Voices of New Media: J.C. Hutchins - Author of 7th Son

“The President of the United States is dead. He was murdered in the morning sunlight by a four-year-old boy…”
J.C. Hutchins

…And so begins 7^th Son, one of the most entertaining, action packed and well written series you’ll never find in a book store…at least not yet. 7^th Son is the brainchild of author J.C. Hutchins. The reason you won’t find it in a book store is because the author has decided to release the trilogy as a series of episodic podcasts available through his website, www.jchutchins.net, and through Podiobooks.com. Originally conceived and written as a single story, the author has split the tale into three pieces: Decent, Deceit and Destruction. Each of those pieces is split into several episodes containing a chapter or two of the story as a whole, and what a story it is.

Seven seeming strangers are abducted and forced work together in a beyond top-secret government installation to try and save the world from the evil plans set in motion by the shadowy John Alpha. As the seven begin to work together, they start to realize they may be closer to him than they think, but also that time is running out for them, and the rest of the civilized world. They have to find John Alpha and stop him. The story takes you, as the listener, all over the globe in the search for John Alpha and introduces you to seven of the most similar yet amazingly unique characters an audio drama has ever seen. 7^th Son is full of nonstop action and plot twists from its opening minutes and never lets up through its last episodes. In this work of epic scale, Hutchins manages to bring together the best aspects of the thriller genre and mix it together with a political conspiracy liberally seasoned with mad scientist pulp. If it were in print, it would be a book you simply couldn’t put down.

You may be thinking that since this is a podcast and not a big-budget audio production, how good could it be? Well, as I’ve said before, I love audiobooks and I devour them. I’ve probably listened to hundreds of titles so far and 7^th Son ranks as one of the best I’ve heard. J.C. Hutchins, in addition to writing the work, is the voice talent for the 7^th Son podcast. As the reader, he seems to effortlessly manage the difficult task of giving all his characters their own unique voice and not just reading the words he wrote from the page. The podcast is excellently produced by Shawn Bishop of The Dividing Line Broadcast Network, has musical chapter cues and even features its own theme music written by Celldweller. So that chalks up to being entertaining, well written, well read and sounding great. It doesn’t get much better than that.

The podcast and Podiobook versions of J.C. Hutchins novels have thousands of subscribed listeners, figuratively tuning in to each new episode release. Thanks to its own popularity and the seemingly ceaseless promotion by its creator, 7^th Son has been featured both in print and on the web at venues such as Boing Boing, Mac User and the New Times. While that may be impressive, J.C. Hutchins has not only been covered by several New Media outlets, but also by such Old Media mainstays as The New York Times. In addition to that, the peers of the 7^th Son podcast have given it their own brand of recognition and praise, as it has twice been nominated for a Parsec Award and twice won at the Podcast Peer Awards.

As if all of that weren’t enough, J.C. Hutchins’ 7^th Son has taken on a bit of a life of its own at the author’s website. The podcast novel has spawned both the Ministry of Propaganda and the Beta Clone Army of fans. The Ministry of Propaganda is the equivalent of a Street Team for the novels. In a fun twist on the traditional Street Team, members are issued promotional challenges by Natasha, the voice of the Ministry of Propaganda. By completing these challenges, they then have the opportunity to win actual 7^th Son swag and some have even won the opportunity to appear on the 7^th Son podcast and relate “The Story So Far…” In doing so, they find themselves in rather distinguished company as this feature of the podcast has been read by actors and authors with names like Nathan Fillion, Richard Hatch, Ron Glass, Alan Dean Foster, Nick Sagan and Kevin J. Anderson just to name a few. The Beta Clone Army is made up of fans who have thrown their support behind J.C. Hutchins by pointing their browsers over to Geeklabel.com and purchasing a 7^th Son themed shirt…especially the particularly fashionable Beta Clone # shirt where fans are issued their own unique Beta Clone ID number. The new Beta Clones can then submit a picture of themselves wearing the shirt and have the image posted on the Beta Clone Army webpage, and often times named in the podcast itself.

So that’s 7^th Son, a brilliant little idea that has found a devoted audience through unconventional means. J.C. Hutchins has the amazing gifts of being able to write a great story and find it a market in any way, and in as may ways as possible. If you’re a fan of a great story, I can’t recommend the 7^th Son trilogy enough. The same goes for if you’re looking for a great podcast or just something to take up space on your iPod and kill a half and hour here and there. The series is worth a listen and J.C. Hutchins is worth keeping an eye on because it won’t be long before you’re picking up his next novel in the bookstore of your choice.

PS – If you were wondering how I knew so much about the Beta Clone Army…I’m Beta Clone #185.

Podcasting 101 - Why aren't you listening?

OK kids, as you may or may not know Onthepod.net was originally conceived as a place for music reviews…heck it even says so right underneath the title. If you’ve been visiting for a while, you know that I've occasionally ventured away from my iPod to the Movies or even those barbaric book things. However, as I’m sure you'll be surprised to learn, because Onthepod.net is rather small, record labels don’t send me free music to review. The good news is that I’m a junkie when it comes to anything I consider to be good music but the bad news is that I’ve only got so much disposable income to play with. I will admit to trying to find a more cost effective manner in which to procure new music, but as my willingness to fund the Russian mob’s music download sites has waned and the though of paying the RIAA $222,000 for the privilege of reviewing their artists now seems like less of a perk than it once did, I find myself with less and less new music to listen to and, in turn, review. Not to mention there just hasn’t been a whole lot of new music released lately that I even like.

So with that little diatribe out of the way, I can continue on to the point. As my previous non-Twittered post states, the well ran dry and I was left with not a lot to listen to. As such, I found myself revisiting one of my own older posts that ran along the lines of Podcasting. What is podcasting you ask? Well podcasting is more of an idea than a physical thing. The idea being that if you’ve got something to say, a microphone, a computer and an internet connection you can reach as many people with your words as will listen. It puts the power in the hands of an individual with an idea and takes it away from the major broadcasters who believe that said idea doesn’t fit into their format. Technically, I guess that a podcast is a thing too, in that at the end of the day you have an audio file that you can post and others can download and listen to at their leisure. If you haven’t guessed, I’m a convert…and I’m not the only one.

As a self-admitted liberal geek, I listen to a lot of National Public Radio. As it turns out, NPR has fully embraced the idea of podcasting their broadcast shows in order to have them reach a wider audience. Want an example? Well, you’re going to get one anyway so you might as well just go with it. Lets say you, like myself, like to listen to NPR on Saturdays. You start your mornings with Car Talk and Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and listen all the way through A Prairie Home Companion on Saturday night. Up North, you used to listen to Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know but your new local Charlotte NPR affiliate doesn’t carry it. What do you do? You can now hop online or into iTunes and subscribe to the Whad’Ya Know podcast which will let you download an hour of the show, usually a day after it airs every weekend. Want to know the best part, other than you can now listen to it whenever and wherever you want? It’s FREE, 100% abso-stinking-lutely free! Keep in mind that this example is for a more mainstream show that’s already “out there” in the public consciousness, not to mention that all the other NPR shows I mentioned are also available as free podcasts. So you say NPR is to mainstream, too right or too left leaning for your particular political persuasion? That’s fine, because there’s so much more that’s available if you just look. Political, entertainment, social commentary, educational; it’s all out there just waiting for you to find it.

As I must have mentioned about a million times here at On the pod.net, I love audiobooks. In the past, I’ve always pimped Audible.com as a great source for them…and it is, but it’s a subscription service that you have to pay for. I recently found a link through a post on either Gizmodo or Lifehacker (or both actually) that led me to www.podiobooks.com. Podiobooks.com offers novel length works, and short stories for that matter, by lesser-known or unknown authors in a serialized podcast format. If you find a story you like, you can subscribe to it in iTunes or your own favorite feedcatcher. If the story is new, you’ll get a new podcast episode ever time one is release. If the story you pick has been completed, you can choose to download the entire thing at once or episode by episode. You, again, also have the opportunity to listen at your leisure and it’s completely free.

I just want to go on record as saying, “I Love This Site!”

Podiobooks.com does ask, and quite fairly so I might add, that if you like what you’re hearing you consider making a small monetary donation, though I’m sure a large donation wouldn’t be thrown out of bed. Podiobooks does get something for the trouble of hosting the book on their website, but the author gets the majority of any donation you may make. It’s really a win, win situation in that you don’t have to drop $50.00 on an audio book you may or may not like, and if you do like it you can shoot the author a little something, at the very least an email, to let them know you liked what you heard.

I've managed to gleefully work my way through several of the available titles in recent weeks and can report that just as in music, there are some outstanding undiscovered writers in the literary world. Two names that just scream out to be mentioned are Mur Lafferty and J.C. Hutchins, both of whom have several titles available on www.podiobooks.com. Mur Lafferty has written a continuing series by the name of Heaven. There are three seasons of Heaven out now (Heaven, Hell & Earth) with a fourth on the way. J.C. Hutchins has penned a trilogy entitled 7th Son and is currently in the process of wrapping up his podcast of the final volume, Destruction. His previous two books being Descent and Deceit. I was so impressed with their work that I’m planning a few special pieces in the near future to talk about them specifically, so keep checking back.

So if you’ve been wondering what’s new On the pod, after a bit of searching, it ends up being podcasts and Podiobooks by some really talented writers. I urge you to check out www.podiobooks.com, www.murlafferty.com and www.jchutchins.net just to get a taste of what’s available to you out there. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.