The Raven's Writing Desk - Jan '08

The Twelve Trek Days of Christmas project was stunningly tiring but personally empowering! It stretched my conception of what I was capable of. Producing the podBooks and being involved with the Podcasts was fascinating stuff! However, to some extent I was on the outside looking in. I was writing about podcasts and organising other people to do the podbooks and it made me wonder if I had it in me to be a creator, to produce a podcast or perform in a PodBook myself?


Never being one to let an opportunity to go to waste, I will now dip my big, hairy toe into the cold waters of podcasting with the first production from the House of L'Stok, "Acrux 0801". It's not a review or a critique - no, no, no, that's way too easy! I have never in my life given anything but constructive criticism but I can count on one hand the number of people who have been able to accept critique of their work so I gave up giving critique long ago. I now leave that to people with thicker skins and a higher regard for their own opinion.

No, I see myself as a commentator and citizen reporter of Star Trek fan productions - Whether I am a successful one or not is up to you, oh hypothetical reader. Each episode I'll put the spotlight on a different fan production, I've picked New Voyages to get the ball rolling because quite frankly my catch-up research after being away from things for a couple of months has given me so much new info on them that I can fill an episode just with their news! You'll have to excuse my "bare-bones" coverage of other productions but I'll be working on getting a full coverage up next month.
So, what's this about 'adventures in multimedia' anyway? Podcasts have been around for ages! The idea of a PodBook is not new either, PodioBooks - an institution in itself! - have had the facility to subscribe to a feed of a book for years. However PodioBooks is all original content, whereas there is a whole world of fan fiction out there, some of it very good, that deserves to be distributed in an audio format.

Keep your eye on this space for the first of a new PodBook series ...