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.
