Dan Dan The Art Man

In this second episode I review the Christmas Classic titled "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. Listen as I share my thoughts on why this classic is so great and the tradition I've started of reading every year around the holidays. Download the .mp3 Visit the website: www.DanDanTheArtMan.com

In this first episode listen to me share my thoughts on the classic novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. It's a book I hated in high school, but reread again after college to find that I actually appreciated it. Download the .mp3 Visit the website: www.DanDanTheArtMan.com

Welcome to my new podcast Dan Dan The Art Man's Book Reviews! This is episode zero where I explain what the podcast will be like so you know what to expect. Have a listen and enjoy. Download the .mp3 Visit the website: www.DanDanTheArtMan.com

Book Memories guest blog post # 9 by Sue Leib Bernstein Download the .mp3 BOOK MEMORIES # 9 IT'S ALL ABOUT THE WORDS There’s something about a well-crafted turn of a phrase that has always given me pause. Even as a child, when I would read a book and came across an unexpected, beautifully-turned phrase, I would stop and read just that phrase, over and over, until I could practically taste it. Then, I would continue on with the story. For me to love a book, it must have more than just well-fleshed-out characters, an engaging story and snappy repartee. The books that stay with me are the ones whose word choices surprise and delight me, whose phrases are both unexpected and exquisite. One of the first books I can remember staying with me is "The Age of Innocence," by Edith Wharton. "The Age of Innocence" is the story of upper-class mores of New York society beginning in the 1870s and how, with the turn of the 20th century and passing of generations, change affects every as

Book Memories guest blog post # 8 by J.R. Murdock Download the .mp3 BOOK MEMORIES # 8 When I was three or four, my mother had a subscription to two different books clubs for my older brother and me. One was to Gold Key, the other to Disney. Each month we’d get two new books in the mail; one Gold Key, one Disney. We got all the traditional books that you’d expect from a collection like this. We also got many obscure books. My brother loved the Disney books, I preferred the Gold Key. Until I was a little older. Sure, my mom and step-father read books to both of us, but my brother was able to read on his own and he soon graduated from the kids’ books to comic books. I remember my favorite Gold Key book was the pokey Little Puppy. I’d flip through the book again and again waiting until my mom or step-dad had time to read it to me. When I was a little older, it was the Disney book, The Magic Grinder. In this book, a dragon gives a magical devices to a poor woman with two little boys. It provides

Book Memories guest blog post # 7 by Dan Absalonson Download the .mp3 BOOK MEMORIES # 7 This week you get to hear from me again! Yeah :) As I wait for more guest posts to come in I share two memories of being transported by reading The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. Enjoy, then write your own book memory and send it in to me! See this blog post for the details. Thanks for listening! www.DanDanTheArtMan.com

Book Memories guest blog post # 6 by Sally Preston Download the .mp3 BOOK MEMORIES # 6 WARNING:  This post contains high degrees of saccharine and dairy. I.E. it's pretty overly sweet and more than a little cheesy. First let me start with a shout out and thanks to Dan for including me as an occasional writer for posts. It's fun to share, put my own spin on things and since for the most part when I express myself I'm singing or playing an instrument writing is a nice change of pace! Now on to my favorite book memories. My first and most vivid memory from my childhood would be when Mom would read to us every night before bed. "Make way for ducklings", "Charlotte's Web" and "The Trumpet of the Swan." A chapter each night, my favorite thing about it was time with Mom and sharing in the story. Many books since then came and went... I grew, so did my taste in books. Never one to go for books that would scare or depress me I eventually would go for books that involved intrigue, mystery and drama. I read

Book Memories guest blog post # 5 by Laura Nicole Download the .mp3 BOOK MEMORIES # 5 This is the fifth post in a series of Book Memories. This guest post is by Laura Nicole who chose to submit her guest post via audio. So sit back and enjoy listening to her book memory of reading by listening to audiobooks, falling in love with them, and then becoming an audiobook narrator herself. Bio: Laura Nicole has been making silly voices since a child. At the encouragement of her father, she started voice acting since 2004 starting with shows on BrokenSea.com and Circus13Productions.com. Her roles include strong artistic leading women, colorful villains, and a lot of computer voices. Currently she is narrating her novel Absolution and other projects to be named. As a writer, Laura has written short audio dramas for GypsyAudio.org and has worked on the “Please Spay Your Tribbles” blog for Flying Island Press magazine. Laura's current work that she has out is “Stonebriar Casefile 186: Bad Alchemy” in both .epub a

Book Memories guest blog post # 4 by Scott Roche Download the .mp3 BOOK MEMORIES # 4 I've read so many awesome books and most of them are classics, but Dan asked for our fondest memory of a book or books. I've loved being read to as much if not more than I've enjoyed reading for as long as I can remember. My Mom read to me well past the age where I needed it. I've read to my own children and credit that for igniting a love of a good tale well told. When I was a kid, there were these things called records and it's a book and record and the journey it started that I'd like to share. The earliest memory of audio fiction I have are the GI Joe Adventure Team book and record sets. With it, you got a comic book and a 45 RPM record. The vinyl disk and book are, in my memory, a gateway to the worlds of action and adventure that I'd revisit a hundred thousand times over during the course of my life. The story was brief, since it had to fit on the record, but it was fun and suspenseful. I must have played it fift

Book Memories guest blog post # 3 by Michael J. Sullivan Download the .mp3 How I Became a Reader It’s probably not a good thing to admit, but when I was young I hated reading. Yep, even though I make my living now from writing books, there was a time when I had no interest in the written word. One of my worst memories was the summer I tortured myself with Big Red, a 254 page “chapter book” that I suffered through just so I could say I’ve read a book in my lifetime. But this post is supposed to be about my best memory not my worst, so I’ve already wandered off track. How I came to reading probably doesn’t seem like an overly pleasant experience. It started in the dead of night (or at least what I thought was the dead of night at the time).  My brother and I shared a small bedroom and since he was ten years my senior he stayed up much later than I did.  He rushed in, switched on a blinding light, shook me awake, and then spend the next several hours rambling about a book he had just started r

The short story "Cue Bull" I wrote for the Every Photo Tells Podcast has been released! It is now available on their website in audio, and available in all eBook formats at Smashwords. I will also be adding the .mp3 to my podcast feed. They did an amazing job narrating this story so slide on some headphones and have yourself a listen. A big thanks to Mick & Katharina of Every Photo Tells for such an amazing reading of my story and for providing this outstanding avenue for writers to get inspiration to write and submit short stories. Download the .mp3

Book Memories guest blog post # 2 by A.F. Grappin Brought to you by www.DanDanTheArtMan.com Download the .mp3 BOOK MEMORIES # 2 I once actually had someone ask me if I was reading Dostoyevsky on purpose. While that's probably one of my favorite memories of reading, I pretty much just summed up the entire memory in that sentence, and that doesn't make for a very good blog post. I could go into more detail, like how I was reading The Brothers Karamazov in the hallway of the music building in college, when I should have been practicing, or like how my music theory professor once asked me why I wasn't majoring in English instead of music, and he's the one that suggested I read The Brothers Karamazov in the first place... yeah, those were good times. But they were some years ago, and honestly, I was a completely different character then. Person. I meant person. Books affected me differently then. Meaning... they didn't. Not really. While I did spend much more time reading words than music at the time, I real

Book Memories guest blog post # 1 by Dan Absalonson Brought to you by www.DanDanTheArtMan.com Download the .mp3 THE FIRST TIME I READ PAST THE REQUIRED PAGES I've always loved reading. In my teen years I could usually be found with a book and if there was a spare moment I'd whip it out and get to reading. Sitting in math class during our homework time I'd finish the assignment and pull a paperback from my backpack. I remember one time I was reading the massive door stopper The Eye of the World, the first in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, and when a classmate saw me pull it from my bag he was like, "Woah! What the heck are you reading Dan? I didn't know they even make books that big. Why would anyone want to read something that long?" It made me smile. The story I want to share about though is about an experience I had reading an assigned book for school. The first amazing part about it is that I liked it in the first place. Not even someone who loves reading enjoys most of the books they forc

One of my favorite authors Nathan Lowell was being interviewed by Chris Moody on the podcast PodioMedia Chat. In what are some of my all time favorite sci-fi books, Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper, coffee plays a part in stories. Chris asked Nathan what some of his favorite coffee is and Nathan mentioned 8 O'Clock Coffee. At which point I shot off the tweet above because as you can see in my Twitter bio, I'm a coffee addict. So they sent me a free whole bean bag of their Central Highlands dark roast. I couldn't just give it a try and send off a thanks tweet back so instead I of course recorded myself opening it, making it, and giving it a try. It tasted wonderful. Listen for yourself: Download the .mp3 https://archive.org/download/8OClockCoffeeReviewDanDanTheArtMan/8OClockCoffee_Review_DanDanTheArtMan.mp3 Thanks for stopping by and thanks 8 O'Clock Coffee!

A podcast flash fiction story written and read by Dan Absalonson inspired by the flash fiction challenge on Chuck Wendig's website www.terribleminds.com. The creepy bum is always there, staring at me. Every time I ride the subway he's there. No matter what terminal I get off at, he's there. I can't escape him and I'm starting to lose it. Rules for writing this story challenge: You know the drill: Random number generator or d20. Roll it. Grab a setting from the list below and go forth and write yourself around 1000 words of fiction set in that location. The list, then, is: (I got a 12 for my random number)  12. The NYC subways Download the .mp3 Music was "Dirt Rhodes" by Kevin MacLeod: http://www.incompetech.com

A podcast flash fiction story written and read by Dan Absalonson inspired by the flash fiction challenge on Chuck Wendig's website. Here were the rules for writing this story:  I’m going to give you ten words. Your job is to work all ten of these words into a flash fiction story, ~1000 words in length. That’s it. End of mandate. The story’s due in a week: Friday, August 30th, noon EST. Post at your online space. Link back here. The ten random words are as follows: FUNERAL, CAPTIVATE, DECEIT, BRIMSTONE, CANYON, BALLOON, CLAY, DISFIGURED, WILLOW, ATOMIC Download the .mp3 Music Attributions: Pilot Error by Kevin MacLeod http://www.incompetech.com SFX Attributions: cf_fx-sounds cf_FX_batch_jingle_glock_N--kloing.aif by cfork http://freesound.org/people/cfork/sounds/26875/

The short story "Helium Heart" I wrote for the Every Photo Tells Podcast has been released! It is now available on their website in audio, and available in all eBook formats at Smashwords. I will also be adding the .mp3 to my podcast feed. They did an amazing job narrating the story. It is, as you may have read earlier, the saddest story I've ever written. A young man must face the first real tragedy in his life, the loss of his best friend. So grab your preferred box of tissues and snuggle up to your eReader or slide on some headphones and have yourself a listen. A big thanks to Mick & Katharina of Every Photo Tells for such an amazing reading of my story and for providing this outstanding avenue for writers to get inspiration to write and submit short stories.

A short story about a boy and his beloved robot who has become out of date. The boy's father wants to trade the robot in for a new one, but the robot has become the boy's best friend. Intro Bumper by Katharina Bordet  http://www.maimer.net/ http://everyphototells.com/ Music Attributions: Danse Morialta by Kevin MacLeod http://www.incompetech.com SFX Attributions: Door Slammed altfuture http://www.freesound.org/people/altfuture/sounds/174643/ heavy breathing off mic loop.wav bevangoldswain http://www.freesound.org/people/bevangoldswain/sounds/54776/ Download the .mp3

Movie Memories guest blog post # 9 by Laith Preston brought to you by www.DanDanTheArtMan.com Download the .mp3 Movies, there are just so many stories I could come up with about movies that I'm not really sure where to begin. When I think about movies, like most everyone I recall the smell of the popcorn and the quiet in the theater as the previews began, the excitement building as the hero wins through against seemingly impossible odds. However, one of my earliest memories of watching a movie is actually not seeing it on the big screen, but rather sitting on the loveseat in my parents room all nice and comfy with a blanket watching the movie unfold on television. There are a number of movies that I first remember enjoying this way but foremost in my mind are Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Black Hole. I suppose given my love of all things Sci-Fi these two sticking out shouldn't be that much of a shock, the music, the characters... the robots... from VINCENT and poor beat up old B

Movie Memories guest blog post # 8 by Justin R. Macumber brought to you by www.DanDanTheArtMan.com. Download the .mp3 A Long Time Ago, In A Drive-In Far, Far Away… We human beings are such a mess of thoughts, histories, experiences, and emotions that it’s hard to know why we are the way we are. The smallest incident can have the biggest impact, yet we can be oblivious to the large changes that shape our psyche. As the bard said, “Man is a giddy, flighty thing.” I’m sure thousands of therapists and psychiatrists would agree. I’m just as prone to it as the next guy. But, there was one moment in my past that I clearly remember as a pivotal one in my development not just as a human being, but also as a life-long geek. It happened on a dark evening in the summer of 1977, in a dusty Kansas drive-in, with me on the roof of my parents’ car. If you’re a fellow geek, you know exactly what I’m talking about. STAR WARS! Yep, I can remember it as though it happened yesterday. I was four