Living the Fictional Dream

Podcasts… the short story equivalent of an audio book. Snippets of fiction read aloud that can be listened to on the website or downloaded to your iPod or iTunes to listen to later.

I’d never really thought about this before, but it’s a cool idea. And, from a writing perspective, how amazing would it be to hear the words you write read aloud? Very, is my thought!

I took a screen writing class while earning my master’s degree. As part of the class we wrote two-page scenes and the professor brought in two actors to perform them. Watching my words come to life like that was amazing… Listening probably would be great, as well.

The other good thing about fiction podcasts from the writer’s point of view is that they seem to love reprints (or, at least, the ones whose guidelines I looked at did). It’s not often in the print and e-zine world that you can sell the same story twice!

I’ve been researching short fiction podcasts (with the help of some recommendations from my friend Stephanie), and I’ve come up with a few that seem interesting. I haven’t listened to all of them yet, but the ones that I did listen do had some great stories. If you’d like to try out a fiction podcast, you could start with one of these:

• Pod Castle — fantasy.
• Escape Pod — science fiction.
• Pseudopod — horror (pay attention to that warning on the first page).
• Drabblecast — speculative fiction/weird tales.
• Well Told Tales — horror, sci-fi, crime/hardboiled, pulp.
• Clonepod — sci-fi/fantasy.
• Bound Off — literary fiction.
• The Great Beyond — sci-fi/fantasy (though this one doesn’t seem to be updating very regularly).

If you do check some of these out, let me know which ones are your favorites.