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Posts tagged as “The Black Laser Reads”

Creative Projects-July: One and A Half is better than Zero, or, Where is all this money from!?

July was a successful for month for me on both pursuits for this year.

Creatively, I put another The Black Laser Reads… out into the universe and managed to finally begin the redesign of the site. I didn’t finish the redesign until we had rolled over into August so it won’t count towards July, but does count for my overall year tally of getting things did. I am pretty psyched on that. Hopefully, if I can keep this momentum up, you’ll be seeing a year end summary where I can claim to have finished more than 100% of my allotted projects. Pretty good. Gets my juices going, that does.

It is also quite nice to have finally passed 50% of my allotment, with another 8.333% in the works. It’s not yet ready to be shared, but it will be done before the month ends so look for more about that when the time comes for my August summary.

In regards to my secondary goal for the year, July was great. I was quite good at sticking to my “don’t go drinking during the week” guideline which feels good. I’m sleeping well (except for the heat), waking up easily, feeling chipper in the morning, and I’m finding money in my pocket from the beginning of the week. It just stays there! That was welcome because, for a variety of reasons, July ended up being a fairly cash-strapped month for me. Finding money that I would have previously written off as history ended up being nice little reminders that I was successfully sticking to my plan. That’s good.

I’ve also been riding my bike around a bit. I quite like it and find that I am flying around like a lunatic whenever possible. Not recklessly, of course, but enough. Though the month of constantly threatening rain has dissuaded me from taking the bike out on more than one occasion. That’s a drag, but getting caught in whipping sheets of rain in the dark with the wind blowing your contacts out as you ride through traffic is less desirable. I’ll pick my battles there.

Overall, pretty positive month for me and, aside from some weirdo mental shit on and off that has little to do with my theme, feeling pretty good about it. I feel like I am developing a healthy pattern here of work, followed by work, followed by relaxing.

I’ll check back in on this business in a month.

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

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.

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

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.