Welcome to The Coode Street Podcast. From time to time, I will be posting new podcasts that are aimed at helping to promote work that I think is worthwhile, noteworthy, or just neat in some way. Sometimes I’ll be promoting a project that I’ve had something to do with, sometimes it’ll be something done by a friend, and sometimes it’ll simply be something that I know about and think is worth taking up some of your time to talk about. While I’m still sketching out a few details, there’ll be reviews, interviews, excerpts and podcasts of stuff.
The Coode Street Podcast No.2 - “The Third-Quarter King” by Tim Pratt
The second Coode Street Podcast features Tim Pratt, one of my favorite new short story writers. His first collection, Little Gods, was published in 2003, and his first novel, The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, was published in 2005. Upcoming is a new collection, Hart and Boot, and a new novel, Blood Engines. His short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award, one of SF/Fantasy’s highest honors, and in 2004 he was a finalist for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He won the Rhysling award (for poetry) in 2005 for his poem “Soul Searching”. He also works for Locus as a senior editor and book reviewer.
“The Third-Quarter King” is featured in Eidolon, a new science fiction and fantasy anthology that I’ve spent the last year or so working with Jeremy Byrne to complete. Eidolon, which also features stories by Carol Ryles, Hal Duncan, Margo Lanagan, Chris Lawson, Tim Pratt, Eleanor Arnason, William Eakin, Holly Phillips, Deborah Roggie, Deborah Biancotti, Kim Westwood, Alistair Ong, Elizabeth Bear, Jeff VanderMeer, Grace Dugan, Lucy Sussex, and Simon Brown, will be published by Eidolon Books in Australia in August and by Prime Books in the United States in December.
The story that follows is one of the book’s stand-outs, and I’m delighted to be able to present it, read by the author, as a Coode Street Podcast.
“The third-quarter king leaned back in his brown leather recliner, eyes closed, and spent the first evening of the season after his reign listening to music by bands named, all unknowingly, in his honor - The Octobers, November Witch, Through the Fall, The Decemberists. His friend the fourth-quarter king had sent the music, because that king loved songs, and giving gifts. When the last song on the last album had played, the third-quarter king rose and went to his window, looking out on the narrow street, and the songs played on in his mind, made bittersweet by the mere fact of their movement into the past. The songs had been lyrical, mostly, and almost all a little melancholy, which was fitting, as they owed some part of themselves to him.”
Listen to “The Third-Quarter King” [17mb].
The Coode Street Podcast No.1 - Stealing Free by Deborah Biancotti
I’m starting things off with a podcast of a brand new story by Deborah Biancotti. Deb published her first story in 2000 and has won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Story, the Ditmar Award for Best New Talent, and the Ditmar for Best Short Story. Her stories have appeared in Borderlands, Orb, Redsine and Altair, as well as Eidolon, Southern Blood, and assorted Agog! volumes.
“Stealing Free” is set to appear in Cat Sparks’ new anthology, Agog! Ripping Reads, which will be published shortly. The story is read by Nick Evans and is published under a Creative Commons License. You can also read an excerpt from “Stealing Free”. Before listening to the podcast, though, I asked Deb to tell us a little about “Stealing Free”:
I have stories I call my Insomniac Crack. Stories that first occur late at night, while I’m awake with the brain spiralling in its own peculiar patterns: alert, but in a tangential, lateral way that doesn’t lend itself to practical work. Awake and daydreaming, if the contradiction may be allowed. Soothed and smoothed by darkness & quiet, the story reaches out for me, always starting at the first line, never giving me the last. And yet, once the beginning is committed to paper, the rest of the story finds itself.
This story is one of those, begun late at night, the broad brush stroked added over several days between work and Life and other projects, but the real guts of it, the meat of the tale, so to speak, requiring another late night to pull itself together. And here — for what it’s worth — is an unusual piece on the dutiful Salamander and his odd mixed bag of friends and enemies. Kingfisher. Pelicans. Empress. Monster. Sea Snake. And all their attendants. The story owes a debt of gratitude not only to Night and the peculiar and compelling Patterns it engenders, but to the careful readership of Chris Lawson, Ben Payne, Kim Selling and editrix extraordinaire Cat Sparks. Naturally, the flaws are all obstinately mine.
Listen to Stealing Free” [4mb].