  Everyone gets a chance to grow, but unless you capture your audience, you've lost a chance at a sale later.  As you see from another post here, I wasn't the only one that felt that way.

I will try another few episodes as you feel they are worth the time.

****** If only Sigler would do a book on escaping an interplanetary prison, I'd be in Vegas the following weekend.

I read the drabble explanation page and conceptually I get it.  I still think it doesn't work as well in audio.  I'll go listen to the next few episodes.  Thanks for the link.

****** If only Sigler would do a book on escaping an interplanetary prison, I'd be in Vegas the following weekend.

about the skipping around.  It was kind of hard to follow at the beginning, but once I got to know the characters and where the story was going, that became easier.  That was the first Drabble anything I'd ever heard.  I didn't know of Jake Bible until after his Crypt episode, but I found that I really enjoyed the story he was telling.

And he does follow the Drabble formula even in the print version.

* * Head Biker Babe & [flickr-photo:id=4891502501], Dead Sexy Dealer, The Juicer, Co-Founder of the Gutter Sistren & Proud Member of GirlCo. * *

Most podioauthors want to hear feedback on how they can make their product better and will go to some length to do so.

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...clear demarcations noted with the skull book cased by shuriken. That makes a world of difference. Using 4 seconds of silence in an audio format simply wouldn't work. And 100 words isn't enough for me to immerse myself in audio. Doing it with flash fiction (300 words) is difficult enough.

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Dead Mech was simply intolerable, mostly from a production standpoint, but there's no way I could deal with this Drabble thing y'all are talking about.

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It took me a while to get used to the drabble format of the story line and the quality of the audio. The breaks between the drabble sections during the episodes took alot of getting used to.  But over all I thought it was a great story.  If you ever get a chance to talk to Jake (or hear you may hear him talk about it) ask him about the mic he was using during his recording sessions. That might give you some Idea of why the audio quality was lacking.  :)

[flickr-photo:id=3718433600,size=m]
KISS'd by Sigler. Honored recipient of the 2009 "Iron Man" Award.
Funky Name Brotha, Gutter Brethren & Pusher Thrice Over!

i'm not really picky when it comes to stories as long as they keep me entertained at work. I just finished listening to Dead Mech about 2 weeks ago. At first i wasn't that excited about it, but the story/format grew on me as i went along in the story. At the end i was kind of sad it was over. Hopefully he gets the sequel out sometime soon.

As far as "The breaks between the drabble sections during the episodes took alot of getting used to" goes, that falls into the oxymoronic category of acquired tastes for me. Why would I keep listening if I didn't like it? I gave him as many episodes as I could tolerate and then called it quits. I can't recall if I even made it to my normal 4 with Dead Mech.

I generally stick to Scott's ROOKIE guidelines for judging whether I'm going to finish a book or not. 4 podio-episodes if it's audio, or 50 text pages if I'm reading treeware. If the author hasn't gotten me hooked by then, it's not worth my time to keep going. It's often difficult for me to put stuff down because I'm convinced "this simply *has* to get better, right?!?" but I've learned throughout the years that those guidelines work well for me.

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That's what Phantom used to record "Triangle Victim," and it wasn't *too* bad. It has a fairly high noise floor IMHO, but I'm a total audio snob. One of the drawbacks of working in the industry, I suppose.

I've found that I am *much* less forgiving than the average listener when it comes to audio quality and production mistakes. IMHO, there are numerous shows out there where a little extra effort could make the show sound better by an order of magnitude. The unwillingness of the producer/author to put in that effort simply means I won't be part of their audience. It's not like there's any shortage of superbly produced content out there.

One area where I am very forgiving is when 'casters/authors are just starting out. It takes time to learn what you're doing. And if fans/listeners don't give them constructive criticism of how they can improve their product, how can we expect them to get better? That's why I try to write to authors with specific suggestions of how they can improve, even if I wind up not finishing listening to their book. The annoying thing there is when they choose not to try and fix the issue(s), but I've found that is *extremely* rare.

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..... for the eBook over at SmashWords and he's letting you have the first 20% free to see if you like it. That seems like an all around win scenario to me. Given the way in which DeadMech is written, I suspect I need to read it rather than listen to it. Having that frequent of transitions with no audio cue (sorry, silence is NOT a cue) would get me totally lost. That, plus I absolutely suck at multi-tasking. So, I've downloaded the first 20% and expect I'll be buying the eBook in a few days. I need to drop Jake a line and see if I'm right about him getting a better percentage from SmashWords than Amazon.

Might as well give him some free pimpage; Here's Jake's 'buy my fiction' page. It's got specific links for each book to Kindle, SmashWords, and Nook (if that particular company carries that title). He's written a hell of a lot more than I realized. Now I have quite a few more 20% samples to check out (and maybe buy). Damn effective marketing strategy. Bastard!!!

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Jake is currently reading The Americans a side-quel to Dead Mech find it here...

http://jakebible.com/

aka nilling

I listened to Dead Mech on my car commute through an iPod connected to car stereo using tape adaptor. Listening to mp3 podcast I would not be able to offer much of an opinion on the audio quality. Whilst it may not have been the best it certainly was not the worst; Matt Wallace - Title Fight ep2, springs to mind. Listening to music? When then that's FLAC played through a DAC unit and Koss PortaPro headphones.

In a recent interview Jake stated that his now side-quel to Dead Mech, The Americans was to be a 'reading' rather than a podcast. He said that it was just not worth his time spending recording time to produce a high-quality podcast. He considers himself to be an author first. So maybe in a way he's held his hand up over Dead Mech's audio quality

aka nilling

Jake it certainly trying different things when it comes to marketing his work, especailly ebooks.

aka nilling

.....because the original recordings of Episodes 1+2 were crap quality audio wise. And to us, PB.com properties should try to be the same as a professionally produced audiobook. Obviously authors who are just starting out aren't going to meet that expectation. But we knew we could do better, so we held off until Scott had time to redo the beginning of the novella.

Along those same lines, what does a 'reading' mean? Isn't that what an audiobook is? To me, a podcast is simply a serialized audiobook w/jibber jabber at the front and back. I assume Jake meant something else. If all he's doing is reading with zero editing, he might as well not bother. No matter how good you are, you're going to stumble, cough, need a drink, etc. Cest la vie. I'll check it out and see what I think. Thanks for the link above.

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No matter how good you are, you're going to stumble, cough, need a drink, etc - Jake calls this 'organic' reading rather the a super-polished audio podcast. And like I've said; listening in the car I will not matter to me one bit ;)

aka nilling

If you like yours straight from the cow, that's your perogative. Baskin Robbins FTW!

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I remember some episode of something quite a while back; can't remember whose feed it came through on, but it was discussing a few podcasters' mic setup. Someone had a completely cobbled-together mic that was taped to a toilet paper roll or something. Anyone remember that? I wonder if it was Jake.

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Gutter Sistren whipping boy, innoventor of words, Life Coach to the Damned.