I've started a project to read all of my stories aloud and release them as free MP3s, to be downloaded and traded at will. I love -- love -- audiobooks. I'm especially partial to unabridged audiobooks that are read by their authors. Sure, writers aren't trained readers, but who's better suited to interpret a story than its author?
(Which is not to say that if some kickass actor-type wanted to do a reading of one of my stories that I'd turn up my nose. I've been infinitely jealous of Johnathan Lethem, for example, ever since Steve Buscemi recorded a reading of his Motherless Brooklyn.)
I've just finished recording my first, a reading of "To Market, To Market, the Branding of Billy Bailey," a story that ran in the British sf zine Interzone last Semptember. I used the built-in mic on my iBook2 and a shareware app called SoundStudio to record the track, and Apple's iTunes to convert the resulting file to an MP3.
I'm pretty happy with how it worked out. Let me know what you think of it.
License
The MP3 files on this page are copyright 2001 by Codoco, Inc., the Cory Doctorow Corporation. Anyone may download and noncommercially redistribute these files, provided that the files and their metadata remain intact. If you want to charge money for distributing these files, please email me to set up terms.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Chapter 6
Forthcoming from Tor Books, Fall 2002
From a reading at the SXSW festival in Austin, TX.
I thought I lived for fun, but I didn't have anything on Zed. She only talked when honking and whistling and grabbing and kissing wouldn't do, and routinely slapped upgrades into herself on the basis of any whim that crossed her mind, like when she resolved to do a spacewalk bareskinned and spent the afternoon getting tin-plated and iron-lunged.I fell in love with her a hundred times a day, and wanted to strangle her twice as often. She stayed on her spacewalk for a couple of days, floating around the bubble, making crazy faces at its mirrored exterior. She had no way of knowing if I was inside, but she assumed that I was watching. Or maybe she didn't, and she was making faces for anyone's benefit.
But then she came back through the lock, strange and wordless and her eyes full of the stars she'd seen and her metallic skin cool with the breath of empty space, and she led me a merry game of tag through the station, the mess hall where we skidded sloppy through a wobbly ovoid of rice pudding, the greenhouses where she burrowed like a gopher and shinnied like a monkey, the living quarters and bubbles as we interrupted a thousand acts of coitus.
To Market, to Market, The Branding of Billy Bailey
Originally published in Interzone, September 2000
Hormones. They were the problem.
Billy Bailey was the finest heel the sixth grade had ever seen -- a true artisan who kept his brand pure and unsullied, picking and managing his strategic alliances with the utmost care and acumen. He'd dumped BanginBumpin Fireworks (a division of The Shanghai Novelty Company, Ltd.) in the _fourth_ grade, fer chrissakes. Their ladyfingers were too small to bother with; their M-80s were so big that you'd have to be a lunatic to go near them.But sixth grade was the Year of the Hormone at Pepsi Elementary. Boys who'd been babyfaces since kindergarten suddenly sprouted acne, pubic hair, and an uncontrollable urge to impress girls. Their weak brands were no match for the onslaught of -osterones and -ogens that flooded their brains, and in short order they found themselves switching over to heel.
As a result, the sixth grade was experiencing a heel glut. Last year's Little Lord Fauntleroys were now busy snapping bras, dropping textbooks, cracking grading computers, and blowing up the girls' toilets.
Hormones. They made Billy want to puke.
More stories to come!