Vidocq & the Thief of Joy

In the spirit of the season, I thought it was time to try a more extended podcast story. To wit, I hope you enjoy Vidocq & the Thief of Joy!



Thanks for your continued support, and Merry Christmas to all!

Le Fantôme Vert

Tipping Point

The Nightingale & The Shark

Powerbrokers

The Shoemaker & The Elves

Scattered Stars

The Genuine Article

The Nature of Treachery

Medical Affairs

The Long Walk

Charcuterie

NaNo Recovery Go!

Apologies for the lack of postcards the past couple of days; I've been writing by the skin of my teeth the past week or so, as we got towards the end of NaNoWriMo and it began taking up a disproportionate amount of my time.

On the bright side, I hit 50,000 words on Wednesday morning after an 11K sprint over three and a half days. Unfortunately that's left my writing brain crying out for relief, so I'm going to give it a couple of days to rest and recover, hopefully to get back to postcard writing at the weekend. We'll start afresh on Monday.

As ever, thanks for your continued support. I'd just like to take this opportunity to say a huge thanks to Jenny for recording and producing the vast majority of the postcards over the past month. She's a life-saver!

Lord of the West

An Honest Day's Work

The Mole

To The Ground

Escalation

Write or Die

Finn's Price

The Chef's Apprentice

Leaving Versailles

Ballerin's Collection

The World's A Stage

Departure

Arrival

In His Father's Shadow

Fire!

Reprisals

Patriots

To Die For

Springsong

Downpour

Night Terrors

Happy Halloween!

I'm going to be taking part in National Novel Writing Month through November; writing 1667 words a day is tricky enough without also recording a podcast each morning. But fear not, you won't be left without your daily dose of Lepari! My lovely wife will be taking over recording duties for the month, five days a week. I think we'll save Saturday and Sunday as days off - the weekends tend to have the lowest listener figures anyway - and once November's over, see how things develop from there.

Thanks for listening, and I hope these little snapshots continue to entertain!

The March of the Lamplighters

A Question of Alchemy

Unlicensed

Out of Afriq

Grand Ambitions

Carnival

For the Numbers

Hunter

Looking at the Stars

Passage

Gourmand

Correspondent

In The Wings

Into Battle

Conductor

In memory of Trisha Macfarlane; great friend and awesome conductor.

1984 - 2011

Rest in peace, Trish.

The Coming Storm

The Vice of Father Moreau

Better late than never, here's today's postcard. I've been bed-bound today with the terribly virulent whiny manflu, and my voice was in no condition whatsoever to record. Luckily I remembered this evening that I had this postcard as a buffer from about 6 months ago, so I won't have to break my streak this time!

Turncoat

Vertigo

Professional

The Monsters of Childhood

The Colours of Fire

Visionary

Representative

Amongst the Bones

Disappointment

A Lifetime of Service

The Smell of Success

Content Warning!



When I originally had the idea for this podcast, one of my first concerns was how to find suitable music to bookend the pieces. Given the setting and my influences, I decided to try to track down some accordion music - despite being slightly anachronistic to my time period, the instrument exemplified the tone and feel I wanted for these stories - and trawled the mighty internet in search of something which caught my ear.

On Youtube I found endless renditions of the same two or three songs, which I'd heard were supposed to be beautiful, but there was something missing; no soul, no heart, just the notes being played one after another. I doubted I'd ever find what I was looking for. And then I encountered Wolfgang Thobae. There was so much more warmth to his playing, such emotion, that I knew I'd found what I was after.



Wolfgang was kind enough to let me use his music for this podcast, so if you've been enjoying it so far, please stop over at his Youtube channel - where he's got a far-wider variety than I've been using here - and let him know!

Waterton's Crusade

Alliance

Apocalypse

Given that this blog's all about Lepari, and Lepari's all about chefs, I also couldn't resist posting this video that's been doing the rounds:



I love garlic, but it's a pain in the ass to peel. No longer. If only I had two bowls of equal size...

A Matter of Love

After a brief sojourn across the Atlantic, I'm back on the writing trail with today's postcard:

The Brothers of Perignon

Alphonse's Walk

Dischord

The Fisherman

Returning to Afongard

La Serment D'Allegeance

After a week and a half, I've finally had confirmation that the Postcards From Lepari feed is now up on iTunes! I feel all professional now, and at last my podcast outro is accurate.

First Impressions

Culinary Affairs

City of Miracles

So I've been doing this for a full week now, and it's still fun. This is a good sign! My time's going to be rather limited over the next week or so - post-wedding wrap-up - so I won't be writing new pieces, but I have prepared a bunch I wrote when I first thought about doing this idea a year ago, so those will be going up every morning. Feel free to leave comments, and I'll reply as soon as I get the opportunity!

The Happiest Day of Their Lives

This was in no way inspired by spending last night looking through our wedding photos. Honest.

Anthem

A Thing of Beauty

Well, I made it this far! Thanks again for all your support with this project; it's felt good to get moving again on it, and while I'm going I might as well keep up the momentum. I've been asked by a couple of people whether I'm planning on putting up postcards on the weekends as well, and the answer so far is 'probably'. I can't promise it every weekend, but if possible I'd like to keep it ticking over; after all, if I can do one story a day every day for a year, that's over a hundred more stories than if I let weekends slip by under the radar.

That's not to say I won't occasionally give myself a lie-in, though. And so, eight hours later than the rest of the week, I present today's story:



I've also had enquiries about when the podcast is going to be available on iTunes (as mentioned at the end of each postcard). At this point, I don't know, but be assured that I've set the wheels in motion; right now I'm simply waiting for it to be approved by Apple, then I'll be able to add links, etc to this blog. Until then, you can always subscribe to this blog with an RSS or Atom feed reader, and the episodes should be available embedded in the feed.

Beasts

Please Note: Lepari is a gritty, nasty city, and some of these postcards will include words and concepts unsuitable for polite company or a family audience. This is one of them. You have been warned!

In Darkness

The Further We Slide

My thanks to everyone who stopped by to listen to my first postcard. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and this seems to be enough of an interesting idea that it's getting me up early enough to write a new one each morning! Here's number 2:

Lampless

Welcome to Postcards From Lepari! I've been playing around with this idea for over a year now, of using regularly-posted audio to further develop the city of Lepari I'm using as the setting for much of my writing, but realised last night that I was getting hung up on something obvious: quality.

To say I'm a bit of a perfectionist would be an understatement, so when I had the idea of a series of drabble-length shorts about Lepari, I got big plans. They were all going to be finely-crafted, perfect little nuggets of entertainment, some of them read by my friends and associates across the internet, and of course I was going to write at least thirty good ones - discarding any which weren't quite up to snuff - before I even started putting them on this blog.

And so this blog languished without content ever since. Until I finally realised that while I should always strive for quality, sometimes it's better to have it done than not at all. After all, this is intended as a breeding ground for ideas, as well as to flesh out this city that never was, and if I insist on perfection every time it simply won't happen.

With no further ado, please allow me to present the first of my postcards from Lepari: