Yesterday I got a story “published.” I made a blog post about scifi podcasting magazines a few months back, and I truly believe that audio fiction will grow exponentially in future years. Books on tape have been around for decades, but with everything just so much more digital now, and devices so small… anyway, I’m not writing to particularly talk about that, but rather to talk about getting “Lizzy’s Last Chance” into print. Or I mean, “into sound waves.” Or whatever I should say to mean it is up in an audio format. But anyway, a little more detail about this process

So “Lizzy’s Last Chance” was read by an actress named Jill Raymond. And you should check her website out, because she has a lot of talent. Also, I had nothing at all to do with choosing her; I was matched with Jill through The Centropic Oracle, which published my story, but I didn’t know who was reading my story until the day it went live. First The Centropic Oracle offered to buy my story, contingent to me approving to a few editorial changes. I assented and then I signed a contract. After that, I waited five months while seeing small updates regarding how things were going through Centropic’s submission portal: “Searching for voice actor,” “Recording,” “Editing audio recording,” “Producing final audio file,” etc. And that is what happened up until yesterday.

It’s so interesting to me that Jill chose to do voices. I said that in my earlier post, and particularly that voices for the characters made sense. Not every book on tape that I’ve listen to uses them, but when narrators/voice actors do them and do them well, I like it. And I think Jill did a FANTASTIC job. She also employed some accents that I didn’t expect, but again, in the context of the story it makes sense, too. Now I just would like to know how long it took her to practice and record the story. Writing this was a breeze—I had the whole thing finished in about two weeks, which is a record; the creative juices were really flowing. Can it be as fast as a voice actor? Perhaps? Or slower? I truly have no idea.

Finally, I think The Centropic Oracle is smart to put the text of a story up, and I’ve already had one family member who said they wanted to read “Lizzy’s Last Chance” instead of listen to it (on their site it’s below the embedded Youtube video). To each their own is really how I feel about fiction, which extends to modes for consuming and enjoying fiction, so great! And I guess there is one last smart thing—the magazine took a chance on me! So in no particular order, those were my follow-up thoughts on contributing to a fun fantasy podcast. Jill seems like a lovely person, and I dropped her a line after this story came out and she was happy to reply. Fingers crossed I’ll get to work with her, and The Centropic Oracle, in the future!

–Jeff and Leah

You can listen to—or read—my story “Lizzy’s Last Chance” by clicking here.