Many of you have asked me what has happened to the Sometimes podcast and the original Hall of Mirrors - and where, if anywhere, can you find them. Well, here's what happened ...

A few months ago, Mevio.com, a site once dedicated mostly to podcasts, became a site mostly dedicated to video. They dumped all but their own flagship podcasts and left hundreds, maybe thousands of podcasters, without show hosting. There was no warning, no opportunity to pay, the shows were just deleted.

This happened to me. I lost my original Hall of Mirrors podcast - along with the associated itunes reviews (Mevio supplied iTunes, so when that went, its iTunes feed went too). That was the really galling thing - I lost at least 500 5-star reviews . I also lost Sometimes, Miss Wong, Someday We'll Meet Again, The Bonus Track, and the Secret Room edition of Hall of Mirrors' Wet Velvet. So I lost a lot - five years of work gone in a flash.

I couldn't start re-posting these deleted shows in my main feed because U&F was still being podcast, and the news on the Sometimes and Hall of Mirrors was years out of date - and this is the reason I still can't re-post them in my feed; news from 2007 is not news, it's olds.

Podiobooks was also affected by the Mevio deletions because the Mevio Hall of Mirrors directly supplied Podiobooks, so when Mevio went, so did Podiobooks' HoM episodes (along with another 400 or 500 itunes reviews ). To fix the problem with Podiobooks, I re-edited and re-uploaded the Hall of Mirrors shows; I shortened the original intros, cut off the old news and chit-chat from 2007 / 2008, and I also included Wet Velvet into Hall of Mirrors Vol 2. So all in all, that was no bad thing ... But what if you liked the original intros? Liked the chit-chat? Even liked to hear the old promos? Well, thanks to Archive.org, I've now been able to re-upload those old Hall of Mirrors episodes as they were originally podcast. And not only has the original Hall of Mirrors found a new home, but also Sometimes episodes 1-16, including The Bonus Track episodes from 2007. Hot diggedy dog! My whole archive is now at Archive.org. So if you want to catch up on everything you may have missed between 2007 and 2011, now you can

If all this sounds incredibly confusing, the short version is this:

Click here for the original Hall of Mirrors Podcast

Click here for Mike Bennett Sometimes Episodes 1-16 (and the Bonus Track episodes).

Huzzah!

Hello Listeners. Because I suspect many people might be popping back here regularly to check for the arrival of Episode 45, I thought it only polite to give you an update.

Episode 45 is HUGE. It's easily the biggest podcast episode I've ever produced; the story content alone runs to over an hour, making it double the length of an average episode. I'm still working on the story audio content - making sure every moment of recording is absolutely the best it can be. But once that's done, I have some important notices to write about and record for the outro which relate to the future of Underwood and Flinch - and details of a forthcoming project that will involve you (I hope) in that future. There will also be a bumper Planet U&F because lots of you wanted to get in at the last minute before U&F ends (no more recordings, please - we're completely full up!)

This massive workload is (understandably) taking a long time to produce, but add to this the fact that next week, my wife and are moving apartment again! (3rd time since U&F started) So there'll be a lot of packing up and trucking about. And then, the week after that, I'll be offline.

So, while I hope to get the episode live next week (in between packing and moving), I can't guarantee it. So it may be another two weeks before the episode goes live. I know that has you wailing and punching the computer screen, but console yourself with the knowledge that when it does come, it's double the size of a normal episode, so if you have to wait double the length of time, the pay off is proportionate.

I could, of course, rush it ... but then the episode would be cr*p, so rushing it would be a really stupid thing to do.

Have patience, people. It'll be worth the wait

Since Mevio (website that used to house a lot of my podcasts) went and dumped all my (and everybody else's) shows, my poetry podcast, Miss Wong, Someday, We'll Meet Again has been offline. However, now, thanks to listener, Justin Elsdon, who kindly sent me his copies of the podcast (since I didn't have any because Mevio was my backup) I've been able to re-post all the episodes I've recorded for the podcast so far. Yay! Many thanks to Justin. You can listen or download the episodes from here.

David, Damo and Miguel arrive at Sergei's club in Malaga, looking for trouble - and finding it

Click the pic to hit the MP3

Mike's page at Smashwords - get free e-books

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to offer yet another FREE ebook from the Hall of Mirrors collection. This time it's "Salvation", a story of Hell and damnation that was originally podcast in 2008. This edition comes with awesomely Hell-tastic artwork by M.J. Hahn of Bellefaire Podcast fame.

I'm giving it to you at Smashwords and making it available for all e-reader formats. The only thing I ask in return is that you leave some stars and maybe a few kind words at the Smashwords page. Oh, and if you're a regular Smashwords user, I'd be very grateful if you could "favorite" me on my author page. It all makes me and my books more attractive to potential new readers / listeners, which is the method behind my big giveaway madness. I thank you warmly in advance

(Update Feb 12th: Salvation is now also available at Wattpad.com)