Hello. This is John Rhodes, author of “Little Bird Told Me”, and, I decided to include in my podcast a pledge break, although hoping you don’t consider me a copycat of PBS. In this recording I will go over some of my background in writing and my constant effort at producing my writing with my own money, while at the same time trying to be innovative in a new form of media, podcasting. Starting from around 1997, I started writing, and have been writing steadily for about ten years now. I published in the beginning a lot of poetry chapbooks, of numerous titles. One title being, “Dreams of a Flowerchild”. I also produced 3 novelettes, which I am going to turn into full length novels. Those 3 titles are, “Fake Mustang”, “The Clown of Piccadilly Circus”, and, “A Bad Penny Always Turns Up”. “The Clown of Piccadilly Circus”, is a play on words. It takes place in and around Piccadilly Circus in England which is really a traffic roundabout. The main character is sort of a sad clown, who lives in that area. The characters in my plot are bought and sold to second-hand lifestyles in penny ante, lackluster situations, which can involve tragedy and usually, but not always, triumph, This is a topic in my life itself, me being a poor poet, although hopefully I will not become famous as a dead poet, as the story usually goes.
Around 2005 I came out with a collection of my poems which I self-published through Authorhouse named “Spirits of Bondage and Inherent Transcendence”, and, out of stupidity paid a fortune to advertise in a big magazine with no success. Soon after that episode I figured I had to invent a way to sell my books which would not cost me money. I had only indirectly heard about podcasting, and around the beginning of 2006 went to a podcast meetup: Located at : http://podcasting.meetup.com/20 . That address as all addresses mentioned will be in the show notes. It was there I met Scott Sigler the now famous Sci Fi podcaster, and Michael Butler who was another early podcaster. He can be found at: http://rockandrollgeekwp.podshow.com . He was to become the narrator of my novel. The first person that offered to do the voice-over of my novel “Little Bird Told Me”, wanted 3000 dollars. I gave up on that and Michael offered to do it for much less. I won’t quote you how much, but it wasn’t a give away, so let’s just say it was more than chore money. Anyway, getting back to the plot, I was convinced after the first time I went to the Podcast meet-up that I could make a podcast. It was then I started podcasting poets from the open mikes of San Francisco. The bay area has a huge amount of poets in it, and I probably never will run out of talent to put on. I consider it only fair to put a few of my poems on each show so as to make a name for myself. Just to note, if you don’t know already, I have an audio video poetry podcast at: http://mysticbabylon.podomatic.com, and I also run it as a TV show here in San Francisco. So, besides all the equipment I had to buy to run a podcast, and eventually a TV show, I spend very little on my advertising. I do have on banner ad that I put on the Poetry Flash web site at: http://poetryflash.org , but that is about it. After I ran my poetry podcast for about a year I came out with my novel: “Little Bird Told Me”. I still wasn’t at this time having much luck at selling my books, but with huge success at downloads from my poetry podcast site averaging 100,000 downloads a year. I also had fair luck at finding numerous fairly well known writers to put on my poetry podcast. Around April of last year Michael Butler finished the voice-over of my book. I wanted a mature seasoned hippie narrator voice for the voice-over, not a young subjective hippie voice for the book, but all I could get was Michael. Michael was a very good 2nd choice though. As you can tell by my life most things I get are 2nd choice as in second-hand, which is a big topic in my books as in my novels. I’m telling you this so you might consider ordering on of my books so you can learn first-hand about my second-hand life. Sometimes I think the Godhead is second-hand. I think that you should also invest in the Godhead, the one that is in us all, so you can learn first hand what has been given to us second-hand. I had to make that shame-less poetic plug, because it would be poetic justice if through this osmotic plug, you decided my writings had enough juice in them to be worth 8 or 9 dollars from www.audible.com . Anyway, that pretty much puts you up to date. I have another poetry book basically finished, that I am editing and hope to put out in the summer or maybe fall, and soon after I hope to have another hip novel out, made out of one of my novelettes. Again, I hope you don’t consider the purchase of my book as a capitalist enterprise, but more of a donation. I was going to put my book on www.podiobooks.com , but because I was afraid of an agreement I made with Audible, I decided not to monetarily publish from two different deals, even though Podiobooks survives from donations. Scott Sigler lost his agreement with Audible because of some fine print in his contract being that he couldn’t for some unidentified reason sell his book with Audible and at the same time give it away for free. I have asked Audible about this, and although they have made some comments about Scott’s predicament, they haven’t made it clear why they let me publish with them, and also give it away for free and not Scott Sigler. I feel blessed this way. Whatever you do, listen to my book all the way through for free, or, decide not to buy Ebenezer Scrooge for Christmas, and buy my book instead. I do sincerely hope you are blessed by the spirit of truth I talk about in my book no matter what you do. I know there are probably a lot of people out there who are listening to this podcast, and don’t have 8 or 9 dollars in their wallet that they can spare, and I respect that, because I’ve been there too. That’s about the end of my shameless plug, and I hope you learned something about me, whether this makes you decide to buy my book or not. You can also buy it in text version from most online bookstores. Adios for now.
The back ground music is by: Marco Esu and is from the podsafe music network. His web site is: http://www.marcoesu.com .
The photo above is of me John Rhodes.