Tag Archives: lightspeed magazine

Inks, Scrolls, and Secrets – A Week at the Raven Feather Salon – Now on Lightspeed 🪶

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Featured this week on Lightspeed Magazine is A Week at the Raven Feather Salon by Carrie Vaughn — a beautiful new fantasy story that I had the joy of narrating. 💫

At the Raven Feather Salon life slows down. Tea brews, buns bake, poetry is read, scrolls of protection are inked, and the soft melody of a lute drifts through the air.  ✨

But life wasn’t always like this for Sparrow. Not long ago, she was on the battlefield, inking protective scrolls for the army. She’d had enough of blood and war — and walked away at the height of her powers.

Until now.

When her old friend Major Kin rushes into the salon, everything changes. A spy has infiltrated his ranks, and Sparrow may be the only one who can uncover the truth. But doing so means risking everything she’s built… and the people she’s come to care for.

To listen or read A Week at the Raven Feather Salon head over to Lightspeed Magazine’s June 2025 Issue 181.  Big thanks to the wonderful team at Skyboat Media for sending this gem my way. 💜🪶

It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand – PART TWO – goes Lightspeed! ⚡🪐

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LS - It Holds Her - Part 2 with background color

🚀 The story continues …

Part Two is out! Dropping this week on Lightspeed Magazine is the next installment of It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand by Lowry Poletti, a really unique sci-fi story podcast I so enjoyed narrating. If you’ve been following along, you know things are getting interesting …

To find out what happens next, head on over to LightspeedMagazine.com, where you can listen to or read Part Two now.

 Click here if you missed my post about PART ONE.

Transmission complete. 😉🎧🪐

A Bird, a Ship and a Question of Trust – New Story Podcast Drops on Lightspeed 🚀

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It Holds Her in the Palm of ne Hand Part 1_WPIMAGE🚀 BUCKLE UP—we’re going to Lightspeed! 

Dropping this week in the February issue of Lightspeed Magazine is a new story podcast that I had the absolute pleasure of narrating for Skyboat Media!

It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand by Lowry Poletti is a mesmerizing sci-fi novelette that turns the familiar “first contact” idea on its head.  Set in deep space, on the planet Miphre, It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand follows an uneasy, even antagonistic, relationship between humans and gastors – intelligent birds whose true intentions remain a mystery.  Are they allies? Manipulators? Something else entirely?  Lightspeed is serializing this story over the next two weeks, and Part One is out now!

To listen or read It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand – Part 1, head over to LightspeedMagazine.com, Issue 177 – link is here.

Huge thanks to Lightspeed Magazine and Skyboat Media for the opportunity to bring this thought-provoking story to life.

Until next time, see you on the bit stream! 🎧✨

Summertime … is the time to go Lightspeed 🚀

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LS July Issue 2024 copySummertime 🏖️ is perfect for escaping into a new story podcast!  So delighted to be featured in the July Issue of Lightspeed Magazine, narrating three different story podcasts:  one fantasy and two science fiction tales.  Huge thanks to Stefan Rudnicki, Skyboat Media and Lightspeed Magazine for sending these beautiful gems my way.  

For a flash fiction story about magic, melody and love caught in the cycles of time, check out Songs of the Sorrow of Thorns by Amayah Perveen.  It’s hauntingly beautiful.  

If you’re in the mood for something lighter, don’t miss The Only Writing Advice You’ll Ever Need to Survive Eldritch Horrors by Aimee Picchi, out today!  This story was a blast to record.  Our heroine secretly fights crime (Eldritch Horrors!) at night under the guise of being an accountant.   When her boyfriend breaks up with her over her suspicious 3am “accounting emergencies,” she puts pen to paper and writes him a letter. 

Lastly, if you love heist stories,  The Heist for the Soul of Humanity by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko may be just what you’re looking for.  Out in the solar system, Josephine Foster and her team of female thieves plot to steal Orion’s Sabre, but the real prize is much more valuable.  Releases on Lightspeed July 18.

Grab your beach gear, headphones, or tablet and head to LightspeedMagazine.com to listen to or read these stories for free.

Buckle up … we’re going to Lightspeed! 🚀

New Story Podcast “We’ll Never Die in the Woods” goes Lightspeed! 🚀

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Dec IssueDropping this week in the December Issue of Lightspeed Magazine is We’ll Never Die in the Woods, by Carlie St. George – a new fantasy story podcast that I had so much fun narrating! 

In the mystical realm of Hook Tree Woods, two sisters, torn apart by fate, find themselves entangled in a tale spun with curses and whispered secrets.

🐸 The elder sister, thought by villagers to be an unkind witch, bore a curse from a vengeful fairy. Now, her words summon only toads and snakes. Blame not her heart, for it was her wicked mother’s influence that shaped her path.

🌸 The younger sister, once a princess of kindness and grace, now a runaway princess, is pursued by a deceitful prince. Her words birth jewels and flowers, a gift from a benevolent fairy. Yet, her heart carries the weight of betrayal and a tower’s shadow.

👭 Sisters turned strangers, they traverse Hook Tree Woods, once bound by love, now haunted by a past of parental manipulation. As they flee for their lives, their destinies collide in a forest echoing with whispers.

🌳 Into the heart of Hook Tree Woods we venture, where the threads of sibling love unravel. Will the bonds of childhood withstand the trials, or will the shadows of betrayal consume them? The answer lies in the echoes of a love lost, as these sisters face a choice that could save or doom them.

📖 The entrance to this enchanting tale can be found in Issue 163 at Lightspeed Magazine where you can listen to, or read We’ll Never Die in the Woods at no cost.  This podcast was produced by the dream team at Skyboat Media. 💫

Learning Letters goes to Lightspeed! 🚀

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Lightspeed Magazine Feb 2023 Issue

Get ready to buckle up … we’re going to Lightspeed! 🚀   Releasing today in the February Issue of Lightspeed Magazine is a new story podcast that I had the pleasure of narrating, called Learning Letters, written by Carrie Vaughn and produced by Skyboat Media.

I have been a long time fan of Vaughn’s writing, so having the opportunity to narrate this really cool, original new sci-fi story, was truly such a treat.

Learning Letters follows Enid, an investigator living in a post-apocalyptic world, who encounters a stranger that arrives in the fields of their small community, known as Haven.  This stranger is from a distant part of the world, intent on delivering a letter dated 30 years ago,  just after the fall.

As the stranger slowly steps down onto the field, exiting from a type of aircraft that the folks in Haven have only ever read about in journals and letters,  he speaks in an odd language –  one that sounds similar to Enid’s – but at first, is just on the edge of her understanding.  As we learn more about the stranger and the recipient of this letter that’s taken 30 years to deliver, these two individuals, find common ground – a way to bridge this gap of time and place – so that they might finally recapture a poignant lost moment from the past.  A moment that has begged to be delivered…

You can listen to, or read Learning Letters by heading over to the February Issue of Lightspeed Magazine, where you’ll be able to access this new story for free online.

Lightspeed Magazine is a Hugo Award-winning digital science fiction & fantasy online magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams and hosted by Jim Freund.

That’s all for now.  See you on the bit stream!

The Shadow Prison Experiment – goes LIGHTSPEED!

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Landing this month in Lightspeed Magazine’s August 2020 issue is a new reprint of The Shadow Prison Experiment, written by Caroline M. Yoachim and appearing with a podcast, narrated by yours truly. I really love Yoachim’s writing and had so much fun narrating this exciting work of dystopian fiction.

The Shadow Prison Experiment explores the concept of a society where people wear skin overlays of generic default… which is kind of like a cross between a nondescript human and a silver android! The people here are either citizens, shadowkeepers or shadow prisoners. A shadow prisoner is someone who has undermined the system in some way and is therefore cast into Shade. Shades don’t go to an actual prison for their supposed crimes, instead a shadow prisoner just gets filtered out…even from themselves. They can no longer see their own skin – their body now only appears before them as a featureless, smoky image. If that isn’t frightening enough, everyone and everything else has also been filtered out, even sound. The only people that the Shade can now see and hear, are the Shadowkeepers, who keep them in line.

The Shadow Prison Experiment,  follows Vivian, a mom to sixteen year old Cass.  When Cass is at risk of being arrested for attending a protest, Vivian steps in to protect Cass, and is instead, herself cast in to Shade.  Faced with a choice to accept her new reality or find a way to fight against it, Vivian plunges deep into Shade to find a way to end the Shadow Prison Experiment once and for all.

This story is part of a novelette called Shadow Prisons. The Shadow Prison Experiment was originally published on June 30, 2020 in The Dystopia Triptych, Vol. 1: Ignorance is Strength, edited by John Joseph Adams, Christie Yant, and Hugh Howey, and is now available on Audible and at Amazon. Do check it out! This is a really cool three part anthology. Dystopia Triptych, as well as the podcast at Lightspeed Magazine, are produced by the Grammy and Audie award winning team at Skyboat Media.

 

 

Stay safe and buckle up – MELTING LIKE METAL – goes LIGHTSPEED!

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Landing today is a really cool Sci-fi story that I had so much fun narrating.  Melting Like Metal  is written by the talented Ada Hoffman, and sweeps us into the world where her novel, The Outside, takes place.

In Melting Like Metal, however, we are now in the POV of cyborg, Enga.  As an angel of the God called Nemesis, Enga is no longer human. That’s not to say, she still doesn’t have her own share of struggles. She most definitely does.  One of which, is she is not able to speak. For me as an narrator, this was an exciting challenge to play around with. Enga’s only way of communicating now, is by sending text messages from her heavily modified, technological brain.

This story takes off at warp speed and was truly awesome to work on.  If you’d like to check out the podcast, just head on over to Lightspeed Magazine. This podcast was produced by the amazing team at Skyboat Media, and was edited by John Joseph Adams and hosted by Jim Freud.

So…are you ready? Let’s go LIGHTSPEED 🚀

The Lonely Heart … Just In Time For Valentine’s Day!

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B7PPZ1lCIAE2B4tAlthough not your typical Valentine’s Day love story… The Lonely Heart  is a story sure to capture your heart.  I had so much fun recording this hauntingly disturbing tale, mainly because the writing of Aliette de Bodard is so good!! The story is now available at Lightspeed Magazine and it is a retelling of the “The Painted Skin” from Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio.

The Lonely Heart is graphic, explicit, dark and all the while completely compelling. Part of the fun for me as a narrator is learning about the places & traditions of the characters that I get to portray. To get into the right mind-space for this particular story, I spent a lot of time researching the area of China where the story took place, most specifically the “Ghost City” of old Fengdu. It’s incredibly fascinating! In case you’re interested, here is an article on some of the historic facts & myths of this old city located on the bank of the Yangtze River. Enjoy! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fengdu_Ghost_City

“Two-Ton Tony had a hard body…” JUPITER WRESTLERAMA – A wonderfully rich, captivating story that I had the pleasure of narrating

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“Two-Ton Tony had a hard body…” JUPITER WRESTLERAMA – A wonderfully rich, captivating story that I had the pleasure of narrating is now available at Lightspeed Magazine.  This gripping story is about murder, betrayal, love, and intrigue and it all takes place on a cramped space station!

I have become an immediate fan of the writer, Marie Vibbert. Her stunning use of language and imagery in Jupiter Wrestlerama made this particular story incredibly exciting for me to narrate.

You can listen to the podcast of Jupiter Wrestlerama for free here:  Jupiter Wrestlerama.  Be sure to stay and check out the many other incredible stories that the 2014 Hugo Award Winning Lightspeed Magazine has available online. You won’t be disappointed!

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