Jeremiah Tolbert

My story from Polyphony 4,  and one of my ear­li­est suc­cess­ful attempts at the short story (although your def­i­n­i­tion of suc­cess may vary from mine in this case), is now live as a pod­cast on PodCastle.  You can give it a lis­ten over on the PodCastle site, but if you’re into fan­tasy, you should sub­scribe to their feed.  The team over there does good work.  With this pub­li­ca­tion, I have one story left to appear on a podcast–I believe my story “Captain Bl00d’s B00ty” is sup­posed to appear on Starship Sofa at some point, although I haven’t heard any­thing about when.

Special thanks to Jay Lake and Deborah Layne for pur­chas­ing the story orig­i­nally, and again, thank you to the PodCastle staff, Anne, Rachel, et al for pick­ing it for the ‘cast.  I am grateful.

The story, by the way is inspired by the Orbital song of the same name.  I was bang­ing my head against the wall try­ing to come up with a story to write when the song came up in Winamp.  I saw the title and thought, hey, I could write a story about that Girl.    I don’t the story reads like the song, sadly.  I would be awe­some if I could make sto­ries read like songs.

I wrote a series of sto­ries with titles iden­ti­cal to songs.  Another one was Louis Jordan’s “A Chicken Ain’t Nothing But a Bird” about a south­ern family’s rooster named Scratch that was actu­ally a cock­a­trice.  Never went any­where with that one. I’m a huge fan of Lois Jordan’s music.  “Beans and Cornbread” is a clas­sic.  Never wrote a story with that title although I am tempted should I find the time.  I even have an idea of what it’s about.  Coincidentally, corn­bread is one of my favorite foods.  Nothing like some fried cat­fish and corn­bread hush pup­pies on a sum­mer night. Remind me to tell you how I feel about fish frys.  As in, ever­body get­ting together and fry­ing up a buck­et­load of fish, not some new Burger King perversity.