Episode 14: Brad Russell, Earth Toys

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It’s one thing to start a business in order to sell a product, yet another to believe in the product and its benefits. But Brad Russell, the co-owner and operator of Earth Toys with his wife Bree, lives and breathes a whole philosophy of play that seems absent from most places that sell toys.

earth-toys-interior-2016-3In my fifth location interview, I visited Earth Toys, a shop in the middle of Cairns, to talk with Brad about how he and Bree set their business up and how it’s going, but came away not just with that but also a hefty slice of Brad himself.

Brad is a great guy to talk with: Always relaxed, always intelligent and always very insightful. Relax and let this one sink in!

And once you’ve finished this episode, drop in and see Brad when you’re next in the area. You’ll probably leave with something you hadn’t thought about buying before, but with a view on playing – and living – that you’d never considered before.

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Episode 13: Leigh Dall’Osto, Supplemental

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Leigh Dall’Osto is one of my more popular guests, and her story of going from the campaign trail of a local government election to opening a successful fusion of cafe and community centre in Edmonton, on Cairns’ south side, has garnered some interest outside the podcast too.

A few weeks ago I was talking with one of the writers at work about the podcast, and he asked me if I could pen a few words about career changes with Leigh as the sample case. I submittted a draft, and he asked if I could get Leigh to tell me more about that period between when Leigh lost the election and opened the cafe.

Thankfully, Leigh was happy to answer my extra questions over the phone. Thanks to having Leigh on speaker, I was able to record the conversation for quotes in the article – and after I was done, I realised the recording would make a great episode!

So please enjoy the return of the effervescent Leigh Dall’Osto to the Paid to Play Podcast!

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Episode 12: Mur Lafferty, Author and Podcaster

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Mur Lafferty is one of the first podcasters I ever listened to. When I decided to take a crack at writing again, I stumbled across Mur’s podcast I Should Be Writing and downloaded as much of it as I could – which is a lot of episodes. Just recently, Mur recorded her 250th episode – and that’s not counting all the extra episodes she’s done.

I Should Be Writing is for people who want to be authors what I hope my podcast is for people who want to follow their passions. Though she has a strong genre focus, Mur interviews authors who have secured themselves publishing deals for any works, asking them about how they write and how they got published. Not only that, Mur gives all us wannabes a little moral support by talking about her own progress to published authordom.

That’s right; Mur Lafferty is also an author, with two novels (one published and one self-published), a series of novellas and a raft of short stories – not to mention another novel coming out next year via publisher Orbit Books!

But not only is Mur a podcaster, she’s a podcasting professional. On top of I Should Be Writing, Mur is the senior editor of the science fiction short story podcast, Escape Pod (for which she also writes and narrates) and host of the official podcast of UK publisher Angry Robot Books.

So I just had to interview her about how she gets it all done!

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Gavin Lucan, with sword

Episode 11: Gavin Lucan, SFtv Scheduler and Blogger

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Update: At the end of 2013, Foxtel closed SFtv Australia down, making Gavin redundant. He still blogs at his own domain, ShoutyBeardyThing (see the links below).

Don’t let the picture of the medieval gent with the sword fool you; Gavin Lucan is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. I’ve known him since the late nineties, and was frankly a little envious when I found out he’d parlayed his experience in scheduling pay TV channels into a gig at Australia’s branch of the SciFi Channel.

Shortly afterward, I signed up for an e-mail newsletter in which Gav offers wry observations on the week’s events in genre fiction, from books to comics, movies to television, games to conventions, and now SFtv feature that newsletter as a weekly blog on their website!

Given that he’s a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy, my friend Gav is definitely getting paid to play. Join me as I find out how he got there!

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Episode 10: Jesse Kuch, DJ and Entertainment Editor

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Episode Ten! Ten episodes! Ten interviews! Double Digits!

(ahem)

It can be easy at times to dismiss regional cities as Hicksvilles with little going for them culturally. Yet Cairns, with its international airport and major tourism draws like rainforests and the Great Barrier Reef a stone’s throw away, does a damn good job of not just attracting, but also breeding artistic talent.

Jesse Kuch falls within both categories. He exercises his musical creativity as a DJ, a gig that regularly takes him across and outside the country. And as the entertainment editor for the local daily newspaper and the manager of an independent dance music record label, he has a vested interest in keeping his finger on the pulse of the local entertainment scene.

For my fourth location recording, I decided to pack my Behringer Podcastudio up and take it into work, where I interviewed Jesse in the media room. The general quality is improved on my last three location recordings (where I relied on my netbook’s built-in microphone) but there are also a few more pops and other distortions as I learn my way around using the kit on location.

Still, these don’t get in the way of a great interview with a fellow whose enthusiasm for music is almost boundless!

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Ten Guests We Want on the Paid to Play Podcast

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Episode 10 of the Paid to Play Podcast goes live tomorrow. My fledgling podcast will have hit double-digit episodes. That, friends, is pretty freaking awesome!

What’s even more awesome is the thought that I could well keep on going until I hit one hundred episodes. Why not, after all? I’m enjoying my interviews, making new friends of both guests and listeners, learning about audio hardware and editing – who wouldn’t want to keep going?

This relies, though, on my getting at ninety more people on the show. Well, eighty-nine – I already have one more interview recorded.

Who could those eighty-nine people be?

Okay, eighty-nine’s a big number. Let’s just stick with ten for now.

But who could be in that ten?

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Episode 9: Steven Cooke, Elite Aquariums

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It’s fun talking about this podcast, not just because of telling people about the interesting thing I’m doing, but also because of the folks I come across whom I realise would make great guests!

Steven Cooke is a great example. He’s a colleague of mine, and a couple of weeks ago I was telling him about Paid to Play. In response, he started telling me about his own project: Creating and building a design of aquarium that features two tanks linked together by a clear tube. Naturally I had to have him on the show!

This led to my third location recording, which turned out to be in Steve’s office at work during a lunch break. So please listen to this interview with a guy who decided to take a concept he’d had at the back of his mind for six years and turn it into something real!

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Episode 8: Jared A. Sorensen, Game Designer

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It was Australian gamer Steve Darlington’s describing Jared A. Sorensen as the “foetus horribilis” of the tabletop roleplaying game design set that got my attention. From there on it was all downhill as I followed Jared from the web forum RPGnet to The Forge and bought myself a copy of his game InSpectres, still the most fun tabletop roleplaying game I’ve ever played or game mastered (and would love to play or GM again regularly).

I managed to catch Jared on Facebook one Saturday and asked him about interviewing – it turned out he was available right there and then! I connected my recording kit and got a good half hour chat about his design process, his full-time job in game design and how empanadas are key to his upcoming martial takeover of New York City.

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How Frequent Should the Paid to Play Podcast Be?

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There’s something I didn’t mention in my last post about marketing the Paid to Play Podcast, because I hadn’t really thought about it at the time. If I want to offer the Podcast as a vehicle for advertising, whether on the site or within episodes, I need to demonstrate to any advertiser that I have an audience that keeps coming back.

Which, therefore, means I have to give that audience reason to keep coming back on a regular basis. Logically, that reason would be new interviews.

But how often should I be providing those new interviews?

How frequent should the Paid to Play Podcast be?

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Episode 7: Elizabeth Vaughan, Romantic Fantasy Author

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I’m sad to say that some connectivity issues prevented this interview with bestselling romantic fantasy author Elizabeth Vaughan being as good as it deserved to be. The podcast you’ll hear is actually our second attempt at this interview after my call recorder butchered the first take a week before.

This time I made sure to run two recordings simultaneously. While the second one was largely intact, editing it took longer than otherwise, and some of the times I’m speaking you’ll hear some hiss in the background.

But you know you have a quality guest when, after you discover that your recording is stuffed, your guest agrees to come back a week later and do it all again! I must thank Elizabeth for giving of her precious writing time twice over to chat with me.

In this interview, we talk about how Elizabeth was dared to start writing seriously by a friend and how that dare became seven novels (two of which made it into the USA Today bestseller lists) with at least three more on the way. We also discuss Beth’s influences, friends, mentors and motivators, as well as science fiction and fantasy conventions and her love of Dungeons & Dragons.
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