Going Public JIAM Audiopalooza – June 29th

That’s right, it’s Friday of the last week of June, folks…the last week of June Is Audiobook Month (JIAM)…which means we’re wrapping up the…

GOING PUBLIC JIAM AUDIOPALOOZA!

All this week, I’ve been posting new snippets and today, I am so very pleasedto have several guests joining me to send JIAM off in style! I’ll start off with Robin Sachs & my collaboration on the second Lawrence mash-up, and then we’re off and running with fresh pieces from Diane Havens, Cassandra Campbell, Dawn Harvey, Gary Dikeos, Karen Commins and David Stifle, interspersed with the Lawrence mash-up released earlier this week, and ending with the full version of The Yellow Wallpaper.

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Humiliation and A Young Wife, by D. H. Lawrence – a poetry mash-up
Read by Robins Sachs and Xe Sands

(click here for SoundCloud link if you cannot see the player above)

Xe writes…

Several weeks back, I decided to offer a fresh Going Public piece every day of Audiobook Week, in celebration of JIAM. But what to do? How could I present something a little “beyond” as part of the effort?

I threw this question to reviewer extraordinaire and good friend Kelli of The Oddiophile, who immediately came back with the most wonderful idea: more dual narration – which she followed up with the idea of poetry pairings, with alternating narration. And like THAT! the flame was lit, the call went out to the ever gracious and phenomenal Robin Sachs, and a plan was hatched. We’ve already released the New Year’s Night / Mystery mash-up, and now offer our second collaboration for the week, Lawrence’s Humiliation paired with A Young Wife.

There seem to be two sides to Lawrence: the sex/death side, and the bitter/trapped/grief side. While New Year’s Night / Mystery represents the former, this offering is definitely in the latter camp.  When Lawrence writes, “The pain of loving you is almost more than I can bear,” what we cannot know is whether or not he wants to bear it, even if he could.

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Weight, by Michael Daigle
Read by Diane Havens

(click here for SoundCloud link if you cannot see the player above)

Diane writes…

“Weight” is poetic prose, on the subject of lost love and found life. “The weight is in the heart…”

I first “met” Mike Daigle when he called to interview me for a newspaper story. Fellow voice actor Kat Keesling and I had recruited many of our colleagues as volunteers when the heated health care debate was at its height, to record the entire bill/s (thousands of pages and hundreds of hours) to post as a public service, a nonpartisan effort (Hearthebill.org). One of those volunteers was voice actor Liz deNesnera, who put him in touch with me to talk about that ambitious undertaking. Ever since, we’ve kept in touch, and I have become a big fan of his writing — both his nonfiction and fiction work. To put it in acting terms, he’s got tremendous range. Read him at: michaelstephendaigle.com

Here’s what Mike has to say about himself and his latest project:

“I have been writing most of my life. I was a print journalist for 30 years, starting at weekly newspapers in Massachusetts and Maine, and then at dailies, in Maine and New Jersey. I am now an online journalist and writer, practicing the craft for digital news web pages, and others. I am working on a political thriller called “The Swamps of Jersey.” It is about political corruption and I’m attempting to write it in real time, that is to say, reflecting some of the activities that mark our present lives, but use them in a story that is broad and wide, and with luck, filled with the lives of characters struggling to make sense of troubled times. The central character is Frank Nagler, a cop, whose troubled heart is ever present. He is also a character I’ve been familiar with for about 30 years. There is a second Frank Nagler story that needs a rewrite.”

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L’Infinito, by Giacomo Leopardi – in Italian and English
Read by Cassandra Campbell

(click here for SoundCloud link if you cannot see the player above)

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Thinking of Holland, by Hendrik Marsman
Read by Paul Strikwerda

(click here for SoundCloud link if you cannot see the player above)

Paul writes…

The Dutch poet Hendrik Marsman is the author of this poem. The English translation is by Paul Vincent.

Snowball’s Chance in Hell, by Trish Macomber
Read by Dawn Harvey

(click here for SoundCloud link if you cannot see the player above)

Dawn writes…

Snowball’s Chance In Hell is a comedy/drama about a cute little, fluffy white dog (who also happens to be a demon from hell). Written by Trish Macomber and recorded by Dawn Harvey, it is available as a free download in honour of June Is Audiobook Month (JIAM) 2012.

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To My Brother George, by John Keats
Read by Gary Dikeos

(click here for SoundCloud link if you cannot see the player above)

New Year’s Night and Mystery, by D. H. Lawrence – a poetry mash-up
Read by Robins Sachs and Xe Sands

(click here for SoundCloud link if you cannot see the player above)

Oh David Herbert…such a love/hate/love relationship I have with you, just like, well, a lover I suppose – there is no middle, no even path with Lawrence. He inspires such heights and depths – rage, passion, disgust, longing. There is nothing that escapes his mark of sensuality and morbidity, usually tied inextricably together. But really, isn’t that life itself – the sensual and the morbid, sex and death and sacrifice and grief pressed against each other until all the lines blur?

This mash-up, featuring the poems New Year’s Night and Mystery, merging sensual with sacrificial imagery, meshed so perfectly together that the result was almost startling. And I guarantee that you will never hear “falcon” quite the same way again…

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Black Thursday, by Melissa F. Miller

Read by Karen Commins

(click here for SoundCloud link if you cannot see the player above)

Karen writes…

In “Black Thursday,” associate Sasha McCandless celebrates her first Thanksgiving as a big-firm lawyer and learns that her blessings come at a cost. This short story introduces the tiny, driven lawyer and sets the stage for the Sasha McCandless legal thriller series, which follows Sasha from her start at the prestigious law firm to her decision to go it alone as a solo attorney. Along the way, her legal skills, personal integrity, and hand-to-hand combat training will be tested by adversaries both in and out of the courtroom. She’ll also drink too much coffee and get too little sleep.

“Black Thursday” by Melissa F. Miller was one of ten legal-themed short stories chosen by a panel of internationally best-selling authors as a winner of the Southwestern Law School’s Legal Fiction Writing Contest. It will be published in the Journal of Legal Education: The Fiction Issue in early 2013. Sasha’s story continues in the audiobook IRREPARABLE HARM, now available at Amazon, Audible, and iTunes.

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God of Tarzan, excerpted from Tales of the Jungle, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Read by David Stifle

God of Tarzan, read by David Stifle

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The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Read by Xe Sands

(click here for SoundCloud if you cannot see the player above)

Originally, I wanted to record The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson. Sadly, it is not in the public domain. But then, for some reason, this wonderful, dark, gothic story of a woman’s decent into madness (due in large part to the damaging “rest cure” her physician husband subjects her to) came to mind. Not sure whether to thrilled to have the perfect piece, or somewhat disturbed that a tale of neuroses run wild popped into my mind so easily, but I digress…grab your favorite beverage, get cozy in your favorite chair, slip on the headphones, and join me as we listen to our narrator tell us her tale…

Dagon, by H.P. Lovecraft
Read by Oliver Wyman

(click here for SoundCloud link if you cannot see the player above)

Oliver writes…

One of H.P. Lovecraft’s earlier short stories, Dagon tells the tale of one man’s descent into madness at having witnessed the unfathomable horror that lay hidden beneath the ocean depths. For Going Public.

Tethered in Purgatory, by Terry W. Ervin II
Read by Matt Baker

(click here for SoundCloud link if you cannot see the player above)

Sonnet 71, by William Shakespeare

Read by Helen Lloyd

(click here for SoundCloud link if you cannot see the player above)