Well, yesterday I received in a rough draft of the TZ radio drama “A Piano in the House” starring Michael York. I was completely blown away by it, and by Michael’s performance, and I can’t wait for all of you to hear it. I had only minor tweaks to it and those have already been made so I will get the finished show on Monday. Michael York plays an evil character, which is so completely different from his real identity. I was with Michael two weeks ago in Los Angeles, interviewing him for the “behind the scenes” DVD for The Word of Promise Old Testament audio Bible I am producing. As with the New Testament, Michael is the Narrator and he is absolutely amazing. In “A Piano in the House” he plays a sinister theater critic who suspects his young wife is cheating on him and finds out for sure when an old player piano is a sort of truth serum to those who hear it play. I believe “A Piano in the House” is scheduled to air the week of October 20th so please listen for it.

I’ve been working night and day on the Youth edition of The Word of Promise New Testament Audio Bible. It hits store shelves mid October and I hope you’ll pick up a copy. It will be available in a 20-CD set (with a behind the scenes DVD) or in an MP3 version. All of the Word of Promise products are available at www.thewordofpromise.com or at Amazon and at major retail chains and all Christian bookstores.

We’re hard at work on a radio station marketing kit for Mystery Theater, the series that we’re going to launch next year. This kit will be mailed out to about 3,500 radio stations in the hope that they’ll want to carry the series. If you missed my previous log, Mystery Theater will be a 2-hour per night showcase for the best in radio: mystery, detective and science-fiction programming. The series will be aired on most stations Monday through Friday and within each 2-hour show, we’ll present 3 half-hour radio dramas. I’m negotiating with a major Hollywood personality right now to star in the series – I hope to be able to announce who that star is, very soon.

Last week I received the first two Mike Hammer radio dramas “Oil & Water” and "Dangerous Days” in from Cerny American Creative. Each episode runs approximately 90 minutes. Stacy Keach reprises his role as the hard-boiled detective created by Mickey Spillane and he doesn’t miss a beat. I had a few more tweaks for the geniuses at Cerny but what I’ve heard is outstanding. Both episodes will be sold in a 3-CD set called “The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer.” It will be released by Blackstone audio in stores this November. They won’t be broadcast on radio anytime soon and the retail price for both shows on 3-CDs is only $19.99 so I hope you’ll give this a try. The future of the series will depend on how well this first double-feature set sells, so I’m giving a shout out to the Hammer fans for some help : )

Well, that’s all for this time, see you next week for more NEWS FROM THE ZONE!

Well, I mentioned last week in my blog that I would have a very special announcement this week -- so here it is: I will be launching a new, nationally syndicated radio series beginning January 5th, 2009 called “The Mystery Theater.” It will be two hours each night, Monday through Friday (10 hours per week) of mystery, detective and science—fiction radio programming originally broadcast from the 1940s through today. It will be hosted by a very well known Hollywood celebrity. The scripts for the host will be written by acclaimed mystery writer Dennis Etchison, who also is the script supervisor for the TZ series. "The Mystery Theater" will have a dedicated website at mysterytheater.com (which will also launch in January 2009). The website will offer thousands of radio shows for sale and/or download. Each offering will be 2 half-hour radio episodes. The download price will be 99 cents or you can buy the 2 shows on CD for $1.99.

A top priority with this new series will be “sound quality” – we will only be broadcasting and selling radio episodes of the very highest sound quality – no radio episodes will be broadcast or sold on our site that are not absolutely top quality sound. For example, there is a terrific mystery series from radio’s golden age titled “Quiet Please.” It was written and produced by Wyllis Cooper, the man who originated “Lights Out!” There were more than 100 episodes produced but I’ve only found a handful of episodes from the series that would meet the sound quality standards to be aired on “The Mystery Theater” or sold at its site.

What you will hear each night on “The Mystery Theater” will be radio episodes of mystery, detective and sci-fi that are “direct from the master recordings” (or episodes very close to the source material) and then digitally remastered. Show's that are not excellent sound quality simply won’t make the cut.

Over my 30-year career in the radio business, I have made wonderful and long-lasting relationships with individuals and companies that not only own rights to the radio episodes, but have the master recordings. Each night you’ll hear 3 half-hour episodes on “The Mystery Theater.” Radio episodes like: I Love a Mystery, Boston Blackie, Dragnet, The Hermit’s Cave, Dangerous Assignment, Adventures By Morse, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, The Adventures of Sam Spade, Nightbeat, X Minus One, The Adventures of Nero Wolfe, Sherlock Holmes, The Weird Circle, Dimension X, Philo Vance, Detective, The Fat Man, The Weird Circle, Mystery Is My Hobby, Mr. District Attorney, Mystery In the Air, I Love Adventure, The Thin Man, Casey, Crime Photographer, Zero Hour (hosted by Rod Serling), The Mutual Radio Theatre (hosted by Vincent Price), The Adventures of the Falcon, Murder At Midnight, Ellery Queen, Mike Hammer, Detective, Bold Venture, The Clock, The Hall of Fantasy, True Detective Mysteries, Molle’ Mystery Theater, Michael Shayne, Detective, Mr. & Mrs. North, and many others.

I expect to launch the series on 100 stations by Monday January 5th, 2009 and by year three to have it placed on as many as 300 stations. You will be able to find a local station by checking the “tune-in” section of the mysterytheater.com website. And I can’t wait to share with you who the host will be! Hopefully I’ll be able to reveal that to you very soon.

Thanks for checking in, I’ll be back with you with more news on this series; "The New Adventures of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer" and of course TZ, next week.

So sorry about not writing a blog in almost a month. A project that I've been working on for the past year has a deadline of next week and I' ve been completely fixated on finalizing it. It's The Word of Promise Next Generation New Testament audio Bible.

About a year ago I was having dinner with Wayne Hastings, Senior VP of Thomas Nelson, Inc. and he shared with me a startling statistic about how young people are moving away from the Bible more and more each year. An idea hatched during that dinner of creating a youth-oriented audio Bible with teen and young adult stars playing the major roles. The hope is that if youths of today had access to an audio Bible with stars they look up to, it might help get them back to the Bible. Wayne liked the idea and so I collaborated with Dan Lynch of the family division of Thomas Nelson, Inc. to set out to making it a reality. Like the current New Testament that I produced with Jim Caviezel as "Jesus" www.wordofpromise.com this youth New Testament audio has over 100 actors, music and sound effects to create a "you are there" feel.

Now a year later, we've just about completed production on it and I'm very pleased and proud of it. The stars include: Cody Linley as Jesus, AnnaSophia Robb as Mary Magdalene, Corbin Bleu as Peter, Marshall Allman as Paul, Luke Benward as Mark, Tahj Mowry as John, Charlie Stewart as Luke, Emily Osment as Mary, Mother of Jesus, Andrew Lawrence as Matthew, Alyson Stoner as Martha, Jordin Sparks as Elizabeth, Sean Astin as our Narrator, with Martin Jarvis as the Voice of God.

It's 25 hours on 20 CDs as well as an MP3 version. I'm very excited about this project and its impact I pray it will have on today's teens and tweens. It releases this coming October in stores everywhere.

On the TZ front, I've received several new scripts in from our very talented pool of writers. I'm looking forward to reading them once I get past my deadline of September 10th to turn in the Next Generation audio Bible. I'm looking forward to receiving a rough draft of the TZ episode "A Piano In the House" which stars the great Michael York. That should be here any day. Then after that will be "The Four of Us Are Dying" with my good friend Eric Bogosian. Next week I'm going to have a very special announcement (I promise not to be late with my next blog) so be sure to log on for it.

Thanks everyone. Talk to you next week.