Podcasts about Cloak

In this episode we chat about Marvel's Cloak and Dagger! Season 2 Episode 6 - B Sides You can find the complete plot on Wikipedia here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloak_%26_Dagger_(TV_series)#Season_2_(2019))

My Cloak of Moss by Livi by 826 Valencia

A curious traveler is warned to avoid the mysterious woman haunting a quiet French hotel —but he just can't resist asking to see her face. Hear the terrifying tale from Beyond Midnight's “Let Me See Your Face!” | #RetroRadio EP0410Join the DARKNESS SYNDICATE: https://weirddarkness.com/syndicateCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:50.000 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Queen of Spades” (March 08, 1976) ***WD00:48:26.039 = Philip Marlowe, “Cloak of Kamehameha” (April 23, 1949)01:18:45.859 = The Black Mass, “Diary of a Madman” (December 16, 1964)01:59:33.949 = Beyond Midnight, ‘Let Me See Your Face” (1968-1970)02:30:16.859 = Mind Webs, “A Night In Elf Hill” (December 15, 1978)02:59:42.250 = Ellery Queen Minute Mysteries, “Mysterious Murders” (1939-1948) ***WD03:02:02.467 = This Is Your FBI, “The Adopted Thief” (August 10, 1951) ***WD03:27:31.029 = Mystery In The Air, “Mask of Medusa” (September 04, 1947)03:57:44.639 = Molle Mystery Theater, “Further Adventures of Kenny Andrews” (May 10, 1946)04:27:51.219 = Mr. District Attorney, “Unknown Source” (August 25, 1948)04:57:07.544 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode more listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music LibraryABOUT WEIRD DARKNESS: Weird Darkness is a true crime and paranormal podcast narrated by professional award-winning voice actor, Darren Marlar. Seven days per week, Weird Darkness focuses on all thing strange and macabre such as haunted locations, unsolved mysteries, true ghost stories, supernatural manifestations, urban legends, unsolved or cold case murders, conspiracy theories, and more. On Thursdays, this scary stories podcast features horror fiction along with the occasional creepypasta. Weird Darkness has been named one of the “Best 20 Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal. Listeners have described the show as a cross between “Coast to Coast” with Art Bell, “The Twilight Zone” with Rod Serling, “Unsolved Mysteries” with Robert Stack, and “In Search Of” with Leonard Nimoy.= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.= = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0410true crime, paranormal, science fiction, old time radio, otr, otr horror, classic radio shows, horror radio shows, vintage radio dramas, suspense radio classics, 1940s radio horror, old radio mystery shows, creepy old radio shows, true crime radio, supernatural radio plays, golden age radio, eerie radio mysteries, macabre old time radio, nostalgic thrillers, classic crime podcast, retro horror podcast, weird darkness, weird darkness podcast, retro radio, classic radio

Cloak & Dagger, the sleekest, sexiest, and most entertaining show on privacy & security…coming to the P.A.Z.NIA Radio Network May 31st at 4pm EST/3pm CENTRAL. Learn more, stream the Second Realm, and help us expand by visiting PAZNIA.COM/RADIO. The post Thane Riddle Presents: Insurrectionary Agorism & An Introduction To Cloak & Dagger (P.A.Z.NIA Radio Network) appeared first on The Vonu Podcast.

In this episode we chat about Marvel's Cloak and Dagger! Season 2 Episode 5 - Alignment Chart You can find the complete plot on Wikipedia here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloak_%26_Dagger_(TV_series)#Season_2_(2019))

This week, Desmond and Tom heap praise into The Gorge. While its title sounds like a Bentley Little novel, it isn't. So Des goes solo on a Dread Media Top 5 Putting a Bentley Little Spin on Movies Titled with Two Words and One of Them is "The." I think we finally have a new winner for longest description of a Top 5. Bentley Little-sounding songs included: "The Complex" by Devin Townsend, "Gorge Upon My Soul" by Skeletonwitch, "The Diplomat" by Pig Destroyer, and "The Cloak" by Leprous. Send feedback to: dreadmediapodcast@gmail.com. Follow @DevilDinosaurJr and @dreadmedia on Twitter! Join the Facebook group! Support the show at www.patreon.com/dreadmedia. Visit www.desmondreddick.com, www.stayscary.wordpress.com, www.dreadmedia.bandcamp.com, www.kccinephile.com, and www.dejasdomicileofdread.blogspot.com.

On this week's episode of our show, Captain Ingle and I set a course for the 23rd century and the aftermath of the Federation-Klingon War. When a defector from the Klingon Empire who was an enemy combatant in the war comes aboard the Enterprise on his way to a conference, old wounds are opened among the crew! Join us as we go boldly!

This week, Desmond and Tom heap praise into The Gorge. While its title sounds like a Bentley Little novel, it isn't. So Des goes solo on a Dread Media Top 5 Putting a Bentley Little Spin on Movies Titled with Two Words and One of Them is "The." I think we finally have a new winner for longest description of a Top 5. Bentley Little-sounding songs included: "The Complex" by Devin Townsend, "Gorge Upon My Soul" by Skeletonwitch, "The Diplomat" by Pig Destroyer, and "The Cloak" by Leprous. Send feedback to: dreadmediapodcast@gmail.com. Follow @DevilDinosaurJr and @dreadmedia on Twitter! Join the Facebook group! Support the show at www.patreon.com/dreadmedia. Visit www.desmondreddick.com, www.stayscary.wordpress.com, www.dreadmedia.bandcamp.com, www.kccinephile.com, and www.dejasdomicileofdread.blogspot.com.

After the fights, Zechs collapses from exhaustion; he's not in harm's way, but shows no signs of waking up. Before leaving the site, Galahad displays a sign ensuring that no more sacrifices will happen here, as per the vow of the Champion of Bahamut. The group takes Zechs to his parents' place so he can rest and wake up in a familiar setting with his parents watching him. The night is young, and after a night like they had, revelry is long overdue. With that, they head out to the Faint Mandolin and enjoy the many drinks the establishment provides, some mood enhancers courtesy of Salix, and the melodic sounds of their new ally, Turk. What is now par for the course for the party, the drinks keep coming, a deep conversation is had, and they run into a familiar face at their next venue, The Jaded Kitty Kat. A wide grin and enthusiastic voice greet the party as Little G is in town and doing some celebrating of his own. The group updates Turk on how they know their associate Little G dubs Turk, THE Turk, which gets a welcome response. Towards the end of the evening, Greyleaf and The Turk discuss their origins, fondness for magic, and Greyleaf's family before heading back to Zechs' parents' place for the night. The following day, in Rinde and Setti's home, the party is joined by a familiar face: Iqra of the Cloak of Feathers. She gives news that she is a messenger for JM as they are otherwise held up, but offers to answer any questions they have. There is an exchange as The Turk works out which JM they're referring to as he realizes that the JM he knew was Mr. Bell, and the JM who sent them was the one who last spoke to the party, presenting as a woman. She tells the party to let Zechs know that Argo is safe and recovering in Nereas, that Cenari received word from the Circle of Friends that are looking into a group known as the Light of Elrin in Luxenborough, and that one of their party members has received the boon from the Daughter of the Flame. Iqra informs Arguile that an army of fiends has overtaken Ors Themar for the first time in history and is making their way toward Nakoroa. Additionally, the Masterful Gains Guild in Gamsby is trying to stop a splinter group known as the Umbral Viel that is trying to disrupt the weave throughout the city. At the same time, some operatives were dispatched from the guild to stop them. None have reported back in and have since gone missing. They say that if Mechfall loses its arcane power, it's the same as putting a lit match next to a powder keg. Upon asking about The Constable and any of his Generals, Galahad is told that The Executioner has also been mentioned as pulling her punches. It's not information they saw firsthand, but they were informed of it. Iqra informs Arguile that Enich is not his only alternate and to beware of the one carrying a rifle with him. We end with some details regarding the Pincushion Maker and the calamities of Sloane.There's so much happening, and that's where we pick up…Find out what happens next in this episode of the Medusa's Cascade: Collateral Damage! Theme Music is written and performed by The Floating LighthouseMixed by Thomas Lapierre III

In this episode we chat about Marvel's Cloak and Dagger! Season 2 Episode 4 - Rabbit Hold You can find the complete plot on Wikipedia here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloak_%26_Dagger_(TV_series)#Season_2_(2019))

It's the 250th episode of The Pulp Writer Show! To celebrate this occasion, this episode takes a look at the expectations people have of a full-time writer's life and contrasts them with the reality. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Talons of the Sorcerer, Book #6 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store: TALONS50 The coupon code is valid through May 27, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 250 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 2, 2025, and today we're looking at what it is really like to be a full-time writer. This is also the 250th episode of the podcast, so thank you all for listening to the podcast over these last six years. Before I started recording, I totaled up the total length of previous podcast episodes and came to about 78 hours, give or take. That's like three days of continuous talking, which sounds less impressive when you realize it was recorded over the last six years.   Thank you all for listening and here's hoping you can stick around with the next 250 episodes. Before we get to our main topic, which is the expectations versus reality of being a full-time writer, we are going to do Coupon of the Week, a progress update my current writing projects, and then Question of the Week. So let's kick off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Talons of the Sorcerer, Book Six in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That code is TALONS50. As always, you can get that coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through May 27th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we have got you covered.   Now an update on my current writing projects. I am 60,000 words into Ghost in the Corruption, which puts me on chapter 13 of 21, so I'm about two thirds of the way through. I think the rough draft will be between 90-100,000 words long, so hopefully I can have that out before the end of May, if all goes well. I also just finished Chapter One of Shield of Power, which will be the final book of the Shield War series and that'll be my main project once Ghost in the Corruption is finished. I'm also 87,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: The Final Quest, and that will be my main project once Shield of Power comes out. I expect Final Quest should come out pretty soon after Shield of Power just because I've been chipping away at it for so long and I'm getting close to the end.   In audiobook news, recording is almost done for Ghost in the Assembly and that'll be narrated by Hollis McCarthy. Recording is totally done for Shield of Deception (as narrated by Brad Wills) and that is working its way through processing at the various audiobook platforms, so hopefully we'll not be too much longer before we can get that to you.   00:02:26 Question of the Week So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. And now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what is your favorite Jonathan Moeller book? The reason for this question is that this is the 250th podcast episode, so it seems like a good topic for that particular milestone. And as you might expect, we had an array of different opinions.   Joachim says: You are kidding us! By the end of the week? How long did you think about your own answer? Let me mirror you: for my own answer, the question is a bit difficult because I spent money on all your books, which meant I thought all of them a good buy. So let me split my answer into male and female protagonists. The best female book was Ghost Exile: Omnibus One because it prompted me to continue with Ghost Exile and fill in the Ghost series later. The Ghosts Omnibus One and Ghost Exile: Omnibus One were my first two books from you. The best male book was the one with Jack March where Thunderbolt said, “males are ogling breasts which never existed”, especially as such AI generated videos are now all over the place on YouTube.   I have to admit that I first came up with the character of Thunderbolt back in early 2021 when I was working on Silent Order: Rust Hand (that was before the AI boom really took off), so she turned out to be a very prescient character for the AI era in a number of ways.   Joe B. says: That is a tough question as there are many contenders. I'm going to go with one that is a little different, Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation, but now known as Stealth and Spells Online: Creation.   Justin says: I nominate Soul of Swords, an excellent end to an excellent series.   Perry says: There can only be one! Demonsouled. Paul says: For me, I think my favorite female protagonist  book is Cloak Games: Truth Chain. Such a dramatic change to Nadia, sets up the series in her struggles with self and enemies so well.   Brad Wills (who as you know narrated the Frostborn, Dragonskull, Malison, and Shield War series for me) says: Does a three book arc count?  Excalibur, The Dragon Knight, and The Shadow Prison made for a fantastic lead-up and finale of the Frostborn series.   Hollis McCarthy (who as you know, narrated the Ghosts and Cloak Mage audiobooks) says: Ghost in the Storm, when Caina and Kylon meet in the Battle for Marsis. Nonstop action, incredible chase scenes, and a great intro to their combative relationship.   Fred says: It's hard for me to say which book is my favorite. All your book series were all great.   Juana says: Frostborn: Excalibur with Ridmark. I happen to love stories about Excalibur, odd but true. Caina in Cloak and Ghost: Rebel Cell because Caina and Nadia are an incendiary team. So there! Randy says: Frostborn: The Dragon Knight. This whole series is great, but that is one of the high points.   Dennis says: I couldn't name my favorite as I enjoy everything you write. I probably enjoyed the Frostborn series best at the time, but having bought and read every one of your books it's now impossible.   Kevin says: There's no way on earth that I could put one book above another, so I would've to take the coward's way out and say Frostborn: The Gray Knight simply because it has a book that drew me to the worlds of Jonathan Moeller back in the spring of 2017, since which time I have bought 117 of his books, including a few omnibus editions, so a few more actual books, I suppose. I avidly read them all as they're published these days, except the Silent Order series (just doesn't grab me and pull me in like the others). Jesse says: Cloak Games: Sky Hammer. Damaged Nadia at her best, epic action the whole way. And yeah, the chapter The Last Death of Nadia Moran was viscerally cinematic and probably the biggest emotional payoff you've written in my opinion, tied her entire journey together. In my head, I cast Castle-era Stana Katic as Nadia, and it worked better than I expected it might.   Morgan says: I can't narrow it down to just one. So top three in no particular order, Sevenfold Swords: Swordbearer, Dragontiarna: Gates, and Stealth and Spells Online: Leveling. That being said, I think Niara might be my favorite character of all your books I have read.   Jonathan T says: I too am torn though only between two books, Frostborn: The Eightfold Knife and Frostborn: The Shadow Prison.   [Side note/addition from The Transcriptionist: My vote is for Half-Elven Thief!]   So thank you everyone for the kind words about all those books. For my own answer, the question is a bit difficult because I've written them all, which meant I thought all of them were good idea at the time. I suppose the glib answer would be the one that made me the most money, which was Frostborn: The Iron Tower, but it really depends on the category, like my favorite heist book, my favorite mystery book, my favorite dungeon crawl, my favorite first in series. So I think I'll go for the most basic level of categorization and split it up by male and female protagonists.   My favorite book of mine with a female protagonist would probably be Cloak Games: Rebel Fist, since it's such a turning point for Nadia and starts the trajectory of the rest of her character arc. It's the first time she really has to save the day instead of just trying to save herself and shows that her brother Russell can also handle himself, which as you know, comes up again later. My favorite book of mine with a male protagonist would probably be Dragontiarna: Defenders, since it has the Battle of Shadow Crown Hill, which was one of my favorite sequences to write. Four different characters have plans and they all crash into each other at the same time, which was a lot of fun to write and set up, which was a real highlight for me in 2020 because as we all know, 2020 was a fun year.   00:07:35 Main Topic of the Week: Writing Full Time: Expectations Versus Reality   So that is it for Question of the Week. Now let's move on to our main topic this week, writing full-time: expectations versus reality (admittedly from the perspective of a self-published author). If you spent any time around the writing community on the Internet at all, you know that many people dream of becoming a full-time writer, and sometimes people think that the only way to be successful as a writer is to write full-time. There are many expectations that people have about what it means to be a full-time writer. Now that I've been a full-time indie writer for nearly nine years at this point, I can provide some lived perspective. In this episode, I will talk about five of those expectations that people have about full-time writing and the way those expectations might be skewed.   So before we get to those, I should mention how I actually became a full-time writer. In 2016 (which seems like a really long time ago now), the Frostborn series was doing really well, and at the time I was also working full time and I realized that summer I was going to have to move for family reasons. I wasn't very enthusiastic about the idea of moving at first, but I decided to embrace the idea and try to make the best of it. This would involve moving a considerable distance to a different state and all the different problems that entails. So I thought about it and I thought I could look for a new job, but any job I would be qualified for in the area I was moving to would make less money than I was actually making from writing part-time. So I thought, why not try and make a go of full-time writing and see what happens?   Since that was nine years ago, I think I can safely say it's worked out pretty well. And I will say that it's been a pretty good experience and I am very fortunate and very grateful and very blessed to have been able to do this because not everyone has the opportunity to pursue a full-time creative job like I have been able to for these last nine years. That said, while it has been pretty great, it comes with a lot of flexibility and I've gotten to write a lot of great books that many people have enjoyed, it's not always all wine and roses, so to speak, which is part of the reason why I wanted to do this episode to let people more in what the reality of being a full-time writer for this long has been like. So with that introduction out of the way, let's move on to our five expectations versus reality.   Expectation #1: Full-time authors make a lot of money. The reality is that even full-time authors generally don't make that much money. A survey from The Author's Guild showed that the median amount that full-time authors make was just about $20,000, though full-time romance writers had a higher median income of about $37,000. Remember that this amount is before any health insurance costs, benefits, retirement contributions, and of course taxes that a traditional job might be able to provide or help with. In the United States, buying even fairly basic health insurance can easily be a thousand dollars per month for a family, and that doesn't include any costs related to deductibles, prescriptions, or additional dental or vision insurance. Authors are either on their own for healthcare in the US or have to rely on a spouse or partner's healthcare coverage. In other words, you either have to pony up a lot of money to buy your own health insurance or you have to rely on your spouse or partner's healthcare coverage.   And at least in the US, taxes are also much higher on the self-employed. Uncle Sam really does not like the self-employed. If you are self-employed, it is in your best interest to essentially form a small corporation and work for yourself (though for details on how to do that, you should consult with an accountant licensed to practice in your region). Now all these costs can add up pretty quickly, and they make the amount of money that you'll earn from writing much less than you think based on raw earnings before taxes and all the other expenses we were talking about. You also have business expenses like cover design, site hosting, editors, narrators, advertising, et cetera, that take even more pieces out of those earnings. You can duck some of those, but not all of them.   So it boils down to that you have to make a significant amount of money as an author to make an actual living after taxes, healthcare costs, and business expenses are taken out of your earnings, which is one of the reasons that writing part-time as you have a full-time job is not the worst idea in the world and can in fact be a very good idea.   Expectation #2: My next book will make as much or more than the last one did. The reality is that your next book or series might not make you as much money as the previous ones did. In fact, you can reliably predict that most book series will have a certain amount of reader drop off as a series goes on, which is why these days I tend to want to keep my series under nine to ten books or so. Budgeting based on your current income levels is not wise, especially with the current economic climate (which for a variety of reasons is very unpredictable) and with increased competition in the ebook market. Most authors have a peak at some point in their career. For example, Stephen King is still obviously making a great living as a writer putting out new books, but his new books don't sell nearly as well as the ones he put out in the ‘80s. J.K. Rowling's novels for adults (she writes as Robert Galbraith the Cormoran Strike series) don't sell anywhere near the number of copies as her Harry Potter series did at its peak.   For myself, my peak years in terms of writing income were 2016 and 2017, and I've never quite been able to recapture that level. In fact, in 2024, I only did about two thirds of what I did in 2017 (my peak year), which can be a little nerve wracking as you watch those numbers move up and down. That is why it is important for a writer (like many other creatives like actors) to anticipate that they might only have a limited window of peak success and to save aggressively rather than living large on the amount you're earning in that peak era. And I am pleased to report that I was fortunate enough and sensible enough to do that, so that even if my income has varied from year to year (2017 onward), it hasn't been a crippling loss and I haven't been out in the street or lost the house or anything like that.   Expectation #3: You will be happier if you write full-time. The reality is that is not true for everyone. Some people actually do better creatively and emotionally with the time restrictions placed on them by having a full-time job. Many famous writers, including Trollope and Kafka, kept their full-time jobs. Even Tolkien was never a full-time writer. He was a professor of philology until he retired. That was interesting to me because personally, I haven't had much in terms of emotional trouble being a full-time writer. I've always kind of had the ability to hyperfocus on a task, and I've been doing that for almost nine years now, and it's worked out well for me.   I've since realized that is not true for many people. One of the things that demonstrated it to me, believe it or not, was insurance actuarial tables. One thing that I tried to do after I became a full-time writer was try and get disability insurance in case I had an accident or severe illness and could not write anymore. I learned that it's extremely difficult for full-time writers to get disability insurance due to their high rates of substance abuse and mental illness. I was astonished by this because I've never had problems with substance abuse or mental illness myself, but given the number of writers and other creatives I've known who have had those issues, perhaps that's not that surprising, but I was still baffled to learn that.   For example, in my area there are a number of tree management companies (because it's a heavily wooded area) and it's a lot easier for an arborist who works with a chainsaw all day to get disability insurance than it is for a writer, which is somewhat crazy to think about because as a writer, I'm mostly sitting in a chair all day pressing buttons on a keyboard while an arborist is climbing a tree or in a crane with a chainsaw, which is a much more physically dangerous thing. But because of the rates of substance abuse and mental illness among full-time writers, apparently it is very difficult for full-time writers to get disability insurance. Some people struggle with the lack of structure and outward accountability that comes from being a full-time writer and find that actually decreases their productivity and leads them to fall into substance abuse or sink deeper into mental health problems. Very few people have the self-discipline and mental resilience required to be a full-time writer for years on end. And that's not me tooting my own horn so to speak, but apparently it is just the facts. Some writers even go back to full-time work just because they find it less stressful or better for their wellbeing. So I think this is an excellent example of having to know yourself and know what is best for you. For example, if you're a very extroverted person who enjoys talking to people at the office, becoming a full-time writer where you spend most of your time by yourself typing might not be the best for your long-term mental and physical health. Expectation #4: Writing full-time will make me more productive. The reality is having more time does not necessarily mean that you'll be more productive. Writers are notorious for falling prey to time wasters, such as social media scrolling, research spirals, and writing adjacent activities (of which there is a whole series about on this podcast already). It does take a lot of a self-discipline, focus, and determination to be a full-time writer. If you are a full-time writer, especially a full-time indie writer, you also have to balance writing time with various administrative tasks, marketing and ads, social media, fan correspondence, and the various tasks involved in the self-publishing process. Writing is not the only thing that writers actually do, and the other tasks often make finding time for writing more difficult than you might expect. Even traditionally published writers still have to carve out time for administrative work and assisting with marketing and social media work.   As your writing career scales up, so does the behind the scenes workload. This is true in my case. Up until 2023, I basically did everything myself, but I did have COVID pretty badly for a while in 2023 and it just knocked out my energy for a while and I realized that I can't keep trying to do everything by myself. I basically had a choice, either cut some tasks or get some help. So I have some people now, some contractors who help me with things like listening to audiobook proofs (I used to do that all myself), doing the podcast transcript, and Excel record keeping (which I used to do myself). While that is an expense, I don't regret it because it really has taken a lot off my plate and freed up more time for writing, which of course is the entire point.   Expectation #5: I admit this one made me laugh. I will have more free time as a full-time writer. I can attest firsthand that that is not true. What you have as a full-time writer is flexibility. The reality is, although there is flexibility on the job, the hours can be more than for a full-time job. There's a joke that full-time writers can work any 12 hours they want every day.   Most indie authors are putting out far more than one book a year in order to make a full-time income, and that requires a fairly demanding pace that most people don't have the self-discipline to maintain as a lifestyle for years and years on end. The majority of full-time writers right now are either romance or erotica writers who are putting out at least a book a month, sometimes even more. As I mentioned in an earlier point in the show, the administrative task can take far more time than most people would imagine. They could, depending on the circumstances, be easily 40 hours a week on their own before you have time to do a single word of writing on the page. I found you really have to guard your writing time well and find ways to keep administrative tasks, distractions, and necessary tasks such as home maintenance or childcare separate from writing.   Anyone who has ever worked from home is familiar with how difficult that can be because home comes with a wide set of distractions. Granted, that's often fewer distractions than the office, but home can have its own set of distractions. I've mentioned before that you need a bit of tunnel vision to produce the quantity of writing I do month after month. I do keep to a pretty rigid schedule. I have daily word count goals I always try to meet and I use the Pomodoro Method to make sure that I'm prioritizing my writing time.   If you are self-employed and working for yourself, that means there are no allocated vacation or sick days and no paid sick leave in the writing world. Taking a couple of weeks off usually means anticipating a loss in income, such as a month without a book being released. Sometimes, especially in the case of illness, family emergencies, and so forth, that just can't be helped. However, the long vacations people imagine writers being able to take mean either a loss of income or a couple of weeks beforehand of working extra hours to make up for it. For example, Brandon Sanderson, who is probably the most famous fantasy author right now, still works and writes on his vacations and does extra work before leaving for a vacation (such as pre-recording videos).   So as you can see, most of the expectations people have about what it's like to write full-time come from the hope that it will change their productivity or make it easier to write. In reality, if you manage your time well, you can often meet all your writing goals even while working another full-time job. Some people are even more productive under the time pressure of only having an hour or so available to write each day. You don't have to wait until you are a full-time writer for your writing career to start. I wrote for decades and published for years before I was a full-time writer.   Frankly, the idea that you need to be a full-time writer in order to be taken seriously or make money exists only in your own mind. Whether you are a full-time writer or not, what matters is having the discipline to shut out distractions and write with absolute consistency regardless of the circumstances. Even writing 250 to 300 words every single day can add up very quickly, even if you don't do it in 15 minute bursts like Anthony Trollope did.   Finally, I suppose this makes it sound like I'm painting a very bleak picture here, but I'm not. As I said before, I'm very fortunate to be able to do what I do, and I'm very grateful to all my readers that I'm able to write full-time and even hire on contractors for narration and behind the scenes work. I appreciate and am very grateful to all the readers who have supported me by continuing to buy my work and access it through subscription services like Kindle Unlimited or Kobo Plus or library options like Libby and Hoopla.   So that is it for this week. I hope it provided some insight into what it's like to be a full-time writer. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show and all 250 episodes. I hope you found the show and all 250 episodes useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

We would love to hear from you! Please send us your comments here. --------Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible. Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org. Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

When a shy girl named Freyja receives a mysterious gift from her grandmother in Norway, her middle school graduation turns into an unforgettable adventure. Writer: Tessa Flannery with help from The Girl Tales Club Voice Over Artists: Rebecca Cunningham Producer: Tessa Flannery Executive Producer and Host: Rebecca Cunningham Theme Song: Megan Bagala Links for the Grownups! Join The Girl Tales Club Get the Girl Tales Starter Pack Girl Tales Events Purchase a Personalized Story Listen to Ghost Tour Join the Girl Tales Patreon Rebecca's Newsletter Facebook Instagram Buy the Girl Tales Team a Coffee Starglow Media

In this week's special spring episode, I share samples from four of my audiobooks. Each audiobook is the third book in its series! 1.) Dragonskull: Blade of the Elves, narrated by Brad Wills. 2.) Cloak of Ashes, narrated by Hollis McCarthy. 3.) Half-Orc Paladin, narrated by Leanne Woodward. 4.) Ghost in the Blood, narrated by Hollis McCarthy. (The next one is technically the 2nd in its series, but it wasn't ready in time for the last Sampler Platter episode.) 5.) Stealth & Spells Online: Leveling, narrated by CJ McCallister. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Cloak Mage: Omnibus Three at my Payhip store: NADIAOMNI3 The coupon code is valid through May 18, 2025. So if you need a new book for spring, we've got you covered!

Mark: Throw Away Your CloakMark 10:46-52Blaise ShieldsSaint Andrew ChurchAuburn, IndianaCCLI# 1357907CCLI# 20112034

Gunsmoke "Billy the Kid" 4/26/1952Information Please "Deems Taylor & George Fielding Elliot" 4/23/1940Dragnet "The Big Job" 4/27/1950Philip Marlowe "The Cloak of Kamehameha" 4/23/1949The Haunting Hour "A Corpse There Was" 4/21/1945X Minus One "No Contact" 4/24/2025

Adventure: Rocky Fortune “Double Identity” 10/13/53 NBC, Cloak and Dagger “The People in the Forest” 6/11/50 NBC.

In this episode we chat about Marvel's Cloak and Dagger! Season 2 Episode 3 - Shadow Selves You can find the complete plot on Wikipedia here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloak_%26_Dagger_(TV_series)#Season_2_(2019))

Palm Sunday was more than a parade—it was a declaration of identity, authority, and surrender. Discover how Jesus' entry into Jerusalem reveals not just who He is, but who we are in response. TEXT: 2 Timothy 3:5, Luke 19:35–40, 2 Kings 9:6, 2 Kings 9:11–13, Zechariah 9:9, 2 Samuel 6:12–16, 2 Samuel 6:22 NOTES: Big Idea: If Jesus is Teacher, King, and Lord… Then I am a student, a subject, and a servant. His brand defines my behavior. If He's the Teacher, I'm His student. If He's the King, I'm His subject. If He's the Lord, I'm His servant. -Cloak = identity, protection, and status. -We want Jesus to wear our coat. But Palm Sunday is about laying ours down. -We're created to worship- It's not ok to allow the rocks to do our job!

Silicon Satan author Cregg Lund talks with Dr. Jerome Corsi for another in a series about the book and the dark underbelly of Silicon Valley's. In this episode, Cregg and Dr. Corsi focus heavily on how the Luciferians among the Silicon Valley Elite find, seduce and groom girls and young women into their world. Warning: Aspects of the book and this interview may not be suitable for children under 18. Parental discretion is advised.Find out more about Silicon Satan and Cregg's next book on https://www.corsination.comVisit The Corsi Nation website: https://www.corsination.comIf you like what we are doing, please support our Sponsors:MyVitalC https://www.thetruthcentral.com/myvitalc-ess60-in-organic-olive-oil/Swiss America: https://www.swissamerica.com/offer/CorsiRMP.phpJoin Dr. Jerome Corsi on Substack: https://jeromecorsiphd.substack.com/Visit The Truth Central website: https://www.thetruthcentral.comGet your FREE copy of Dr. Corsi's new book with Swiss America CEO Dean Heskin, How the Coming Global Crash Will Create a Historic Gold Rush by calling: 800-519-6268Follow Dr. Jerome Corsi on X: @corsijerome1Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/corsi-nation--5810661/support.

In this episode we chat about Marvel's Cloak and Dagger! Season 2 Episode 2 - White Lines You can find the complete plot on Wikipedia here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloak_%26_Dagger_(TV_series)#Episodes)

Cloak & Dagger follows Davey Osborne, an imaginative 11-year-old boy obsessed with spy games, role-playing, and the Cloak & Dagger video game. His father, Hal Osborne, is a busy Air Force employee, leaving Davey to escape into his world of make-believe, where he imagines his hero, Jack Flack (played by Dabney Coleman in a dual role), a superspy who guides him in dangerous situations.One day, while running an errand at a video game shop, Davey witnesses a real-life murder and is handed an Atari game cartridge containing secret military plans hidden inside. No one believes his story, including his father, forcing Davey to go on the run with his friend Kim while being pursued by real spies who will do anything to retrieve the cartridge.Guided by his imaginary spy mentor Jack Flack, Davey must navigate through espionage, betrayal, and life-or-death situations. As he loses his childhood illusions and comes face-to-face with real danger, he ultimately learns that heroes aren't invincible and that real courage comes from within.If you are new to the podcast then please consider following us on the platform that you love, we can be found most anywhere that you listen to your favorite podcasts. Please leave us a rating and review if you listen on iTunes and a 5 star rating if you listen on Spotify. If you like what you hear then please share the show with your friends and family. If you would like to help support the podcast by donating a small amount or any custom amount you choose then please visit the following link:https://retrolife4u.com/supportThis is not a membership or anything just a way for you to help support us without paying a reoccurring monthly fee when you feel like you are able to help. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions for shows or you have a question you would like us to read on air then email us at retrolife4you@gmail.com You can find us on social media at the following places:FacebookInstagramTik TokYouTubeRetro Life 4 You Website

This week we look at Luke 19:28-40, the story of Palm Sunday - a story of self-offering.  © Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. 

In this episode we chat about Marvel's Cloak and Dagger! Season 2 Episode 1 - Restless Energy You can find the complete plot on Wikipedia here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloak_%26_Dagger_(TV_series)#Episodes)

By Steven D Holladay - Before the New Testament Passover took place, Christ performed a service which took the disciples by surprise. However, it gives Christians insight into Christ and the Father's character and purpose.

 Mocking is debasing a person by parody.Today the Romans will tell the King of Kings that He is not their king. They tell the king of the world that He is not the king of THEIR world.They Mock Jesus as King to make a cruel point: You are not a king and You are not OUR king.They will act like He is a king to show that He is NOT a king.https://youtu.be/wEfzQAmRBuo

In this week's episode, we take a look at how research can both help and hinder writers, and offer tips for effective research for fiction. This coupon code will get you 25% off DRAGONTIARNA: OMNIBUS ONE at my Payhip store: DRAGONOMNI25 The coupon code is valid through April 14th, 2025. So if you need a new book to read for spring, we've got you covered! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 245 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 28th, 2025, and today we are looking at some of the challenges of research for writers. Before we get into that, we'll do Coupon of the Week, an update my current writing and audiobook projects, and then Question of the Week.   First up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Dragontiarna: Omnibus One at my Payhip store, and that is DRAGONOMNI25. This coupon code will be valid through April the 14th, 2025. So if you need a new ebook to read for spring, we have got you covered.   Let's have an update on my current writing projects. I'm currently 70,000 words into Shield of Battle, which I believe will put me on chapter 16 of 24, so I'm about two thirds of the way through the rough draft. I'm still hoping to have it out towards the end of April, if all goes well. I am 7,000 words into Ghost in the Corruption, which will be the sequel to Ghost in the Assembly, and hopefully that will be out sometime after Shield of Battle.   In audiobook news, recording is underway for both Shield of Deception and Ghost in the Assembly. Brad Wills will be recording Shield of Deception and Hollis McCarthy will be recording Ghost in the Assembly. So I am looking forward to both those audiobooks and that's where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects.   00:01:25 Question of the Week   Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question, do you read comics books or graphic novels, Marvel, DC, indie manga, whatever? No wrong answers, obviously, including “I don't read comics.”   Ryan says: I don't read comic books, they just don't appeal to me. I prefer world building through writing as opposed to images, and I think you don't get the same feel for characters in a comic as you do in a novel.   Justin says: Once upon a time, I did read comics. It's been a long time since I knew of the mainstream comics interested me, sadly. I have read some manga in the last year, but any associated light novel wins handily. There are a few web comics to keep up with. I have bought books and merch from the Foglios for Girl Genius and Tayler for Schlock Mercenary, but even then, it's been years since my last purchase.   Juana says: I love Batman. End of story.   John says: I enjoy graphic novels, mainly for the art. Most recent read was The Wizard of Earthsea graphic novel, which is a true work of art published just this month.   Randy says: Marvel/DC stuff, not much anymore. I can sit down and read Peanuts, Pearls Before Swine, etc. collections anytime, probably not the “comics” you meant.   Jenny says: Rat Queens! So good!   Gary says: I don't read comics.   Bob says: Nope. Used to devour DC and Marvel as a kid. Wish I still had some of them. Probably worth big bucks now.   Tom says: I used to be a Marvel Zombie. Seriously, I have 20-30 long boxes filled with comics. I had to kick the habit though. Nowadays it's mostly just a few TV show based series. Would love to read some Frostborn graphic novels though!   And finally, Tracy says: I don't read comics.   For myself, I agree with many of the commenters where my answer is I don't read comics. It's not out of snobbery or disdain for the art form. It just doesn't speak to me or hold my interest. Of course not all art speaks to all people at all times. I was curious about this topic because I see people discussing comic books online all the time, but apparently the industry is in bad shape financially with multiple bankruptcies and closures and so forth. So I was wondering if comics were kind of more of a vintage art form that is less popular with younger generations as the older generations start to die off. But you never know. Things always are on a wheel and come around again.   00:03:36 Main Topic of the Week: Writing Adjacent Activities: Research   So now back to our main topic or to start with our main topic, research challenges for writers. As I mentioned two episodes ago, I'm working on a new podcast series about what I call writing adjacent activities. What do I mean by this? I'm talking about tasks that seem like they're part of the writing process but really belong in a different category. These tasks are important, but they can also be a pitfall if you spend too much time on them or don't use that time correctly.   In this series, we will focus on a few of these tasks and how they can benefit or hinder your writing process, even though they seem like good uses of time and may be beneficial. In this episode, we'll talk about research for fiction writing. How much research is necessary and how does research help? When does it get to the point where it becomes a pitfall instead of an asset? What are some things that work well for me when researching matters for my books?   First of all, why should writers even have to research in order to write a work of fiction? Why can't we just make up details since the characters and the plot are also made up? Why research?   Research can help provide crucial information for the plot. For example, of a spy novel set in World War II focuses on the Canadians battling the British is inaccurate to the point of farce. Knowing which countries were Axis and which were Allies is an important piece of research that should have been done for that story in advance of writing it. There's a British TV series called The Goes Wrong Show about a group of inept actors putting on bad plays that's quite funny, and one of the episodes has them putting on a play that is widely criticized for its lazy historical research, which includes such things as Winston Churchill being a prime minister during the Vietnam War. In the show, of course, this is played for comedy as part of how bad the actors are, but you don't want to do this in real life.   Research prevents factual errors that can distract readers. Some of the biggest examples of this are military terminology, the British peerage system, and information about weapons like guns. All of these things have very distinct details that avid readers in a certain genre will notice and be upset about if they're incorrect. You'll notice that successful thriller writers tend to put a lot of time into researching and lovingly describing various pieces of military hardware in their books.   For a genre like historical romance, the distinction seems unimportant to a modern American, but to a debutante in Regency England, the difference between marrying a baron and a duke is immense and the titles can't be used interchangeably in a work of historical fiction. For example, the duke and baron would be addressed differently and enter a room in a different order, but more importantly, in a status conscious marriage market like the debutante season, a duke would be a highly sought after potential husband while a baron might be less of a catch, especially if the family is not so wealthy. This detail changes the characters and plots completely. To return to the firearm examples, for one of the famous errors that sometimes new writers do is a character puts a silencer on a revolver, which doesn't work because you can't silence a revolver. Much of the noise comes from the rear of the weapon when it's fired in addition to the muzzle flash and muzzle noise, so there are little details like that (both for weapons and the British peerage system) that you do need to watch out for.   Research can give you ideas or add depth through details. For example, someone writing a romance novel about two rival managers in a theme park could discover that this particular theme park has an intricate underground system of tunnels that includes storage areas and staff break rooms. The writer realizes this would give good opportunities for the characters to have a conversation or confrontation in a more private place than outside of a busy ride. What are some good sources for research? Not all research is going to the library and looking at books that haven't been checked out in 10 years or so. Sometimes research for writing fiction is about checking or learning basic facts like street names, what the word is for cat in Spanish, or what a certain chain store was named in 2008. Making these details up only makes sense if the places and languages are completely fictional. Where more academic and in depth research comes in is when a high level of informational accuracy is required by genre convention, like in thrillers, historical fiction, a legal drama, or a medical thriller.   One of the criticisms of the relatively recent Disney Plus show She Hulk was that although She Hulk's profession is a lawyer and she spends all of her time doing lawyer things, none of the writers had a background in law and it seemed like their legal advisor was quite hands off in their approach. They tried to write around it instead, and the results were disappointing to both fans of the source material and new viewers because as I've often said before, you don't need to be totally accurate, but it needs to feel accurate. Anyone watching the show would know that the American legal system works nothing like the way it's portrayed, not even in the abstract.   One of the additional complaints about the show is that they missed the chance to showcase the character by barely showing them doing any actual work or to only show it as a farce, making She Hulk seem more frivolous and unlikable without her defining trait of being a really good lawyer. Trying to write around factual information is usually not the best solution, and it could hurt the reader's feeling of immersion or cause them just to feel annoyed.   For genres that require a high level of information accuracy, try starting with the general overview books and then looking at more specific information as needed. You don't need to become an expert in every piece of medieval weaponry to write a historical or a fantasy book, but you do need to know the basics in order to have the characters use them in a convincing way.   As I've said before, I often talk about how verisimilitude is the goal in writing. You need to know and share just enough to make the reader feel convinced and have the characters be able to act in a believable way in the world there inhabiting.   Often writers are advised to use YouTube for research because it's free and usually easy to understand. However, YouTubers usually don't cite their sources and incorrect information often gets reshared this way. That said, it can still be useful. For example, if we go back to our example of the theme park romance novel, the writer could find YouTube footage of what the line looks like for a certain ride without having to go see it in person and determine from the footage if a child could really climb over a railing to escape their parents, for example, if that was one of the plot contrivances the writer wanted to put in the book.   I would strongly recommend you don't use a LLM program like ChatGPT for research, and if you do, you should cross-reference and double check its answers for accuracy because ChatGPT essentially makes stuff up. Unlike a search engine ChatGPT essentially guesses at its answers instead of retrieving them. For example, if you ask ChatGPT who the spouse of one reality star is, it confidently lists her brother as her husband because the names are very frequently paired and they had the same last name, ChatGPT made a guess and that guess was quite wrong. It's also important to note that it's not trained on recent information. It won't, for example, be able to tell you on what date a movie is going to come out in two weeks because it may not have access to that information yet, and it might instead give you the premiere date for previous films or guess at a date.   How much research is necessary and when is it a pitfall instead of an asset? Too much research can keep you from starting to actually write. It's a real temptation if you enjoy research to spend months bogged down in every possible source of information. It's also good to take a step back, look at your book's outline, and determine what's truly needed. When you're writing, you can add a note, “research this” and note about what fact you need to look up and then keep going. It isn't a great idea to stop writing every time you need to look up a specific fact. Doing that can often lead to research spirals that take too much time and then you lose your writing momentum.   Having researched too much can also drag down the plot with a lot of info dumps. We've all encountered books where the writer very clearly put in a lot of research into a very specific topic, so they were going to put all that research into the book, even if it was to the book's detriment. It's natural to want to use as much of your research as possible, but in reality, the only research that is good for the reader is what benefits the plot or adds to the feeling of verisimilitude without stopping the plot in its tracks.   What are some things that have worked for me when researching subjects for my books? Because I write fantasy and science fiction, I tend not to do that much research. Usually it's if I need to look up a specific fact to increase the verisimilitude. I had to do that quite a bit with Silent Order because that's science fiction and therefore a bit more fact-based. So I wanted to make sure I had things like the speed of light in kilometers or the amount of kilometers in a light year, for example, make sure that I had those numbers accurate. However, when I'm writing and there's something I want to look up later, I tend to literally just type “look this up later” and then keep going in the book.   This actually happens quite a bit in the Cloak Games and Cloak Mage series because while that's set in a fantasy setting, that fantasy setting is a version of our own world. I do need to look things up reasonably frequently, like where this town is located or how long you would take to fly from Chicago to Boston, for example. So very often I will just type “look this up later”, and then in the editing process, I will actually look that up and make sure that I have a good information source, not ChatGPT, and then add that fact into the book as necessary.   One thing I would recommend watching out for is that if the entire plot of the book hinges on a certain fact, like for example, say that you have in your book, the entire plot revolves around the fact that on average it takes about seven to eight hours to drive from Milwaukee to Detroit, it's a good idea to look it up and make sure that is actually true. If for example, you, let's talk hypothetically, if you weren't familiar with the geography of the United States and you had the plot being that it takes only three hours to drive from Milwaukee to Detroit, your book will not work because anyone remotely familiar with the American Midwest knows that if you are driving from Milwaukee to Detroit around the southern side of Lake Michigan, it takes at least seven hours and depending on traffic conditions, it can easily go much higher very quickly. So if you do have a fact around which the entire plot of your book hinges, it's a good idea to research that fact first and make sure that's accurate, so you can avoid the scenario where you write the book and then people are laughing at you because you wrote it only takes three hours to drive from Milwaukee to Detroit.   So to sum up, research in fiction is very different from in the academic world, but that doesn't mean that's not important. Like so many things in life, it's all about balance. You don't want to go too far down the research rabbit hole to the detriment of finishing your book, but you do need enough information to maintain verisimilitude, but not an excess of detail that will derail the plot or keep you from finishing the book you want, just enough that it makes sense.   An example for that for me would be one of the plot lines in Cloak of Spears which revolves around nuclear fusion. The book sold pretty well and people liked it, but I did get a email from an expert in nuclear fusion saying that the way I had described things is not actually how nuclear fusion works, and the fact of the matter was that thankfully for that book, it didn't matter because the actual intricacies of how nuclear fusion works is beyond my grasp and frankly beyond the grasp of most people. So I'd included enough verisimilitude to that the book worked for most people, but it was not enough to fool an actual expert in nuclear physics. So that brings me to a Abraham Lincoln quote I remember where he says, “you can fool some of the people some of the time and the rest of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.” And that is true with research and fiction. You'll want to do just enough to get verisimilitude so that you can fool most of the people, but you can't always expect to fool everybody. If you are writing about something which has subject matter experts, you may find that you'll have the subject matter experts writing to you and pointing things out. But what's important is that you do it well enough to fool most of the general audience, if not the subject matter experts.   So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

An actress attempts to impersonate Death itself in a bid to secure an inheritance, leading to unexpected and dramatic consequences. Hear the story in “Death Rings Down Curtain” from The Sealed Book!CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:02:00.000 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “With Malice Aforethought” (December 01, 1975) ***WD00:47:15.879 = Adventures in the Supernatural, “The Mysterious Carriage” (1932) ***WD01:11:51.419 = Richard Diamond, “The Singing Critic” (November 05, 1949)01:41:00.729 = Ripley's Believe it Or Not, “Inhuman Monarch” (1932) ***WD01:41:55.718 = The Saint, “Author of Murder” (July 30, 1950) ***WD02:10:37.619 = Sam Spade, “Insomnia Caper” (October 24, 1948)02:33:27.889 = The Sealed Book, “Death Rings Down Curtain” (July 01, 1945) ***WD03:03:09.299 = The Shadow, “Sabotage by Air” (March 05, 1939) ***WD03:32:01.199 = Sleep No More, “The Storm” (December 19, 1956) ***WD03:59:58.639 = BBC Spine Chillers, “Kappa” (1984)04:25:04.999 = Suspense, “Death Flies Blind” (May 04, 1943) ***WD04:54:14.699 = Tales of the Frightened, “White House” (December 20, 1957) ***WD04:58:34.640 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.= = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0364

Money laundering runs rampant in Cambodia. Privacy advocates question a new data sharing EO from the White House. An NYU website hack exposes the data of millions. A game demo gets pulled from Steam after users report infostealing malware. The Cloak ransomware group claims a cyberattack on the Virginia Attorney General's Office. 23andMe files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Medusa ransomware is using a malicious driver to disable security tools on infected systems. Clearview AI settles a class-action lawsuit over privacy violations. A look back at the CVE program. In today's Industry Voices segment, we are joined by Joe Ryan, Head of Customer Enablement at Maltego Technologies, who is highlighting how to help analysts in resource-constrained environments overcome training gaps and use investigative tools more effectively. Luring AI bots into the digital labyrinth. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest In today's Industry Voices segment, we are joined by Joe Ryan, Head of Customer Enablement at Maltego Technologies, who is highlighting how to help analysts in resource-constrained environments overcome training gaps and use investigative tools more effectively. Selected Reading How Scammers Launder Money and Get Away With It (New York Times)  Trump order on information sharing appears to have implications for DOGE and beyond (The Record) Over 3 million applicants' data leaked on NYU's website (Washington Square News) Steam pulls game demo infecting Windows with info-stealing malware (Bleeping Computer) Ransomware Group Claims Attack on Virginia Attorney General's Office (SecurityWeek) 23andMe Files for Bankruptcy Amid Concerns About Security of Customers' Genetic Data (New York Times) Medusa Ransomware Uses Malicious Driver to Disable Security Tools (SecurityWeek) Clearview AI settles class-action privacy lawsuit worth an estimated $50 million (The Record)   Despite challenges, the CVE program is a public-private partnership that has shown resilience (CyberScoop) Trapping misbehaving bots in an AI Labyrinth (Cloudflare) Share your feedback. We want to ensure that you are getting the most out of the podcast. Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey as we continually work to improve the show.  Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at cyberwire@n2k.com to request more info. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week's episode, I take a look at some of the historical influences & inspirations that went into my new book GHOST IN THE ASSEMBLY. This coupon code will get you 25% off SILENT ORDER: OMNIBUS ONE at my Payhip store: SILENT25 The coupon code is valid through April 7th, 2025. So if you need a new book to read for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 244 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 21st, 2025, and today we are looking at some of the historical influences that went into Ghost in the Assembly. Before we get into that, we will do Coupon of the Week and an update my current writing and audiobook projects. And then Question of the Week, which we did have time for this week.   This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Silent Order: Omnibus One at my Payhip store. That coupon code is SILENT25. I'll have the links and the coupon code in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through April 7, 2025, so if you need a new book to read for these spring months, we have got you covered.   Now an update on my current writing projects. I am 44,000 words into Shield of Battle, the fifth book in the Shield War series. I'm hoping to have that out towards the end of April, if all goes well. A reminder that the Shield War series will be six books, so Shield the Battle will be the second to last one. I have also started on the sequel to Ghost in the Assembly, and I am 4,000 words into that, give or take. I had originally planned to call this book Ghost in the Assassins, but I thought that sounded too similar to Ghost in the Assembly. So the fifth book in the Ghost Armor series will be called Ghost in the Corruption. A reminder that Ghost Armor will be six books long and Ghost in the Corruption will be the fifth of six books, so the second to last book in that series as well.   In audio news, recording has started for Shield of Deception and Ghost in the Assembly. Shield of Deception will be excellently narrated by Brad Wills and Hollis McCarthy will excellently narrate Ghost in the Assembly. I expect both of them will probably be out sometime towards the end of May if all goes well, given how long it usually takes to record an audiobook.   In Stealth and Spells Online news, I am 68,000 words into the third and final book in this trilogy. Once Ghost Armor and Shield War are complete, then I will hopefully release the final book in the Stealth and Spells Online because I've been working on that as a tertiary project for quite a long time now. So that's where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects.   00:02:17 Question of the Week   Now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is of course designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question, what is your favorite style of fantasy setting (like a more high fantasy, one like Middle Earth or the Forgotten Realms, urban fantasy like the Dresden Files or Kate Daniels or more steampunk like Everon and so on)? No wrong answers, obviously.   And as you can imagine this inspired quite a few responses.   Perry says: Hyperborea! Lankhmar is up there as well. Setting where magic is rare, and usually dangerous or evil. The first edition of the Forgotten Realms (the grey box from the ‘80s) was great. Enough detail to let you use the setting, lots of room to make it your own. Then all the Forgotten Realms novels started to appear with the release of the second edition in the ‘90s and everybody in the world suddenly had powerful magic at their fingertips. Elminster, the Seven Sisters, Drizz't, and others took the appeal right out of the setting for me.   Joachim says: I like the Spelljammer Campaign setting best. A lot of great modules. It seemed it was not overly successful. A shame. I had a campaign running in this setting with some people who liked it. In addition to the Spelljammer modules, you can easily transfer any normal module centered on a small town onto an asteroid.   Evan says: A huge Sanderson Cosmere fan here, especially Stormlight Archive. I like the magical progression tied in to character development, with a bit of mystery of how things work or an unknown that takes time to unwind or tease out.   Justin says: My problem here is separating the settings from the authors. Given that near impossibility, I would cast my vote for high fantasy with a bit of techno/steampunk mixed in. Example – Andre Norton's Witch World.   Bonnie says: I seem to gravitate towards the swords and sorcery genre like Frostborn, but I also enjoyed the urban fantasy/Nadia and the other genres. I have to thank you for introducing me to all of these.   Michael says: Okay, Jonathan, that's the second time I've noticed you indicating a preference for sword and sorcery saga where a barbarian hero travels between corrupt city states and now I really, really want you to write this. And yeah, that's definitely my favorite type of setting too.   Simone says: Definitely urban fantasy. Even in your books, which offer an unusual variety of fantasy settings, I find I enjoy the Cloak series the best.   Roger says: Being an old fogey, I prefer high fantasy always. Can't seem to get my head around urban fantasy. It jars with me.   John says: While I enjoy all settings, I'm also a traditionalist and want a non-industrial, non punk setting without some sprawling empire, more like the aftermath of empire with multiple successor states.   Jonathan T. says: Personally, Star Wars has always been fantasy in a science fiction setting, and that remains a personal favorite. Other than that, I suppose I'm for high fantasy, although I'm not opposed to high fantasy slapstick either such as the Wuntvor trilogy. At some point I must try again to surmount the obstacle known as The Wheel of Time.   Catriona says: Epic and high fantasy are my favorite, enjoy Dark Fantasy, too. Urban fantasy is a hard pass for me.   Juana says: Sword and sorcery, parfait gentle knights, medieval societies, historical fiction like Doyle's The White Company and Sir Nigel. Wherever Nadia lives.   Justin says: Sword and sorcery, magical creatures/beasts. Definitely needs different environments like cities and wild mountains and forests. Not sure what genre that is, but that's what I like.   MG says: High fantasy.   Brandy says: I like ones with a clearly defined map. Sometimes it seems like the world wasn't thought about clearly, so it makes it hard to imagine and I find those stories the least successful. The ones I go back to repeatedly, the ones I read over and over or pimp out to other authors or groups are those I feel like they have a great structure and map, even if it's added on to later. So high, low, or middle, I just really just want the author to tell a great story and make it a great one.   Speaking as an author myself, I really dislike drawing maps, but fantasy readers really like maps, so that's why I have been doing more and more maps lately.   Pauline says: Urban fantasy is definitely my favorite.   Jeremy says: High Fantasy is my favorite. However, my favorite fantasy author is Terry Brooks. His series is Low Fantasy based on Earth. I found out years after reading the series LOL.   For myself, I think my favorite would be a pre-industrial setting with a lot of city-states and various dangerous magic, like you have a barbarian hero wandering from city-state to city-state with monster infested ruins and wilderness between them. When he gets to the city states, he can fight corrupt sorcerers, arrogant nobles, and thieves guilds, and then move on to a new adventure in the next book. So basically a sword and sorcery style setting. So that's it for Question of the Week.   00:06:30 Main Topic of the Week: Ghost in the Assembly: Inspirations and Sources (Note: Spoilers for Ghost in the Assembly!)   This week and now onto our main topic, Ghost in the Assembly inspirations and sources that went into the book. I should mention that this episode contains mild spoilers for Ghost in the Assembly. So if you have not finished reading Ghost in the Assembly yet, stop listening and go finish reading Ghost in the Assembly.   So I thought it would be interesting to talk about some of the ideas and influences that went into Ghost in the Assembly. I have to admit, it took me a few years of thinking between Ghost Night and Ghost Armor to figure out how to write more Caina stories because Caina had become a political figure by the end of Ghost Night and political figures typically do bad things for personal advancement and then lie about it. That is in some ways the essential definition of a political figure. This of course, is hard for a writer to use as a sympathetic protagonist.   Of course, I eventually realized the way around this, the success of a political figure cannot be judged by their personal morality or even their political morality, but by the results of their decisions. Did they do the most for the greatest good of their people? Therefore, I just needed to write a political figure who did somewhat sketchy things (like subverting the Kyracian houses via buying up their debt) in the name of the greater good of the people (defending them from the impending attack of the Red Krakens).   I frequently said that if you want to write a good fantasy novel, you should try to stick to about 15 to 25% of the actual harshness of the past. I don't think you want to go full Grimdark, but you don't want your fantasy world to be indistinguishable from a typical 21st century parliamentary democracy because I think that kind of defeats the purpose of fantasy where you want to visit a world that is eldritch and strange and at least somewhat different than our own. So for Ghost in the Assembly, I went to about 15 to 25% of the experience of ancient Greek democracy. For the entire time that New Kyre and the Kyracians have been in the series (Ghost in the Storm was way the heck back in 2012 and the Kyracians were mentioned before that), they've always been very loosely based on the democracy of ancient Athens. In fact, the very name Assembly of New Kyre comes from ancient Athens, where the gathering of voting citizens was called the ecclesia, which translates into English as assembly. Interestingly, this is also the origins of the word ecclesiastical in terms of a church since one of the first words for the church was ecclesia in the sense of the assembly of the believers in Christ.   Athens wasn't the first ancient Greek democracy, but it was one of the most successful. It was also one of the democracies that self-destructed in the most spectacularly dramatic fashion possible. The Athenians decided to convert the Delian League from an alliance of city-states into their own private empire. A demagogue convinced them to waste enormous resources attacking Syracuse and Sicily, which ended disastrously. The Athenians were eventually defeated by the more militaristic Spartans.   People have debated for centuries whether or not this means democracy is inferior to the Spartans' harsher system, but that overlooks the key fact that a few decades later, Athens, Sparta, and all the rest of the Greek city-states were conquered by the Macedonians anyway. I suppose the actual historical lesson is that a city-state, regardless of its government, is no match for a larger centralized state with better leaders and better military organization. In fact, historically city-states tend to eventually get subsumed into larger political entities. If they last for a long time, it tends to be because of geography (like in ancient Greece) or because of weak and or remote central authority like the medieval Italian city-states, which were ostensibly under the authority of the Holy Roman emperor but in practice tended to do whatever they wanted. Places like modern Vatican City tend to be special exceptions.   Caina's criticism of the assembly of New Kyre in the book is that it is not as egalitarian as it pretends and is easily swayed by both demagogues and bribes. The Athenian assembly of citizens had both these problems, but far worse. You needed to have a substantial level of property to be allowed to vote, and there were numerous examples of the votes swinging on bribes or last minute orations. The Athenian assembly was easily swayed into making bad decisions, such as supporting the disastrous attack on Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War that was the start of Athens' downfall.   In Ghost in the Assembly, Lady Eirenea Tritos is one of the nine chief magistrates of the city, but in an Athenian democracy, women were not allowed to vote and most definitely were not allowed to hold political office. The ancient Greeks in general did not have a very high opinion of women. One Greek orator said that men had wives to produce legitimate heirs, concubines to attend to the body's “daily needs”, and prostitutes for pleasure.   Because of things like that, I thought a setting with a hundred percent of the harshness of ancient Greece would be off-putting to the reader. So as I said, I shot for between 15 and 25% of the actual harshness. New Kyre is definitely richer, better governed, and less elitist and chauvinistic than the ancient Greeks. That said, New Kyre isn't an egalitarian place. Nobles have vastly more rights and money than commoners, and both nobles and commoners own slaves and only the poorest commoners own no slaves themselves. Indeed, slavery is so common in New Kyre that the other nobles see Kylon's decision that House Kardamnos will have no slaves as a sign of malevolent and sinister foreign influence.   Kalliope's fear that she could be dispossessed and Kylon simply take her children is very real. If Kylon wanted, he probably could keep Kalliope from seeing Nikarion and Zoe ever again, though that would inevitably put him in conflict with Lysikas Agramemnos and Calliope is charismatic enough to powerful allies to her side. If Kylon did in fact refuse to allow Kalliope to see their children, he might well set off a civil war. But Kylon, who lost both his parents when he was young, doesn't want to deprive his children of a loving mother.   Of course, the ancient Greeks never had to fight the Red Krakens and orcs. The Red Krakens, the Caphtori, are kind of written like snake-worshipping Vikings. In fact, Caphtori are inspired by the “Sea Peoples”, pirates that seem to have contributed to the collapse of Bronzes Age civilization. Historians argue endlessly about the impact of the Sea Peoples or whether they existed at all, but if they did exist, they might well have been proto-Ancient Greeks, perhaps Mycenaean in origin.   Since having one ancient Greek-esque group fighting another would've been confusing in the book, I made the Caphtori/Red Kraken more like Vikings, which I suppose is a bit of historical anachronism, but Ghost Armor is a constructed world with elves, orcs, and sorcerers, so it's not like I'm writing period accurate historical fiction here.   So these are some of the influences that went into Ghost in the Assembly. I don't have any grand concluding point here. Those were just some of the ideas I thought about and went into the story. Though I should mention that for a while I was a graduate student in medieval history and I hated the experience so much I left and went into IT instead. That said ,decades later it has proven a useful source of plot ideas for fantasy novels, so it worked out in the end.   One final note, a reader suggested that Kalliope Agramemnos and Mardun Scorneus might hook up in later books. And I have to admit, I laughed at that suggestion. Kalliope would react with dismay at the thought of marrying anyone other than an extremely high ranking Kyracian noble, and at the prospect of marrying Kalliope, Mardun would think about it, fake his death, and flee back to the Empire, preferring to take his chances with the Magisterium rather than Kalliope. Anyway, thank you to everyone who has read Ghost in the Assembly. I am very grateful that so many people have enjoyed the book.   So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes of the show on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.  

Join us as we take a look at this 1984 spy action movie Cloak & Dagger. This is a movie neither of us had even heard of until it was brought up for this podcast. What did we think of it? Was it a total flop? Or was it a hidden gem that has found its way into our hearts and shelves forever?.. or was it just kinda meh? Find out on today's episode!

Your energy can be drained by people, situations, things you read or hear. When you get ready for a meeting, it can be overwhelming, you could be anxious or nervous and so I share with you the visualisation and also a physical object you can have on your person as you go to the meeting or anything else that you're doing.It could even be as simple as having a conversation with someone. You need to protect your mindset, energy, peace and mental health.This episode is powerful as it arms you with the power and protects you.Connect with me about my amazing business opportunity in the travel industry that can and will change your life. Message me on IG here > ⁠https://www.instagram.com/rebeccaadams187⁠Enjoy this episode.Show up to your life & Keep Going Always ™ Rebecca.xMy website is here > ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.rebeccaadamsbiz.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠My powerful EXPANSION program is here to transform your life > ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://racourses.thinkific.com/courses/expansion⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠My amazing guided journals & planners are here > ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.rebeccaadamsbiz.com/books⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

When's the last time you heard some good news? How did it feel to receive it?  And were you ever in a situation where everyone around you doubted you, but you stayed certain of your viewpoint? Were you proved right in the end? In this episode, we open a conversation about the moment when the shirt of Yusuf (s) is brought to his father, Yaqub (s), the truth is brought to light, and Yacub (s) regains his lost sight. You will learn:

Lindsay observes a mourning cloak butterfly.

Bassist Bobby Markos of "Cloakroom" joins us on Episode 274. Third time is a charm. Bobby talks about birdwatching, Documa, NASCAR, and Cloakroom's new album “Last Leg of The Human Table”. Make sure you check out Cloakroom on their upcoming tour, and at Slide Away NY & LA. Support the Cloak's here : https://www.lastlegofthehumantable.com/  Slide Away : The Festival that Celebrates Itself (Tickets) https://www.slideaway.co  Bobby on Musically Meditated (Part 2) https://open.spotify.com/episode/1hY6uEg1vMVRQUHSJ63fMW?si=SHLnbHIXTkCzm3biYpOzOQ  Bobby on Musically Meditated (Part 1) https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Qh1krvpfYZBR7GHqZ6H8L?si=VU0tPx51SJG9kSh3TXnrGA

Between eclipses and theres an emerging sense of creativity developing this week. Hope you enjoy your spring equinox forecast :)⁠⁠ESOTERIC NUTRITION 3 PART CLASS ⁠⁠Class 2 starts on monday, enrollment still open⁠⁠SPIRITUAL WARRIOR TRAINING VOL 7 - BECOMING THE VESSEL - 4 WEEK TRAINING ⁠⁠⁠⁠STARTS APRIL 27⁠⁠⁠⁠LEARN MORE ABOUT OAK & OAK ASTROLOGY SCHOOL ⁠⁠Private readings, teachings, classes⁠⁠https://bio.site/oak.kalawakan⁠⁠

It’s been a bit since we had a “Fix This Character” episode, in which we reimagine underperforming characters in wildly different ways! This time: CLOAK and DAGGER! And to be honest, Ty and Tandy are great and don’t really need… Continue Reading → The post 467: Cloak and Dagger and Alan Moore’s Horny Cthulhu appeared first on Zero Issues Comic Podcast.

In this week's episode, we continue our discuss about how seeking prestige can be dangerous for writers, specifically in the form of traditional publishing and the New York Times Bestseller list. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, Book #2 in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store: DRAGONSHIELD50 The coupon code is valid through March 21, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook for spring, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00   Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 241 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is February 28th, 2025. Today we are continuing our discussion of how to escape the trap of prestige for writers, specifically traditional publishing and The New York Times Bestseller List. Before we get to our main topic, we will do Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing and audiobook projects, and then Question of the Week.   This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Shield of the Knight, Book Two in the Dragonskull series (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), at my Payhip store. That coupon code is DRAGONSHIELD50. As always, I'll include the coupon code and the link to the store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through March 21st, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook as we start to head into the spring months, we have got you covered. Now an update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report I am done with the rough draft of Ghost in the Assembly. I came in at 106,000 words, so it'll definitely be over a hundred thousand words when it's done. I'm about 20% of the way through the first round of edits, so I am confident in saying that if all goes well and nothing unexpected happens, I am on track to have it out in March. I am also 10,000 words into Shield of Battle, which will be the fifth of six books in the Shield War series and I'm hoping to have that out in April, if all goes well.   In audiobook news, recording for both Cloak of Dragonfire and Orc-Hoard is done. I'm just waiting for them to get through the processing on the various stores so they're available. There is also an audiobook edition of Half Elven Thief Omnibus One and Cloak Mage Omnibus Three that hopefully should be coming in March. More news with that to come.   00:01:55 Question of the Week   Now let's move on to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: what is your favorite subgenre of fantasy, high fantasy, epic fantasy, sword and sorcery, historical fantasy, urban fantasy, LitRPG, cultivation, or something else? No wrong answers, obviously.   Cindy says: Epic fantasy or those with a good history for that world. The Ghost Series are fantastic at this.   Thanks, Cindy.   Justin says: I enjoy all those sub-genres, if they are done well. In times past I would've said comic fantasy, but that is because Terry Pratchett at his best was just that good.   Mary says: High fantasy.   Surabhi says: I'd honestly read anything fantasy that's written well and has characters I'm attached to, given that it's not too gritty. Bonus points if there's humor! Also, I love your books so much and they're the perfect blend of fantasy, adventure, and characters. Your books were what really got me into Sword and Sorcery.   Thanks, Surabhi.     Matthew says: See, that's difficult. I love my sabers, both light and metal. I would say urban fantasy crosses the boundary the most. If it's a captivating story, it will be read.   John F says: I can't choose one- Lord of the Rings or LWW, The Inheritance Cycle, The Dresden Files, Caina, Ridmark, or Nadia. I think what draws me is great characters who grow. The setting/genre is just the device. That's why I keep coming back to your books. You create great characters.   Thanks, John F.   John K says: I think I'm partial to historical fantasy. I enjoy all genres, but when I think of my favorites, they tend to be derivations of historical settings. Think Guy Gavriel Kay or Miles Cameron. That said, I was weaned on Robert E. Howard, Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner, Jack Vance, so a strong sword and sorcery second place.   Juana says: High fantasy. Belgariad, Tolkien, dragons, et cetera.   Jonathan says: Sword and sorcery in space! Prehistoric sword and sorcery, sword and sorcery always.   Quint: says Sword and sorcery!   Michael says: Sword and sorcery.   For myself, I think I would agree with our last couple of commenters and it would be sword and sorcery. My ideal fantasy novel has a barbarian hero wandering from corrupt city state to corrupt city state messing up the business of some evil wizards. I'm also very fond of what's called generic fantasy (if a fighter, a dwarf, an elf, and a wizard are going into a dungeon and fighting some orcs, I'm happy).   00:04:18 Main Topic of the Week: Escaping the Prestige Trap, Part 2   Now onto our main topic for the week, Escaping the Prestige Trap, Part 2, and we'll focus on traditional publishing and the New York Times Bestseller List this week. As we talked about last week, much of the idea of success, especially in the United States, is based on hitting certain milestones in a specific order. In the writing world, these measures of success have until fairly recently been getting an MFA, finding an agent, getting traditionally published, and hitting The New York Times Bestseller List. Last week we talked about the risks of an MFA and an agent. This week, we are going to talk about two more of those writing markers of prestige, getting traditionally published and having a book land on The New York Times Bestseller List. Why are they no longer as important? What should you devote your energy and focus to instead?   So let's start with looking at getting traditionally published. Most writers have dreamed of seeing their book for sale and traditional publishing for a long time has been the only route to this path. Until about 15 years ago, traditional publishing was the way that a majority of authors made their living. Now that big name authors like Hugh Howie, Andy Weir, and Colleen Hoover have had success starting as self-published authors (or in the case of authors Sarah J. Maas and Ali Hazelwood, fan fiction authors) and then are getting traditional publishing deals made for them for their self-published works. It's proof that self-publishing is no longer a sign that the author isn't good enough to be published traditionally. Previous to the rise of the Kindle, that was a common belief that if you were self-published, it was because you were not good enough to get traditionally published. That was sort of this pernicious belief that traditional publishing was a meritocracy, when in fact it tended to be based on who you knew. But that was all 15 years ago and now we are well into the age of self-publishing. Why do authors still want to be traditionally published when in my frank opinion, self-publishing is the better path? Well, I think there are three main reasons for that.   One of the main reasons is that the authors say they want to be traditionally published is to have someone else handle the marketing and the advertising. They don't realize how meager marketing budgets and staffing support are, especially for unknown authors. Many traditionally published authors are handling large portions of their own marketing and hiring publicists out of their own pocket because publishers are spending much less on marketing. The new reality is that traditional publishers aren't going to do much for you as a debut author unless you are already a public figure.   Even traditionally published authors are not exempt from having to do their own marketing now. James Patterson set up an entire company himself to handle his marketing. Though, to be fair to James Patterson, his background was in advertising before he came into publishing, so he wasn't exactly a neophyte in the field, but you see more and more traditionally published authors who you think would be successful just discontented with the system and starting to dabble in self-publishing or looking at alternative publishers like Aethon Books and different arrangements of publishing because the traditional system is just so bad for writers. The second main reason authors want to be traditionally published is that they want to avoid the financial burden of publishing. This is an outdated way of thinking. The barrier to publishing these days is not so much financial as it is knowledge. In fact, I published a book entirely using free open source software in 2017 just to prove that it could be done. It was Silent Order: Eclipse Hand, the fourth book in my science fiction series. I wrote it on Ubuntu using Libre Office and I edited it in Libre Office and I did the formatting on Ubuntu and I did the cover in the GIMP, which is a free and open source image editing program. This was all using free software and I didn't have to pay for the program. Obviously I had to pay for the computer I was using and the Internet connection, but in the modern era, having an internet connection is in many ways almost a requirement, so that's the cost you would be paying anyway.   The idea that you must spend tens of thousands of dollars in formatting, editing, cover, and marketing comes from scammy self-publishing services. Self-publishing, much like traditional publishing, has more than its fair share of scams or from people who aren't willing to take the time to learn these skills and just want to cut someone a check to solve the problem. There are many low cost and effective ways to learn these skills and resources designed specifically for authors. People like Joanna Penn have free videos online explaining how to do this, and as I've said, a lot of the software you can use to self-publish is either free or low cost, and you can get some very good programs like Atticus or Vellum or Jutoh for formatting eBooks for very low cost.   The third reason that writers want to be traditionally published is that many believe they will get paid more this way, which is, unless you are in the top 1% of traditionally published authors, very wrong. Every so often, there's a study bemoaning the fact that most publishers will only sell about $600 worth of any individual book, and that is true of a large percentage of traditionally published books. Traditional publishers typically pay a lump sum called advance, and then royalties based on sales. An average advance is about the same as two or three months of salary from an office job and so not a reflection of the amount of time it typically takes most authors to finish a book. Most books do not earn out their advance, which means the advance is likely to be the only money the author receives for the book. Even well-known traditionally published authors are not earning enough to support themselves as full-time authors. So as you can see, all three of these reasons are putting a lot of faith in traditional publishers, faith that seems increasingly unnecessary or downright misplaced. I think it is very healthy to get rid of the idea that good writing comes from traditional publishers and that the prestige of being traditionally published is the only way you'll be accepted as a writer or be able to earn a living as a full-time writer. I strongly recommend that people stop thinking that marketing is beneath you as an author or too difficult to learn. Whether you are indie or tradpub, you are producing a product that you want to sell, thus you are a businessperson. The idea that only indie authors have to sell their work is outdated. The sooner you accept this reality, the more options you will have. Self-publishing and indie publishing are admittedly more work. However, the benefits are significant. Here are five benefits of self-publishing versus traditional publishing.   The first advantage of self-publishing is you have complete creative control. You decide what the content of your book will be; you decide what the cover will be. If you don't want to make the covers yourself or you don't want to learn how to do that, you can very affordably hire someone to do it for you and they will make the cover exactly to your specifications. You also have more freedom to experiment with cross-genre books. As I've mentioned before, publishers really aren't a fan of cross genre books until they make a ton of money, like the new romantasy trend.   Traditional publishing is very trend driven and cautious. Back in the 2000s before I gave up on traditional publishing and discovered self-publishing, I would submit to agents a lot. Agents all had these guidelines for fantasy saying that they didn't want to see stories with elves and orcs and dwarves and other traditional fantasy creatures because they thought that was passe. Well, when I started self-publishing, I thought I'm going to write a traditional fantasy series with elves and orcs and dwarves and other traditional fantasy creatures just because I can and Frostborn has been my bestselling series of all time in the time I've been self-publishing, so you can see the advantages of having creative control.   The second advantage is you can control the marketing. Tradpub authors often sign a contract that they'll get their social media and website content approved by the publisher before posting. They may even be given boilerplate or pre-written things to post. In self-publishing, you have real time data to help you make decisions and adjust ads and overall strategy on the fly to maximize revenue. For example, if one of your books is selling strangely well on Google Play, it's time to adjust BookBub ads to focus on that platform instead of Amazon.   You can also easily change your cover, your blurb, and so forth after release. I've changed covers of some of my books many times trying to optimize them for increased sales and that is nearly impossible to do with traditional publishing. And in fact, Brandon Sanderson gave a recent interview where he talked about how the original cover of his Mistborn book was so unrelated to the content of the book that it almost sunk the book and hence his career.   You also have the ability to run ad campaigns as you see fit, not just an initial launch like tradpub does. For example, in February 2025, I've been heavily advertising my Demonsouled series even though I finished writing that series back in 2013, but I've been able to increase sales and derive a significant profit from those ads.   A third big advantage is that you get a far greater share of the profits. Most of the stores, if you price an ebook between $2.99 (prices are USD) and $9.99, you will get 70% of the sale price, which means if you sell an ebook for $4.99, you're probably going to get about $3.50 per sale (depending on currency fluctuations and so forth). That is vastly more than you would get from any publishing contract.   You also don't have to worry about the publisher trying to cheat you out of royalties. We talked about an agency stealing money last episode. Every platform you publish your book on, whether Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Smashwords and Apple will give you a monthly spreadsheet of your sales and then you can look at it for yourself, see exactly how many books you sold and exactly how much money you're going to get. I have only very rarely seen traditional publishing royalty statements that are as clear and have as much data in them as a spreadsheet from Google Play or Amazon. A fourth advantage is you don't have to worry about publishers abandoning you mid-series. In traditional publishing, there is what's called the Publishing Death Spiral where let's say an author is contracted to write a series of five books. The author writes the first book and it sells well. Then the author publishes the second book and it doesn't sell quite as well, but the publisher is annoyed enough by the decrease in sales that they drop the writer entirely and don't finish the series. This happens quite a bit in the traditional publishing world, and you don't have to worry about that in indie publishing because you can just publish as often as you want. If you're not happy with the sales of the first few books in the series, you can change the covers, try ad campaigns, and other strategies.   Finally, you can publish as often as you want and when you want. In traditional publishing, there is often a rule of thumb that an author should only publish one book a year under their name. Considering that last year I published 10 books under my name, that seems somewhat ridiculous, but that's a function of the fact that traditional publishing has only so much capacity and the pieces of the machine involved there are slow and not very responsive. Whereas with self-publishing, you have much more freedom and everything involved with it is much more responsive. There's no artificial deadlines, so you can take as long as you want to prepare it and if the book is ready, you don't have to wait a year to put it out because it would mess up the publisher's schedule.   So what to do instead of chasing traditional publishing? Learn about self-publishing, especially about scams and bad deals related to it. Publish your own works by a platform such as KDP, Barnes and Noble Press, Kobo Writing Life, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and possibly your own Payhip and/or Shopify store.   Conquer your fear of marketing and advertising. Even traditionally published authors are shouldering more of this work and paying out of their own pocket to hire someone to do it, and if you are paying your own marketing costs, you might as well self-publish and keep a greater share of the profits. The second half of our main topic, another potential risk of prestige, is getting on The New York Times Bestseller List. I should note that I suppose someone could accuse me of sour grapes here saying, oh, Jonathan Moeller, you've never been on The New York Times Bestseller List. You must just be bitter about it. That is not true. I do not want to be on The New York Times Bestseller List. What I would like to be is a number one Amazon bestseller. Admittedly though, that's unlikely, but a number one Amazon bestseller would make a lot more money than a number one New York Times Bestseller List, though because of the way it works, if you are a number one Amazon bestseller, you might be a New York Times Bestseller, but you might not. Let's get into that now.   Many writers have the dream of seeing their name on the New York Times Bestseller List. One self-help guru wrote about “manifesting” this milestone for herself by writing out the words “My book is number one on The New York Times Bestseller List” every day until it happened. Such is the mystique of this milestone that many authors crave it as a necessity. However, this list has seen challenges to its prestige in recent years. The one thing that shocks most people when they dig into the topic is that the list is not an objective list based on the raw number of books sold. The list is “editorial content” and The New York Times can exclude, include, or rank the books on the list however they choose.   What it does not capture is perennial sellers or classics. For example, the Bible and the Quran are obviously some of the bestselling books of all time, but you won't see editions of the Bible or the Quran on the New York Times Bestseller List. Textbooks and classroom materials, I guarantee there are some textbooks that are standards in their field that would be on the bestseller list every year, but they're not because The New York Times doesn't track them. Ebooks available only from a single vendor such as Kindle Unlimited books, ebook sales from not reporting vendors such as Shopify or Payhip. Reference Works including test prep guides (because I guarantee when test season comes around the ACT and SAT prep guides or the GRE prep guides sell a lot of copies) and coloring books or puzzle books.  It would be quite a blow to the authors on the list to realize that if these excluded works were included on the list, they would in all likelihood be consistently below To Kill a Mockingbird, SAT prep books, citation manuals, Bibles/other religious works, and coloring books about The Eras Tour.   Publishers, political figures, religious groups, and anyone with enough money can buy their way into the rank by purchasing their books in enormous quantities. In fact, it's widely acknowledged in the United States that this is essentially a legal form of bribery and a bit of money laundering too, where a publisher will give a truly enormous advance to a public figure or politician that they like, and that advance will essentially be a payment to that public figure in the totally legal form of an enormous book advance that isn't going to pay out. Because this is happening with such frequency, The New York Times gave into the pressure to acknowledge titles suspected of this strategy with a special mark next to it on the list. However, these books remain on the list and can still be called a New York Times Bestseller.   Since the list is not an objective marker of sales and certainly not some guarantee of quality, why focus on making it there? I think trying to get your book on The New York Times Bestseller List would be an enormous waste of time, since the list is fundamentally an artificial construction that doesn't reflect sales reality very well.   So what can you do instead? Focus on raw sales numbers and revenue, not lists. Even Amazon's bestseller category lists have a certain amount of non-quantitative factors. In the indie author community, there's a saying called Bank not Rank, which means you should focus on how much revenue your books are actually generating instead of whatever sales rank they are on whatever platform. I think that's a wiser approach to focus your efforts.   You can use lists like those from Publishers Weekly instead if you're interested in what's selling or trends in the industry, although that too can be manipulated and these use only a fairly small subset of data that favors retail booksellers, but it's still more objective in measuring than The New York Times.   I suppose in the end, you should try and focus on ebook and writing activities that'll bring you actual revenue or satisfaction rather than chasing the hollow prestige of things like traditional publishing, agents, MFAs, and The New York Times Bestseller List.   So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp — go to http://betterhelp.com/super to get 10% off your first month. Today J dives into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter to find out why Mad-Eye's Moody's Eye can see through the Invisibility Cloak one of Death's own hallows! Is it a 4th Hallow? Was it created by one? Is it one of Death's own EYES? #supercarlinbrothers #HarryPotter Edited by : Ethan Edghill

All Good Things A Star Trek Universe Podcast Episode 179: Top Five   Kelvin, Amy, Kristin, & Christos are back to share their Top 5 Star Trek episodes. Kristin's Picks: VOY The Void, TNG Ethics, SNW Ad Astra Per Aspera, TNG Drumhead, DS9 In the Pale Moonlight   Kelvin's Picks: LDS Fissure Quest, PRO The Devourer of All Things, DSC Terra Firma, SNW Hegemony, Pliable Truths by Dayton Ward   Christos' Picks: DS( Way of the Warrior, DS9 In the Pale Moonlight, PIC No Win Scenario, SNW Ad Astra Per Aspera, TNG The Chase & Conspiracy   Amy's Picks: DSC Rosetta & Species 10-C, PRO Time Amok, SNW Spock Amok, SNW Subspace Rhapsody & These Old Scientist, SNW Under the Cloak of War   Join our listeners group The BQN Collective on Facebook Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/wqJt68vnxg The Network: @BQNpodcasts (IG/Bluesky) The Show: @AllGoodPod (Bluesky) Amy: @amynelson522 (IG/Discord)  Mark: @mw.207 (IG) @mw207 (Bluesky/Discord) Christos: @GreekgeekSD (IG/Bluesky/Discord) Kelvin: @KelvinsTimeline (IG/X/Discord) Kristin: BQN Collective FB

This week, Tommy is joined by actress Olivia Holt who is currently starring in the rom com horror film, Heart Eyes. Heart Eyes is about a masked killer who terrorizes romantic couples on Valentine’s Day. The killer has a new target, and Olivia's character spends the most romantic night of the year trying to stay alive. You also know and love Olivia from a bunch of other fan-favorite projects like Cruel Summer, Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger, Totally Killer, and more. She made her Broadway debut as Roxie Hart in Chicago, showing the world that she is indeed a multi-hyphenated artist. Today, Olivia opens up about if she is as much of a bad ass in real life as her character in Heart Eyes, how she formed that steamy chemistry with co-star Mason Gooding, why working on this movie was the most fun she has ever had on set, what her experience was like transitioning from working as a child star in Disney projects to headlining her own major studio movie, why she felt like she had to work extra hard to showcase a different side of her talents coming out of the Disney community, refusing to not be put into a box in her career, her fellow Disney actor that became a mentor to her, if she would reprise her fan-favorite role in Cruel Summer, her thoughts on a spin-off Cloak and Dagger movie, if she will be making more music, being graceful with her mental health journey and so much more. Subscribe, rate, and review this episode if you enjoyed this conversation!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 74 - “SWEETHEARTS FROM THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD" 2/10/2025 As Cupid sharpens his arrows, and the candy and greeting card companies prepare to make bank, we celebrate Valentine's Day. In this episode, we take a loving look at some of Hollywood's most enduring real-life love stories. From JOEL McCREA and FRANCES DEE to JEAN HARLOW and WILLIAM POWELL, join us as we discuss their lives, films, and, most importantly, their beautiful love stories.  SHOW NOTES:  Sources: Ladies of the Westerns (2015) by Michael C. Fitzgerald and Boyd Magers; Joel McCrea: Ride The High Country (1992), by Tony Thomas: “William Powell: Hollywood Star, Detective Film Icon," Jan. 27, 2025, Britannica,com; Letters From Hollywood: Jean Harlow , January 21, 2023 by David Stenn, TCM.com; The Love Story of Jean Harlow and William Power: Hollywood's Iconic Couple, Documentary (2023), Youtube.com; “McIntire and Nolan: A Romance Wright In Radio,” June 27, 2022, Travelanche; “12 Times Real Life Couple John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan Played a Couple Onscreen,” July 18, 2022, MeTV.com; “It Took Three Separate Actors To Bring Psycho's Norma Bates to Life,” November 30, 2022, www.slashfilm.com; “John McIntire and Jeanette Nolan Mix Business With Pleasure,” 2022, by J. Johnson, www.vocal.media/geeks; “John McIntire & Jeanette Nolan: Life Together,” by Jerry Skinner, YouTube.com; “Mary Pickford,” April 5, 2005, American Experience, PBS; “Douglas Fairbanks,” American Experience, PBS; Life and Times of Mary Pickford, Documentary (1998), Youtube.com; Harlow: The Blonde Bombshell, Documentary (1993), directed by Tom McQuade; “William Powell,” The State Historical Society of Missouri, www.missouriencyclopedia.com; Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscars.org): Mary Pickford; “William Powell, Film Star, Dies at 91,”March 6, 1984, by Peter B. Flint, New York Times; “Jeanette Nolan, Spouse Rough it in Montana Wilderness Home,” March 24, 1974, The Indianapolis Star; TCM.com; MaryPickford.org; McCreaRanchFoundation.org; IMDBPro.com; IBDB.com; Wikipedia.com; AcademyMuseum.com Movies Mentioned:  JOEL MCCREA & FRANCES DEE: The Jazz Age  (1929); The Silver Horde (1930); Playboy of Paris (1930); King of the Jungle (1930); An American Tragedy (1931); Caught (1931); Born to Love (1931); Bird of Paradise (1932); The Silver Cord (1933); One Man's Journey (1933); Little Women (1933); Finishing School (1934); Of Human Bondage (1934); Gambling Lady (1934); Becky Sharp (1935); Barbary Coast (1935); These Three (1936); Come and Get It (1936); The Gay Deception (1936);   Wells Fargo (1937); Dead End (1937); If I Were King (1938); Union Station (1939); Foreign Correspondent (1940); I Walked With A Zombie (1943); Four Faces West (1948); Ride The High Country (1962); JEAN HARLOW & WILLIAM POWELL: Man of the World (1931); Ladies Man (1931); Hell's Angels (1930); Reckless (1935); Libeled Lady (1936); After The Thin Man (1936); Saratoga (1937); My Man Godfrey (1936); JOHN McINTIRE & JEANETTE NOLAN: The Ramparts We Watch (1940); Northside 777 (1948); MacBeth (1948); Words and Music (1948); River Lady (1948);   Command Decision (1948); Top of The Morning (1949); No Sad Song For Me (1950); The Asphalt Jungle (1950); Winchester '73 (1950); The Secret of Convict Lake (1951); The Happy Time (1952); The Big Heat (1953); Westward The Women (1951); Apache (1954);  The Far County (1954); Flaming Star (1960);  Summer and Smoke (1961); The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); Rooster Cogburn (1975); The Rescuers (1978); True Confessions (1981); Cloak and Dagger (1984); Turner and Hooch (1989); The Horse Whisperer (1998); MARY PICKFORD & DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS: *** Please email us for list of Pickford & Fairbanks movies*** --------------------------------- http://www.airwavemedia.com Please contact sales@advertisecast.com if you would like to advertise on our podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A mantle isn't just bestowed lightly. It requires us to value and honor the spiritual leaders in our lives. In celebration of Dr. Gabriel Allen Powell's birthday, Pastor Victoria explores the biblical significance of mantles as representations of divine authority and calling. She discusses the roles of sacrifice, commitment, and spiritual authority associated with mantles, and emphasizes the importance of honoring and understanding the power and responsibility they entail.Support the showText encounteratl to 94000 to stay up-to-date on all things Encounter.Worship with EncounterSundays at 9 AM ET | Wednesdays at 7:30 PM ETSupport EncounterText egive to 77977 Connect with EncounterFacebook | Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | WebsiteConnect with Dr. GabeInstagram | YouTube | Website

We have a wealth of wonderfully talented actors who got their start making Disney shows and films. But, as often discussed on Collider Ladies Night, this is an industry with a habit of boxing artists in to the first they do well. One particularly popular box? The Disney box, and that's the one I focused on with Heart Eyes star, Olivia Holt.Holt's star started to rise with not one, but two Disney shows and a Disney Channel Original Movie. First it was Disney XD's Kickin' It, then came the movie Girl vs. Monster, and after that it was the Disney Channel Original Series, I Didn't Do It. All fantastic opportunities for a young actor getting a foothold in the industry, but all projects that would wind up labeling Holt as a particular kind of actor. When the time came to grow beyond Disney projects, Holt cared a good deal about that carrying label - until she didn't. “I just couldn't care anymore. I think I cared so deeply about people not wanting to view me as a Disney star, and now I just embrace it.”Embracing it has served Holt exceptionally well since the end of I Didn't Do It. While making the most of the invaluable lessons learned on those Disney sets, Holt has gone on to headline the short-lived but beloved Marvel series Cloak & Dagger. She also delivered big starring in the Hulu series Cruel Summer. She starred opposite Kiernan Shipka in Prime Video's horror comedy Totally Killer, and now she leads yet another slasher movie that's a total blast, Heart Eyes. Holt plays Ally in the Josh Ruben-directed romantic comedy slasher film. After a setback at work, Ally agrees to have dinner with Jay (Mason Gooding), the hotshot designer her boss brought in to oversee her assignment. Trouble is, it's Valentine's Day and the Heart Eyes Killer is out for blood. When HEK suspects Ali and Jay are on a date, they become HEK's next target.With Heart Eyes now playing in theaters nationwide, Holt took the time to swing by the Collider Ladies Night studio to recap her journey to becoming an undeniable force in the genre space. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we cover how to use honeypot data to keep your offensive infrastructure alive longer, three critical vulnerabilities in SimpleHelp that must be patched now, and an interesting vulnerability affecting many systems allowing UEFI Secure Boot bypass. Leveraging Honeypot Data for Offensive Security Operations [Guest Diary] A recent guest diary on the SANS Internet Storm Center discusses how offensive security professionals can utilize honeypot data to enhance their operations. The diary highlights the detection of scans from multiple IP addresses, emphasizing the importance of monitoring non-standard user-agent strings in web requests. https://isc.sans.edu/diary/Leveraging%20Honeypot%20Data%20for%20Offensive%20Security%20Operations%20%5BGuest%20Diary%5D/31596 Security Vulnerabilities in SimpleHelp 5.5.7 and Earlier SimpleHelp has released version 5.5.8 to address critical security vulnerabilities present in versions 5.5.7 and earlier. Users are strongly advised to upgrade to the latest version to prevent potential exploits. Detailed information and upgrade instructions are available on SimpleHelp's official website. https://simple-help.com/kb---security-vulnerabilities-01-2025#send-us-your-questions Under the Cloak of UEFI Secure Boot: Introducing CVE-2024-7344 ESET researchers have identified a new vulnerability, CVE-2024-7344, that allows attackers to bypass UEFI Secure Boot on most UEFI-based systems. This flaw enables the execution of untrusted code during system boot, potentially leading to the deployment of malicious UEFI bootkits. Affected users should apply available patches to mitigate this risk. https://www.welivesecurity.com/en/eset-research/under-cloak-uefi-secure-boot-introducing-cve-2024-7344/

A mysterious figure with glowing red eyes and supernatural leaping abilities terrorized Victorian London's streets. Many believed it to be paranormal, but others believed it was simply a bored, wealthy aristocrat with a taste for pranks.Darkness Syndicate members get the ad-free version. https://weirddarkness.com/syndicateInfo on the next LIVE SCREAM event. https://weirddarkness.com/LiveScreamInfo on the next WEIRDO WATCH PARTY event. https://weirddarkness.com/TVIN THIS EPISODE: Was the legendary Spring Heeled Jack an Irish nobleman? (The Devil in the Dark Cloak: Unmasking Spring Heeled Jack) *** During the early morning hours of August 11, 1887, a terrible train crash occurred near the small town of Chatsworth, Illinois -- and left ghostly legends in its wake. (Hauntings of Illinois' Worst Train Disaster) *** It was a beautiful old home – a Queen Anne Victorian, with gingerbread-like shingles and trim all the way around, painted beige. One look, and you knew joy-filled years were lived in that home. But you know what they say… don't judge a book by its cover. (Noises and Unexplained Happenings) *** Seventeen years after he disappeared, has a man's killer been brought to justice? (The Strange Case of Zebb Quinn's Disappearance) *** A man shares his belief that he is being stalked – by something paranormal. (The Gray Lady) *** One of our Weirdo family members shares how the strange Elisa Lam case creeped into a terrifying case of sleep paralysis. (Terror From The Elisa Lam Case) *** The Bermuda Triangle is not the only vortex of missing ships, and half a world away, in a whole other ocean, there lies a counterpart in the waters near Japan, which by all accounts is just as strange as its Bermuda cousin. (The Devil's Sea) *** A man who has had no issues before is suddenly finding the energy in his house is out of whack. (Something Is Messing With The Energy In My House) *** With all the men of the house gone fishing, an axe murder chooses the perfect time to attack and kill the women inside. (The Smuttynose Murders)CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Disclaimer and Cold Open00:02:19.323 = Show Intro00:04:54.434 = Devil In The Dark Cloak: Unmasking Spring Heeled Jack00:15:56.345 = Illinois Train Disaster00:31:35.698 = Something Is Missing With The Energy In My House00:44:42.080 = Smuttynose Murders00:55:53.680 = The Gray Lady01:05:56.131 = Wack Energy01:10:58.420 – Terror From The Elisa Lam Case01:13:43.707 = The Devil's Sea of Japan01:24:59.018 = The Strange Case of Zeb Quinn's Disappearance01:30:45.927 = Show CloseSOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM THE EPISODE…“Hauntings of Illinois' Worst Train Disaster” by Troy Taylor: https://tinyurl.com/ryh3m8x“Noises and Unexplained Happenings”: https://tinyurl.com/txp3haq“The Devil in the Dark Cloak: Unmasking Spring Heeled Jack”: https://tinyurl.com/wkgr663“The Strange Case of Zebb Quinn's Disappearance” by Orrin Grey for The Line Up: http://ow.ly/MTpL30lUmaF“The Devil's Sea of Japan” by Brent Swancer: https://tinyurl.com/sprcpur“Terror From the Elisa Lam Case” submitted anonymously to WeirdDarkness.com“The Gray Lady”: https://tinyurl.com/uymg3y5“The Smuttynose Murders” by Robert Wilhelm: https://tinyurl.com/a6kue74“Something Is Messing With The Energy In My House” by Russel James: https://tinyurl.com/r3ygrcoWeird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library. = = = = =(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.= = = = =Originally aired: September 21, 2018SOURCES PAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/SpringHeeledJackTRANSCRIPT: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p83bdyj

Darkness Syndicate members get the ad-free version. https://weirddarkness.com/syndicateInfo on the next LIVE SCREAM event. https://weirddarkness.com/LiveScreamInfo on the next WATCH PARTY event. https://weirddarkness.com/TVCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:56.000 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “Goodbye Karl Erich” (July 16, 1975)00:48:11.469 = BBC Appointment With Fear, “Clock Strikes Eight” (May 18, 1944) ***WD01:19:17.819 = The Avenger, “Death Rings The Bell” (October 12, 1945) ***WD (LQ)01:48:42.089 = Ghost Story BBC, “The Shimmering Dress” (ADU)02:03:09.239 = Beyond The Green Door, “Trent Perkins and Sword Swallower” (ADU)02:06:52.619 = Beyond Midnight, “The Party” (ADU) ***WD02:38:09.179 = Black Book, “My Favorite Corpse” (February 24, 1952) ***WD02:52:47.199 = The Black Mass, “Nightmare” (January 18, 1964)03:20:22.969 = Box 13, “The Hot Box” (December 26, 1948)03:47:21.029 = Chet Chetter's Tales From The Morgue, “The Return of the Master Constipator” (ADU) ***WD04:11:09.349 = Cloak and Dagger, “Windfall” (October 22, 1950)04:39:46.409 = The Clock, “The Bank Vault” (February 02, 1947) ***WD (LQ)05:04:23.128 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2024, Weird Darkness.= = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0284

Darkness Syndicate members get the ad-free version. https://weirddarkness.com/syndicateInfo on the next LIVE SCREAM event. https://weirddarkness.com/LiveScreamCHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Show Open00:01:56.000 = CBS Radio Mystery Theater, “The Golden Cauldron” (June 30, 1975)00:48:36.029 = Cloak and Dagger, “Wine of Freedom” (October 15, 1950) ***WD01:20:27.839 = The Clock, “Spangler's Attic” (January 26, 1947) ***WD01:46:24.499 = Confession, “Roger S. Chapman” (September 13, 1953)02:16:10.919 = The Creaking Door, “Aunt Mae” (ADU)02:45:24.429 = Creeps By Night, “Six Who Did Not Die” (July 11, 1944) ***WD03:14:39.859 = Dark Fantasy, “Dead Hands Reaching” (May 22, 1945) ***WD03:38:56.949 = Sounds of Darkness, “Birds For Sale” (December 01, 1967) ***WD04:05:08.199 = CBC Deep Night, “Bonehouse” (August 07, 2005)04:39:16.429 = The Devil And Mr. O, “Chest” (January 28, 1972)05:07:31.538 = Show Close(ADU) = Air Date Unknown(LQ) = Low Quality***WD = Remastered, edited, or cleaned up by Weird Darkness to make the episode listenable. Audio may not be pristine, but it will be better than the original file which may have been unusable or more difficult to hear without editing.Weird Darkness theme by Alibi Music Library= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2024, Weird Darkness.= = = = =CUSTOM WEBPAGE: https://weirddarkness.com/WDRR0275

Sieu is a young boy living in the big city of Phnom Penh, but he misses his old life in the Cambodian countryside. The air, the farms, but mostly… the animals. When the Khmer Rouge promises a return to the land, Sieu has no idea how far he and his family will have to go.This story recounts aspects of the Khmer Rouge civil war including scenes of torture and death. Sensitive listeners, please be advised.BIG thanks to Sieu Do for sharing your story with us! There is so much that we were not able to share with you about Sieu and his family's incredible journey. To find out more check out his book, A Cloak of Good Fortune.Produced by Nikka Singh, original score by Renzo Gorrio, artwork by Teo DucotSnap Classic - Season 15 - Episode 54