Journal Entries
Quentin Tarantino's Penny Dreadful
Posted Jun 13, 2007
I put together a sort of film strip trailer of a steampunk Pulp Fiction, "Quentin Tarantino's Penny Dreadful." My immediate goal, besides gaining positive street cred, was to see if I could make something funny enough that boingboing.net would list it. They did! Here it is, hope you like it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA
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Latest reply: Jun 13, 2007
Subscribe to Brazen Hearts, Fresh, On Sticks podcast
Posted Jun 18, 2006
You can subscribe to the goblin soap opera podcast by adding this link to your feed aggregator or iTunes or bloglines or My Yahoo or whatever you use:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BrazenHeartsFreshOnSticks
For songs and extras and more info, check out the devoted blog at http://brazenhearts.blogspot.com
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Latest reply: Jun 18, 2006
Brazen Hearts, Fresh, On Sticks
Posted Feb 28, 2006
http://www.archive.org/download/RobertThomasNorthrupBrazenHeartsFreshOnSticksEpisode1/brazenhearts1__64kbps.mp3
Brazen Hearts, Fresh, On Sticks
Goblin soap opera podcast, not pretty. Josie is your typical young goblin, selling freshly-grilled human hearts outside the mall, trying to survive her violent goblin family, and pining after that big, dreamy hobgoblin who just sauntered into town. Each week she describes part of her story to you, another human whose heart she will soon be selling on a stick.
Hopefully this will be a podcast serial which you can subscribe to, as soon as I can figure whether odeo or iTunes is better for hosting this kind of thing. (Do either of them host mp3 files at all?) Got to work out all the logistics.
The reason for this is I noticed that I dictate a lot of notes for stories, and then I neglect to transcribe my verbal notes for a long time, and then I forget where I'm at so I can't make progress with that story. I figured if I could just improvise a story, take that straight dictation and polish it a little to make a podcast, it would be fun and quick and I'd feel less pressure to find optimal word choice, or to have a brilliant hook in the first paragraph, whatever. Just blurt something, cut it off after ten minutes, leave them wanting more in the next episode.
So download that first episode at the link above. It's 5.6 Mb mp3. I'll put up RSS info or whatever later when I straighten it all out. Might use some old Lucky's Radio Theatre shows somewhere down the line, but not until I've done several episodes of Brazen Hearts, Fresh, On Sticks.
http://www.archive.org/download/RobertThomasNorthrupBrazenHeartsFreshOnSticksEpisode1/brazenhearts1__64kbps.mp3
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Latest reply: Feb 28, 2006
Dungeons & Dayjobs
Posted Dec 3, 2005
I'm excited over compiling and self-publishing my first collection of short stories, titled Dungeons & Dayjobs. But if I direct h2g2 readers to a website where they can buy the 170 page, 6 inch by 9 inch paperback, then the URL might be deemed unsuitable for posting on h2g2. Can we compromise? I'll give a link to my website, http://evilbobdayjob.tripod.com , which has a blog and lots of stories and games and essays, and which does not exist solely to promote my book. If you peek at that site looking for a story or essay I wrote, and if you happen across one of the teeny parts that mention my book or how to buy it, then the blame would be all yours. It would be out of my hands sort of, theoretically, not really.
As you might infer from the title, Dungeons & Dayjobs plays around in the areas where fantasy and humor and angst-filled wage-slavery overlap. One of the stories is a novella, one has five chapters and another has three chapters, so I'm not sure how many stories to count that as. Somewhere around 2d6 stories. One of them, "Chicken Fried Love Interest with Cilantro and Asparagus," uses full recipes to express or disguise the ups and downs of a young couple.
Here's a list of the stories:
Trailer of the Temptress
Almost Always, Somebody Lost an Eye
Vampire in The Mountain-Tree
The Wire Tetragrammaton
Chicken Fried Love Interest with Cilantro and Asparagus
My Terrifying, Dry Warrior (five chapters)
Godfella
My Time With The Capitalist Swine
Basqura's Homecoming
Basqura's Horror Story
Basqura's Mystery
Suburban Lanes (novella)
It's not the glorious leap into fame and fortune I had always hoped for, but it's a nice start. If I sell a dozen copies, it will be an improvement over seeing these stories sit in boxes or dusty areas of hard drives where some of them have been hiding a few years.
You may have heard that self-publishing is for suckers. If you buy into that notion, then you're willing to write off people like Tolstoy, Alexandre Dumas, Samuel Clemens, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ernest Hemingway and dozens of others who paid to publish their own works before hitting it big. (That's the pep talk I keep giving myself.) 
So I'm stoked and geeked and really failing to be a good salesman or marketer so far. I need to send out some review copies and really push it on people. I put up flyers on bulletin boards at work, but I caved in and started telling my co-workers I'll get them copies at cost or loan them a copy of it. Should have said FULL PRICE! ACT NOW! But maybe if I get a few cheaper copies circulating, they'll talk about it and increase the word-of-mouth publicity.
If you're curious but not interested in buying it, you can poke around my website and find some of the same stories there for free. Let me know if any of them make you laugh or think or yawn.
Thanks,
Subcom. Deidzoeb
(Robert Thomas Northrup)
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Latest reply: Dec 3, 2005
Name adjustment -- I'll go back to Deidzoeb soon
Posted Jul 24, 2003
I applied to a technical writing job and listed two of my h2g2 Edited Entries as writing samples, the ones about Jackson and Waffle House Restaurant. Lord help me if they poke around and see what else I've written. Hello, ma'am! Really I'm a hard worker in spite of the weird stuff I write in my spare time.
What would I do if I suddenly stopped being underemployed? It would be a whole new feeling. Surely I'll write a big, gnarly essay if/when it happens.
Anyhow, the employer might not recognize that I actually wrote them if they looked up the Jackson and Waffle House entries and found that they had been created by "Subcom. Deidzoeb." No, really, I'm Subcom Deidzoeb!!
I'll put my name back to how it *should* be in a few days if I get no response. Until then, don't tell anybody, okay?
Other entries I need to finish some day:
* Detroit's Dynasty of Radio Adventures (Lone Ranger & Green Hornet)
* Chinese Invasion of Vietnam 1979: Domino Theory shot to hell.
* My stretch of Old US 12.
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Latest reply: Jul 24, 2003
Deidzoeb
Researcher U96220
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