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Posts published in “The Black Laser Reads”

The Black Laser Reads: Episode 4 – Dagon by HP Lovecraft

The Black Laser Reads: Episode 4 – Dagon by HP Lovecraft

December 4, 2023 |

The Black Laser Reads and Writing

On this episode of The Black Laser Reads we feature the short story Dagon by everyone’s favorite problematic weirdo, HP Lovecraft.

Content warning: Suicide.

This is a classic Lovecraftian story where not very much happens but for some reason the narrator grapples with maintaining his sanity. Really. Dude wakes up on a muddy plane covered in rotting fish, finds a rock that’s carved with fish people, and sees a giant fish monster climbing around. He wakes up in San Francisco and decides to end it.

That’s it!

Light weight, overall, but important for introducing the fish people who would become so important in later Cthulhu mythos tales like Lovercraft’s later The Shadow Over Innsmouth. We’ll get to that one another day. Ultimately, like most of Lovecraft’s work, this story is about the vibe.

Please listen and enjoy, unless you value your sanity.

The text for this episode came from Standard Ebooks. If you are interested in reading “Dagon” or other Lovecraft short fiction yourself, you can download a public domain e-book here.

> Continue reading...The Black Laser Reads: Episode 4 – Dagon by HP Lovecraft
The Black Laser Reads: Episode 3 – The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Black Laser Reads: Episode 3 – The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

November 20, 2023 |

The Black Laser Reads and Writing

This time on The Black Laser Reads we are digging into Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic gothic horror tale of postpartum depression, internalized misogyny, and gaslighting from an era which predates all those terms.

I like this story a lot. I first encountered it in my creative writing class at Cabrillo College just before the pandemic. It’s clever and effective and efficient. There is not an extra word in the whole story. And, while it was originally published in 1892, it still feels quite modern. The language didn’t give me nearly the challenge that Bartleby did.

Please listen and enjoy.

The text for this episode came from Project Gutenberg. If you are interested in reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” yourself, you can download a public domain e-book here.

The next couple episodes are probably going to be on the shorter side with the holidays coming up, but if I can find some time, I’ve got something special in my pocket. Come back and check it out!

> Continue reading...The Black Laser Reads: Episode 3 – The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Black Laser Reads: Episode 2 – Bartleby The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street by Herman Melville

The Black Laser Reads: Episode 2 – Bartleby The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street by Herman Melville

October 16, 2023 |

The Black Laser Reads and Writing

This time on The Black Laser Reads we visit Herman Melville’s classic tale of capitalist woe “Bartleby the Scrivener”. You didn’t think we were the first generation to feel ground to death under the heel of our economic system, did you?

You might have read this story in high school English, as I did, and not realized how funny it was. A quick scan of the Goodreads reviews reveals a bunch of readers taking this story very seriously. But I think it’s actually quite humorous, especially in the contrast between the narrator’s uppity opinions of himself and his staff and the reality betrayed by their actions.

I tried to inject a little personality into the performance of this one. It’s easy to lose that in the old fashioned writing style, but there’s plenty of it in the text if you can coax it out a little (and deal with all the commas and semi-colons). It was certainly lost on me the first time I read the story as a 16 year old or whatever back in the 1900s. It was a pleasant discovery as I looked through texts for my next read.

Listen and enjoy.

I apologize to my British readers for Turkey’s accent. I did my best. I will work on it for the future.

The text for this episode came from Project Gutenberg. If you’d like to read “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street” yourself, you can find it here.

I’ve got a nice spooky one lined up for next time. If you’d like to be notified when it comes out, subscribe to e-mail notifications and you don’t even need to remember to check. It just shows up! Easy!

> Continue reading...The Black Laser Reads: Episode 2 – Bartleby The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street by Herman Melville
The Black Laser Reads: Episode 1 – The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

The Black Laser Reads: Episode 1 – The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

October 6, 2023 |

The Black Laser Reads and Writing

Welcome to the inaugural post of the rebooted The Black Laser Reads, a series of audiobooks recorded by yours truly all sourced from the public domain. I attempted this project once before way back in 2011, but I was never happy with the recording quality or the performance. Fly forward 12 years with me and I’ve practiced a ton, figured out how to record myself in much higher quality, and gotten excited for the project all over again.

I even designed a sweet new logo for the series!

Nice, right?

We’re beginning with an old standby: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”. This selection was partly inspired by Criterion Channel’s Roger Corman/Vincent Price/Poe retrospective they put up in September (excellent watching all of them) and my simmering hype for the new Mike Flanagan show premiering later this month. Poe seemed a natural start. Plus, Poe was the first one I read in the old version of The Black Laser Reads and who doesn’t love a callback?

Please listen and enjoy.

If you enjoyed it, leave a comment and tell me. If you hated it, leave a comment also! I have tons of texts lined up for this series, and not just short stories. And if you want me to read something from the public domain specifically, let me know.

A huge thanks to Standard Ebooks for providing the text I used in this performance. I mean, they didn’t directly do anything for me, but they do provide an incredible resource for anyone interested in classic ebooks. Really. Go check them out. Fantastic site.

And if you are interested in reading some more Poe yourself, this is the collection I read from.

> Continue reading...The Black Laser Reads: Episode 1 – The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

The Black Laser Reads… Charles Bukowski’s “It’s A Dirty World”

July 7, 2011 |

The Black Laser Reads and Writing

For this edition of The Black Laser Reads I picked a relatively short short story by one of my favorites, Charles Bukowski, called “It’s A Dirty World” from his 1983 collection of short stories Hot Water Music. The subject matter, style, and tone could not be more different than “The Tell-Tale Heart” which made it an attractive choice.

I’m not sure I like my performance on this as much as the other one, but what are you going to do? These are supposed to be about learning, not putting out tons of ace material. It’s not bad, mind you, but something feels flat, a little wrong. I might just be hyper-critical so ignore my self-doubts if you would.

This time I also edited a lot less than the previous one. You’ll actually hear breaths in this one. I did, however, go through and get rid of any spit sounds. Sorry, purists, that shit is gross and I hate hearing it. If I missed any, it was not on purpose.

[audio:https://www.theblacklaser.net/projects/tblr/TBLR_02_Its_A_Dirty_World.mp3|artists=Charles Bukowksi|titles=It’s A Dirty World]
Download here. TBLR 02 “It’s A Dirty World”.

Check back for more! It’s hot as hell in my apartment when I do these without an air conditioner or fan running and with the windows closed. I’ve been sweating the whole time. I suffer for you all, my lovely Black Laserites.

> Continue reading...The Black Laser Reads… Charles Bukowski’s “It’s A Dirty World”

The Black Laser Reads… Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”

May 8, 2011 |

The Black Laser Reads and Writing

Welcome to inaugural edition of “The Black Laser Reads”! A few days ago a call went out to Twitter and Facebook asking for suggestions for short stories that people liked. I got a lot of really good suggestions from people and have a running list on my Google Docs. I’m thinking Lovecraft, Bukowski, Carver, O’Connor, and so many more. The whole point behind this project is to build a body of audiobook work so that maybe somewhere down the line I can make it a professional pursuit. But, for now, it’s just fun to share stories with folks.

For this first one I picked Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” because it was my mom’s suggestion and it is Mother’s Day. Pretty perfect if you ask me. Happy Mother’s Day, mom. The story is also nice and short for this first outing. No reason to start with “Bartleby The Scrivener,” right?

[audio:https://www.theblacklaser.net/projects/tblr/TBLR_01_The_Tell-Tale_Heart.mp3|artists=Edgar Allen Poe|titles=The Tell-Tale Heart]
Download here.

I hope you guys enjoyed this. I had fun reading it and tweaking the audio all to hell. I’m thinking that I’ll try and do one of these once or twice a month. This was about 3 hours of work, but I imagine that I’ll get faster as I go along. And next time, I won’t have the mic pointing towards the fridge. Oops. Rookie mistake. I nearly re-recorded the whole thing when I heard it in the background.

> Continue reading...The Black Laser Reads… Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”