Playing for Keeps, launching November 1st, …tells the story of Keepsie Branson, a bar owner in the shining metropolis of Seventh City. Keepsie and her friends live among egotistical heroes and manipulative villains, and manage to fall directly in the middle as people with powers, but who just aren’t strong enough to make a difference. Or that’s what they’ve been told. As the city begins to melt down, it’s hard to tell who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

Playing for Keeps will be a unique podcast experience: you have the ability to subscribe to just the audio version of the novel or you can subscribe to the “PfK Experience”, where you will receive in the feed a PDF of the episode including art, links to content you can’t get on the audio feed, and a short supplemental podcast called “Stories of the Third Wave”.

Check out the site Playing For Keeps. The first espisode is available at Playing for Keeps.

Mur Lafferty is a North Carolina based writer who has written numerous short stories like my personal favorite, the funny and touching I Look Forward to Remembering You as well as the audionovel series Heaven.

Been a while since I’ve gotten an update out. I’ll be posting more scripts and links to script over the next day, but I thought I’d let those of you who live in the Carlisle, Pennsylvania area know that The Whistlestop Bookshop will be hosting Harry Potter Party, starting Friday the 20th at 9:00 am edt. The Whistlestop Bookshop is located at 129 West High Street * Carlisle Pennsylvania 17013. See you there! - Don

If you live in south-central Pennsylvania, do take time out to visit The Whistlestop Bookshop. Located in historic Carlisle, PA., The Whistlestop Bookshop is the best independent bookstore ever. If you see Jeff, tell him, “Don says, ‘hi!’”.

On Public Domain Torrents I ran across the movie Nosferatu as a free download (or you can watch it streaming). You can also read an excellent transcript courtesy of Horror Lair.

I’m listening to Shadowmagic by John Lenahan. Shadowmagic is a fun fantasy adventure novel very loosely based on Irish mythology. Conor is a teenager whisked away to Tir na Nog, the mystical land of the ancient Celts. - Don

I’m guessing you want to hear more about what I got for my birthday.

I got Pevear’s new translation of The Three Musketeers, Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth , Jasper Fforde’s latest Nursery Crime novel, The Fourth Bear and Dava Sobel’s The Planets. - Don

The discussion board is ‘resting’ for a bit. I upgraded the board. There were some glitches. Once I got the glitches taken care of I noticed a few new enhancements that I didn’t like, which I thought added confusion to how the board operated, so I decided to revert back to the last upgrade. I am currently re-uploading the back-up (taken just before the upgrade so nothing should be lost).

I just returned from celebrating my birthday and thought I share what I got:

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

The two follow-up books to His Majesty’s Dragons (which I read at the beach), Throne of Jade and Black Powder War

and, Perils of the Atlantic: Steamship Disasters, 1850 to the Present.

Birthday lunch was held at The Back Door in downtown Carlisle, PA. Grabbed some good stuff to eat later at Appalachian Whole Foods where Sandy put me on to some great instant Indian meals and gave the boys some sugar free lollipops. Swung by The Whistlestop Bookshop to say hello to “Uncle Jeff” and Kara and add more books to my Christmas/Birthday list. We then dodged over to Casa Mani for a quick Cafe~ Mocha. Later that evening I had my birthday dinner at Amy’s Thai Cuisine. - Don

The early bird deadline for the upcoming Gimme Credit short screenplay competition is September 7th. Write Movies‘ standard deadline for The International Fall 2006 Writing Contest is October 1st. So, get writing. More info onthese contest can be found on the announcements page.

My friend, Jason Henderson, who has produced comics such as Sword of Dracula, and the graphic novel Soulcatcher, co-written Tokyopop manga series Psy-Comm and written and designed for several hit computer games, including Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 as well as being a chronic under achiever, has a new book coming out in October.

In The Darkling Band, two best friends in 13th-Century Germany set out across towns, tundra and mountains to find one of the friend’s two sisters, who have been kidnapped by a raiding party of winged men locked in a war with the exploding human population.

The Darkling Band can be preordered through Amazon.com or Dragon Moon Press.