Voiceovers (and particularly, character voices) aren’t my specialty, but I thought it would be fun to do a reading of a flash fiction piece from my recently published short story collection.

And since storytelling is that wonderful combination of character, plot and place, what better than a piece set in New Orleans, with an appearance by the Voodoo Queen?

Here is The Vial (7:40):

The Vial

And here’s a free download of the title story (not the one I read above).

Mom, this isn't blasphemy—the Virgin is part of the story, honest

I recently read a good, helpful essay on finding and developing your writer’s voice, courtesy of Writer’s Digest (and another fine one, on the same topic from Jane Friedman). An important point in both essays is that the expression of self in writing, be it in diction, passion, slant or tone, can be a variant thing—the hummingbird’s flight is always expressive of the bird, but its dartings and hoverings aren’t always approached from the same direction or desire.

But thinking of a writer’s voice made me think of literal voices, and I remembered a radio piece I did some years ago for a local Santa Cruz station, KUSP. The aural collage was called the Foreign Stories Project, an effort by a producer named Howard Scherr to induce local folks to recount interesting tales of their adventures in foreign lands. I don’t quite sustain the right cadence in this piece, but it’s a fun challenge to try to tell a story aloud, and to see how it’s rendered with sound effects and professional editing. And any story which has a 1,000-mile bus ride to a surprise whorehouse has to have some intrigue.

Take a listen (but do wear protection):
[audio:http://www.tombentley.com/wordpress/audio/Bentley-Juarez.mp3]