Updates in life and creative work. Live streamed on Sep 7, 2023.

Then I pulled the audio and did only very quick edits to the audio-only version: truncate silence (which got rid of empty gaps), noise reduction, amplification of dialogue to come closer to intro/outro music. Done and done.

Below are the notes that I referenced as we talked today.

Welcome to GCP.

I am your host, Don Bishop.

Today’s episode is live on YouTube. I will take this and upload it later to other locations, including the podcast proper which is where you’ll hear it if you listen on Spotify, YouTube, etc.

But it is live as I record it, so any “ums” will be left in place. It’s a trade-off, honestly, because that’s how I talk a lot of the time.

I’m doing this live to be quick and get an update out there. I didn’t publish a podcast episode in August, and I don’t like to disappear completely when I’m busy. I want to maintain contact with you.

So here we are, even though I’m still quite busy, recording live because I won’t spend hours editing it this way.

So, big updates:
                -Nearing the end of active duty service
                -out by end of year
                -SkillBridge internship with Full Magazine Publishing
                                -MOU needed
                                -graphic novels – aimed mostly towards veterans, telling their stories
                                -industry partner to “refine skills” for “follow-on career pathways”
                -I will be going to 20Books Vegas. I am registered and have booked my hotel room. No flight – thinking of driving our ‘95 civic instead. Cost, stops along the way.

Creative work updates:
                -GC currently on pause in lieu of other effort
                -Pushing through “Nightshade Unicorn”
                                -Shrongelin
                                -Nomord
                                -Sakalai
                                -2k words/day
                -Expect some short stories
                -Expect some story narration!!!

-Don’t forget “fantasty” – it’s still open, since we haven’t had a chance to really push it. I’ll close it 30 November, and announce a winner in December. $30 gift certificate to the restaurant or retailer of your choice.

Enter by: send picture and “#fantasty” to fantasty@thorn.link, or – @grendhillchron on social media.

Welcome to the Grendhill Chronicles podcast, where we discuss world building and sometimes read aloud to you. Although this podcast was intended to be centered on the Grendhill Chronicles, we often go far afield. This is season two, episode nine, as I record this intro today. It is July 1st, 2023. First off, I’m going to apologize for some misinformation.

In the last episode’s intro, I mistakenly stated that I had not published an episode in the previous month in May of this year. But looking back, I did no big deal, but that’s the case now. True to my promise from the last episode, because of the audio issues, I promised that this episode would massage your eardrums.

To follow through and to keep true. The title of today’s episode, this is Birdsong. We’re not reading to you today. We’re not discussing world building. It’s just birdsong, almost nothing else. If you’re like me, lately, you’ve been going too fast and too frantic. So now go ahead and take a while and relax to these beautiful sounds.

Rejuvenate yourself and be refreshed. This audio was recorded in one continuous take. You’ll hear a couple of cars in the distance. There were a couple more of them, but I removed them because they were too noisy and it would distract from the piece. The other editing that I did here was amplification to bring the overall sound level up cuz the bird song was a little quiet.

And noise removal, just that kind of background that you often get in recordings, and that was done in Audacity. Also, at the end of the recording, you can hear a gait shut, and I negatively amplified that the squeal of the hinge was pretty loud, so I didn’t want it to be jarring. I don’t know the names of the birds that we hear in this recording.

If you do, reach out and let me know. There are lots of beautiful birds in Virginia and I would love to isolate the sounds of each one.

The bird song was recorded on June 19th and the video that accompanies it that you’ll see if you’re watching on YouTube. Was recorded on June 30th in exactly the same place, and at approximately the same time of day, early in the morning before I went to work. And although the video was only 11 days later, the birds weren’t singing as much on the morning that I recorded the video.

And my guess is because that it was definitely warmer on the 30th. Let’s get ready to relax. We’re almost there.

There is an intro to this episode. Like always. However, today there will be no outro. The bird song will go to the end, and then there will just be silence.

When you hear the gate shut, that’s your signal. To know that we’re almost at the end of the recording. I will take a two minute sample from earlier in the recording and paste it after the gate shutting and. Then after that, there will be another 30 seconds of just silence. So if you’re listening on a platform that will automatically play the next video or podcast episode after this one ends, when you hear the gate shut, that will be your signal that you have two minutes and 30 seconds to stop the podcast if you just want to relax in the quiet.

Without further ado, please enjoy this roughly 40 minutes. Of Birdsong as much as I do.

Let’s talk about inventing languages!

Intro:

Welcome to the Grendhill Chronicles Podcast, where we discuss world building and occasionally read aloud to you. While the spotlight is intended for the Grendhill Chronicles, we often go far afield.

Today I present to you an interview with Science Fiction author Martin L. Shoemaker. We are going to discuss ConLangs, or constructed—invented—languages, and how language shifts over time. Before we get to today’s content, let’s catch up a little bit.

I did not publish a podcast episode in May. Several things hit at once or in close sequence, pushing this to the back burner so I couldn’t even do one episode. And that’s not even recording! This episode was recorded on April 15^th, 2023, just over two months ago as I speak to you today on June 17^th.

We’re trying to remedy the cigarette smell in our old house. We have quotes from ServPro but since there has been a period of several months with the mortgage draining our savings, we’re trying to do more of it ourselves in order to save money.

Also, in May my wife left town to tend to some matters, and although I took time off work to be with the kids, there was overlap between me going back to work before Laila returned. So my parents came to town to help cover the gap.

Somehow it got worked in there that my sister was coming with her kids, which sounded like a good idea at the time. Let me tell you now, that although I loved seeing my sister and nieces and nephews, and the cousins loved playing together, it was bad timing.

My sister homeschools her children, but my kids were still in school; they were not on summer break. So I found myself coming home from work and being the party pooper, calling and end to playtime, and stuffing food in faces as fast as possible in order to get my kids in bed. You may recall from another episode how early their school started, so they had an early bedtime while their cousins didn’t.

It was very stressful. Will we have them over again? Of course! But not while I have to go to work and Laila is out of town and the kids are in school and we’re not even fully settled into our new house and we still have to turn around our old house because the renters smoked in it…

Yeah. Good idea. Bad timing. Next time will be better!

My health has also been suffering. A couple of weeks ago I had a fever and chills, where two evenings in a row I was shivering uncontrollably and the only way I was able to stop was with a very hot bath. Then I did some profuse sweating for a few hours. Turns out it was strep. Got an antibiotic and it calmed right down.

And my knee. The doctor says with the amount of time that it has been without improvement, it may be time to consider surgery to debride the tendon. Kinda scary. I’ve looked up success rates, and while it says 77%…I’ve also seen things say that this issue never fully goes away. Decisions.

Now, I do have some big news in my life, which news is only 4 days old now, but I’m going to sit on that one and not share it because it hasn’t taken proper shape yet. Sorry.

So, one final item before we get into our discussion – a sincere apology in advance. I had audio issues. I didn’t realize it while recording, but my microphone record level was set much too high. This means that my side of the conversation suffers from clipping, a kind of distortion. I installed Audiate from TechSmith, which has an algorithm to try to fix the clipping, but maybe I don’t know how to use it right. Anyway, it’s good enough that you can clearly hear what I’m saying, so I hope you’ll forgive me. I’ll make up for it in my next episode, I promise. It’s already recorded.

Without further ado, today’s world-building discussion: ConLang. (Subscribe to the “Grendhill Chronicles Podcast” to listen to this in your favorite podcast app.)