News — 2022

Announcing with great pleasure and happiness that with the first of our new episodes with Pierre Estève, my podcast What Now with Simo has just passed 10,000 listens on audio streaming alone. Counting also YouTube listens, this milestone was already passed a little while ago, but now, on Christmas Eve of 2022, the official count on my podcast hosting site for audio-only listens has gone past 10,000. With thanks and appreciation to everyone who has listened — a perfect Christmas gift!

Released the first of the two new episodes of What Now with Simo featuring Pierre Estève. As with our earlier episodes in 2021 (see the Podcast page), all the music in these episodes was composed and performed by Pierre and can be bought on Bandcamp.

Remastered every episode of my podcast and compiled each season so far into YouTube videos (playlist link), giving the early episodes (1.1 to 3.9) the lo-fi treatment they needed — to match my earliest intention of having those episodes be like something you heard from a single-speaker radio, old tape recordings, or even a telephone, perhaps late at night — and the later episodes the best hi-fi stereo quality they called for.

Happily announcing two new episodes of What Now with Simo featuring Pierre Estève and his fantastic music. The background image for this banner is from his beautiful and inspiring Flowers of Change project. You can find our earlier, 2021 episodes here: Part 1 and Part 2.

Published the season 4 finale of my podcast: episode 4.16: “Creative Basics, Visions, and Fog”. In it you can you also hear in fragments parts of an ongoing composition of mine called “In the Fog, Deep”.

Published my first collection of poetry, Land of Youth & Beauty: Early Poems, as a hardcover and an ebook. See the Writing page for more.

Updated the album with two new tracks:

1) My reading of the H. P. Lovecraft poem “The Garden”, as featured in the 2nd anniversary episode of my podcast What Now with Simo. The reading follows the music-only track “Lovecraft’s Garden”.

2) An “Extended Peaks Version” as the last track of the album. This version includes all the repeats as in the episode itself, whereas the album’s opening track, the “Single Peaks Version”, is a condensed take without repeats.

I also made one tweak: shortened the silence at the end of the first track. Other than these changes, everything else remains the same, including the price of the full album. Here is the album link again.

For the amended album blurb, see the Music I page.

Released my first album of music, Passages Dark and Light, on Bandcamp. The album blurb reads:

“Passages Dark and Light is my first album. It consists of the full soundtrack of the 2nd anniversary episode (4.9) of my podcast What Now with Simo.

For this episode I created a more serene version of the theme tune as well as the extended piece ‘Passages Dark and Light’ made up of peaks and valleys. The first track presents a version of this with just the peaks without the meditative guitar valleys.

‘Lovecraft’s Garden’ accompanies in that anniversary episode my reading of H. P. Lovecraft’s poem ‘The Garden’.”

That 2nd anniversary episode is available for example here on the hosting site rss.com.

I recently decided to start uploading all future and earlier episodes of my podcast also to my YouTube channel. This process will take a long time, but the latest two are already up, including the extra long and extra musical 4.9: “2nd Anniversary Special”.

That one is also the first of my episodes to be recorded with my new Shure Super 55 Deluxe microphone, and my voice has never been captured better. If you have a smart TV with a good sound system and capable of accessing the YouTube app, that’s one of the best ways to experience the episodes.

Edit, 25 October 2024: Since this time I’ve discontinued and removed these individual uploads to my YouTube channel. They would have overrun all my other shares there.

The presentation video for my collection of short stories is now viewable in various places, including this site, my YouTube channel, and the Amazon product page for the hardcover (scroll down there to find it).

Published my first collection of short fiction, At Dawn: Early Short Stories, as a hardcover, a paperback, and an ebook. See the Writing page for more.