SFFreader » This Week’s New Short Fiction

ON MY SHELF
Prime Codex, edited by Lawrence Schoen and Michael Livingston:
I picked this up at CONduit last weekend at a reading by Eric James Stone, who has published multiple stories in places like Analog SF and IGMS. He’s a member of the Codex Writers Group, and stories by members of that group comprise this anthology. Eric’s remarkable and moving story, “Salt of Judas” joins stories by new and exciting writers like Mary Robinette Kowal, Ken Scholes, and Tobias Buckell. So if you want to read what the best of the new writers are writing, the Prime Codex anthology is a must-buy. Get your copy here.

If you are curious, you can listen to the audio version of my story here, before you pick up the anthology.

Listen to “Rampion”

Prime Codex is for sale! And you have multiple reasons to want a copy.

I’ve sort of kept mum about one of them, I realize. You already know that my story, “Rampion” appears in the anthology. But there’s this other thing I forgot to mention.

After I sold them “Rampion,” I had one of those conversations with the editors, Lawrence Schoen and Michael Livingston, where I foolishly said, “Who’s your art director?”

I need to learn to stop asking this question. This is how I started working with Shimmer , too. Not that I mind, you understand, but it does seem to be a dangerous question because after a little bit of conversation the answer turned out to be, me.

Lawrence and Michael picked out David Ho’s fantastic art, before I came on board as art director, so all I designed was the cover and interior. It just felt a little awkward to mention since I have a story actually in the anthology and all. But, it does give you another reason to want the anthology, right?

Plus! Look at the table of contents:

1. James Maxey, “To The East, A Bright Star”
— from Asimov’s (December 2005)
2. Cat Rambo, “Ticktock Girl”
— from CyberAge Adventures (September 2005)
3. Ken Scholes, “The Man With Great Despair Behind His Eyes”
— from Talebones (Winter 2005)
4. Geoffrey Girard, “Wizards’ Encore”
— from Beyond Centauri (April 2005)
5. Elaine Isaak, “The Disenchantment of Kivron Ox-master”
— from The Worlds of Fantasy (2001)
6. Jim C. Hines, “Sister of the Hedge”
— from Realms of Fantasy (June 2006)
7. Mary Robinette Kowal, “Rampion”
— from The First Line (Spring 2005)
8. Eric James Stone, “Salt of Judas”
— from Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show (March 2006)
9. E. Catherine Tobler, “Button by Button”
— from Would That It Were (April/June 2001)
10. Matthew S. Rotundo, “Black Boxes”
— from Absolute Magnitude (Spring 2001)
11. Tobias Buckell, “Tides”
— from Ideomancer Unbound (December 2002)
12. Tom Pendergrass, “Urban Renewal”
— from Shimmer (Summer 2006)
13. Mike Shultz, “As the Stars of the Sky”
— from Leading Edge (April 2004)
14. Ruth Nestvold, “Rainmakers”
— from Asimov’s (June 2005)
15. David W. Goldman, “Radical Acceptance”
— from Analog (January/February 2007)

You can order your copy of Prime Codex at the Paper Golem website.

I forgot to mention a couple of my favorite tricks, which work nicely with a microphone. If you drop your volume and lean into the microphone then it will sound as if you are right next to the listener, whispering in their ear. This can have a wonderful effect to distinguish between “asides” and dialogue. It can also create a real intimacy with your listener.

Listen as I demonstrate.

Another handy trick is left-right balance. This isn’t a reading thing, but a post-production effect that can do a lot to create the idea of different speakers even with only one voice. When you record something with multiple characters, read the whole thing straight through, for pacing doing all of the character voices.

Then go back and read each piece of dialogue individually. Do all of a character’s dialogue in one go, then go back and do the next character. Besides giving you a more consistant vocal quality for the characters, you can separate them into left and right channels. Most people choose to leave the narrator in the middle. It does a lot to distinguish between characters. But it will add a lot of work to post production.

If you have time, do multiple reads so you can select the best take for each line.

If you listen to my Rampion I read the narrative three times and each of the character dialogue breakdowns twice. The characters are separated into different channels–this does mean that the file will be larger to download. For downloads I could have saved a lot of space by keeping it mono.

My story, Rampion, is up at the First Line, if you’d care to take a listen.

I tried to email the recording of Rampion to The First Line today, but the file was too big to send via email so I uploaded it to our website. Which means that if anyone wants to listen to the uncompressed version you can. I’m assuming that TFL will crunch it some to make it easier to download, since at 9MB it’s fairly hefty.

I’ll let you know when it’s up on their website.

Meanwhile, Rob and I went to Tektronix today for the first time in ages. It was great to get out and do some of the things we used to do when we were courting.

Rob and I finally went into the studio today to record Rampion for the First Line. It’s the first day in ages that we’ve both had the time and energy to set aside for it. Initially, I had thought I might do a multi-voice recording with sound effects, but I realized that the first line of dialogue was a little more than halfway through. I thought it would be jarring to suddenly have another actor appear, so it’s all just me.

I’ll post the link to the website when it’s up.

This is a submission for the magazine The First Line. I am required to use the first line they provide, but everything else is up for grabs. Let me know if you’d like to read the rest.

Rampion

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp As the warrior guided his horse back home, she pondered what the future might hold. Sybille had plotted his seduction from the moment he arrived in their village, and now that he rode away, she had a deep longing to call him back. But she did not know his name.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Sybille brushed a strand of her golden hair, still sweat-damp, back from her face. Her hand traced a path down her face to her belly, resting above her womb. Would life quicken there?
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp She turned and went back into the tiny cottage she shared with her husband, Hans. If the warrior chanced to look back, she did not want to be standing in the doorway watching like a girl at a barn dance.