stories

Trick or Treat: More Free Audio Short Stories

October 29, 2010 By heather Leave a Comment

So unlike the other free audio short stories I shared with you last month, these free audio short stories are authored by none other than yours truly!

Can you taste the excitement?

Just in time for a Halloween treat, you can download four of my published short stories. And–if you can believe your luck–you don’t even have to smell my feet. How’s that for a good deal?

But wait! There’s more!

Yes, these particular short stories are narrated by one of the foremost emerging voices in America.

Mine.

I selected four of the short stories I’ve had published over the past couple of years, recorded them with my own lovely voice, and made them available on NoiseTrade.

Commercial break: for those of you unfamiliar with NoiseTrade–NoiseTrade is a place to discover great musicians (and, in this case, storytellers). You can download the music (um, short stories) by either (1) paying however much you choose from $1 to $100 or (2) sharing the artist with friends via Facebook, Twitter, or email. Or some combination of both. You can also go back and tip the artist if you’ve listened and think, hey, this is good stuff–this artist needs to be paid some of my hard-earned bucks so they can keep doing what they’re doing. I’ve discovered some of my faves through NoiseTrade–Katie Herzig, Justin Caldwell, Willowfair, for example. And some old faves, like Sandra McCracken, Derek Webb, and Caedmon’s Call also have music up there.

Back to me. Because today, it’s all about me. NoiseTrade was created for musicians. Technically, I am a musician, even if I’m not using NoiseTrade for my music at this time. Potato, potato. NoiseTrade, I take your offerings and bend them according to my will.

A note about the short stories I selected:

"Ash Wednesday" (originally published in Ruminate Magazine): Sarah watches her house sink into the flames, but rather than panic, and old desire to run away takes hold.

A glimpse: "Ash slid down the sky like stars on a midnight stroll. It streaked her arms and pajamas. She turned up her face to it, licked the flakes like raindrops, rubbed them into the skin of her face like moisturizer."

"Dies Irae" (originally published in Generate Magazine): Veronica, an actress and aspiring playwright, contemplates her demise as she takes a job of web coordinator at a lawyer’s office.

A glimpse: "When I met her, I was playing a part at the Addison Water Tower Theater. My biggest gig yet. Or my biggest venue, I should say. I had exactly nine lines in four scenes in an experimental play called Going in Circles. I also had two scenes that I mimed. I painted my face white and everything."

"The Audition" (originally published in Relief Journal): Greta has one last chance at a brilliant performance that will pull her from her suburban existence into the world of "real music"–an audition for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

A glimpse: "The right thing to do would be to keep the car running, leave the seat belt strapped, back out of the parking spot, and go home. Make a plan, like Terry said, and settle down. Plenty of things to do, he said, like play for church orchestras or teach music in preschools. Or die in the mire of mediocrity, I added. He didn’t appreciate that comment. He’s tired of living on the fringe of my dreams. Let’s make a new life together, Terry said like life is a Carpenters’ song."

Want to know a secret? This story was inspired by the myth of Eurydice and Orpheus.

"Matt and Marnie, Sittin’ in the Tree, or Something Like That" (originally published in Infuze Magazine): Feeling washed out and less than womanly after her husband left her for another woman, Marnie, mother of three, ventures out on her first date since junior high. This piece comes from my novel, 50 Things to Do Before I Turn 30, which won the 2008 Genesis Award in Women’s Fiction (sponsored by ACFW).

A glimpse: "To be honest, I stink at this chit-chat stuff. I never know what to say, so we mostly drive in silence. I make a few astute comments about his car, like, "So you drive a Toyota," which then infers the follow-up question, "Do you like it?" Astounding conversation, really. Should have been recorded for posterity’s sake."

So that’s that. Do you think it would help if I wrote a jingle?

Filed Under: audio books, short stories, stories, writing

Curious Question of the Day

October 28, 2010 By heather 2 Comments

What makes a story succeed or fail for you? Does it succeed when it affirms your beliefs? Shows you a different viewpoint? Gives you a new glimpse into an old viewpoint? Resonate with your struggles? Gives you a character to love? Has a happy ending? Teaches a lesson? Demonstrates a point? Explores a theme openly (with no answers at the end)? Offers tentative answers at the end?

How does all this work with plot, character development, truth, and beauty?

I guess I just want to know what makes you like a story, what makes you say, "Yes, this story works" (or "No, this story doesn’t work").

Filed Under: stories, writing

Bits and Pieces

May 13, 2010 By heather 5 Comments

Sometimes a line from a book or story makes me laugh out loud. (This can be embarrassing if I’m running while listening to an audio book.)

I’ll show you what I mean.

There’s this one, from "The Cheapjack," a short story by Frank O’Connor:

"Now, Carmody was a conceited young man who thought that everything about himself was of such importance that it had to be recorded for the benefit of posterity."

What would Frank O’Connor say about our blogging, twittering world?

Or this one, from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins:

"My daughter Penelope has just looked over my shoulder to see what I have done so far. She remarks that it is beautifully written, and every word of it true. But she points out one objection. She says what I have done so far isn’t in the least what I was wanted to do. I am asked to tell the story of the Diamond, and, instead of that, I have been telling the story of my own self. Curious, and quite beyond me to account for. I wonder whether the gentlemen who make a business and a living out of writing books ever find their own selves getting in the way of their subjects like me. If they do I can feel for them. In the mean time, here is another false start. What’s to be done now? Nothing that I know of, except for you to keep your temper and for me to begin it all over again for the third time.

"The question of how I am to start the story properly I have tried to settle in two ways. First, by scratching my head, which led to nothing. Second, by consulting my daughter Penelope, which has resulted in an entirely new idea."

What would an editor say to a beginning like that? Also, I’d like to answer the gentleman’s question: yes, we who make a living telling stories often find our own selves getting in the way of our subjects.

Then there’s this tidbit from the poem "Change" by Louis Jenkins:

"It’s more difficult nowadays to deal with
the speed of change, disturbing to suddenly find
yourself brushing your teeth with what appears
to be a flashlight."

That elicited a good belly laugh.

Filed Under: books, stories

"I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany."

April 15, 2009 By heather 8 Comments

I love a good movie. I love the story. I love the artistic interplay of the writing, directing, acting, sets, costumes, music. I love reclining in that chair in the movie theater and watching it all unfold in two hours.

But I love books more. In movies, time speeds up, but in books, time slows. You have to commit to a book. If it’s a bad book, you lose more than two hours of your life. But if it’s a good book, you’ve immersed yourself more thoroughly in its characters and stories. It’s not a quick dip in the pool. By the time you’ve come to the end of the book, your fingers and toes are like prunes from the water.

The characters get under your skin. They become part of your life for more than two hours but for days, possibly. And because of this, they stay part of you.

HALLATROW, UNITED KINGDOM - DECEMBER 12: Book...

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Taking a movie back to Blockbuster is humdrum. Ho, hum, I think. Exchange this one for a new one. Out with the old; in with the new.

Taking a book back to the library tears a piece of me out and leaves it on the shelf with the book, smashed between pages 112 and 113. I mourn when I come to the end of a book. And I continue to have conversations with the characters. Anne, who shall we pretend to be today? Sully, how’s that knee doing? Tell you what, let’s run up to Rosy’s for a drink and see if that helps. Recently, I introduced Rebecca and Lauren, and though both are quiet, they’ve developed quite a friendship.

Movies draw me in, it’s true. I laugh. I cry. I get involved. And my favorite movies, I watch over and over again, and that process makes me part of it.

But I enter into a book on the first reading. I don’t easily move on to the next. I can’t say, "Oh, that was nice. What’s next?"

Movies make me think. They show me different perspectives. Or make me think about old perspectives in fresh ways.

But books shape who I am.

Title quote from Anchorman.

Filed Under: books, characters, movies, stories, storytelling

Tension and Release

August 13, 2007 By heather Leave a Comment

My piano teacher used to say this over and over and over again until
I could feel the tension and release in my shoulders. Tension and
release. It’s what music is built on. You can’t have the resolving
chord without that on-the-edge-of-your-seat V7 chord (although perhaps
Debussy would disagree, but even he has tension and release, and often
in the V7-I sense, so we won’t go there). It crosses boundaries into
every genre, whether a big Berlioz piece or Wagnerian epic or a Bach
pastoral.

It’s the same with stories. Tension and
release. You can’t have the resolving end without the obstacle that
needs resolve. You can’t have a protagonist without some sort of
antagonist.

At some point growing up–I’d like to think
it was early on being the prodigy that I am–I began wondering how this
relates to eternity, when God sets all things right and restores
everything to pure goodness. Music with no tension? Then how can we
have a Beethoven’s third? How can we have stories?

And more importantly, was all of this planned? All of the evil and sickness and disease and wars?

This weekend, I watched a movie called Equilibrium (and talked about it indepth here). It renewed some thoughts in me I haven’t thunk in a while. Thoughts about true peace and beauty and harmony.

I
believe that God did not wish for it, but He knew. He knew before He
created us that in order for us to love Him freely, not as puppets (but
as real boys), not as robots, but as humans with free will, He had to
preserve that choice. Even though He knew exactly where that choice
would lead. I’m not saying God wants us to suffer or that He enjoys the
disgust in this world. I’m no sadist, and God isn’t either. I don’t
want pain or disaster to fall on me, my family, or my friends, and
neither does God wish to see His creation, those He loves more than I
can imagine, hurt. But how could we love Him if we had no capability to
say no?

The sad thing, we did say no.

Here’s
the amazing thing to me: He saved the best for last. The Garden of Eden
is incredible, true, but the end, the next earth, fully restored and
beautiful, is even better. So amazing that John in Revelation 19-22 can
barely find adaquate words and metaphors to describe its shimmer. The
next earth makes Plato’s Utopia look like Auschwitz.

Imagine,
as the Lord crafted this earth, declaring it good, He knew that it
would turn and destroy and be destroyed. He knew about the tsunamis and
polution and oil spills and hurricanes. As the Lord made the animals,
slick and beautiful and playful, he knew they would slaughter one
another and be slaughtered, stuffed and hung on walls and in bellies.
As our God breathed life into man and woman, He knew He’d watch His Son
take his last breath because of this humanity.

And He
knew that a more magnificent earth is in store, and that the lamb would
lie next to the lion, and that this humanity would be at peace again.
He knew beauty would reign again, and when it did, it would be better
than the first time.

Why would my God give me something better after I did this to Him? That’s a grace I don’t understand.

But
this brings me back around to my first question (I like circles better
than lines, I think): what about the eternal, when heaven comes down to
earth, and we all reside in peace and beauty and perfection, when evil
(the antagonist) is completely wiped off the face of the–well, I was
going to say earth, but universe, or eternity fits better–what happens
to music and stories then? Will we not know them? If there’s no more
tension in life, does that mean there’s no more tension left to be in
stories and song?

I don’t know, but I have a feeling it
relates to that phrase "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,
and death will not exist any more – or mourning, or crying, or pain,
for the former things have ceased to exist” (Rev. 21:4, NET). They won’t exist (thankfully), but does that mean we won’t remember them? I don’t know. In Lord of the Rings,
Sam tells Frodo of all the stories they’ll tell in the shire about
them, the heroes Frodo and Sam, when all is right again. There will be
no more sorrow, but they’ll tell the stories. I can’t help but wonder
if that is what it will be like. When everything is right and there’s
no more sorrow or death or evil, we’ll tell the stories, not to revell
in the evil, but to delight in the good, in God’s victory, His love for
us and our love for Him. In the transformation from war to peace, from
tsunamis to surfing, from safaris for shooting to safaris for petting.
We’ll tell the stories and play the music.

Which means, our stories and music and paintings are a foretaste because don’t we already know the end?

Filed Under: music, purpose, stories, writing