9. The Poet And The Thief, Part One. 

A charming flash fiction from certainwaters; all the various voices performed by Russil Tamsen. Original text here.

It sounds like a medieval Persian fairy tale with a bit of Doctor Who stirred in (minus the time travel). The gal at the center of it all is like Merida from Pixar's Brave, except she escapes not into the forest but into a bizarre solitary sickness... 

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

The Old Man Bar is the opening scene of the upcoming novel by Dylan O'Toole, and is narrated by Russil Tamsen. Original here. 4 mins.

A young out-of-town writer hits a dive bar, angling for some inspiration. He meets a grouchy old dude - and what a vivid character he is, the old geezer! Coincidence promptly entangles them both in a web of misunderstandings and threatening behavior.

I think most of us have met him along the way at some point.

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

The Future of Poop, comic monologue penned by Peter Bradley, performed by Russil Tamsen. Original here. 6 mins.

This was just too fucking funny for me to pass up! The conceit is simple: earthlings in the future invent time travel technology... and use it as a waste disposal chute. We in the past, specifically our bodies, are the hapless recipients of future waste. (It's probably going to happen, too, right?) There's only one way to solve this problem.

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

From cupcakesandcum on Tumblr comes this dirty, raw, disturbing, yet evocative sexual monologue. Performed by Russil Tamsen. 5 mins. Original text here.

The piece concerns the five first encounters in a temporary relationship. A ragged pair of stockings exemplifies the couple's disarray with terminal runs.   It was great to be allowed to experiment with this writing! In the audio I played with rhythm, adding in some character voices, and some out of control sound effects. I totally went for the humor too... All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

I made Tom Robbins crack up! Score!

At the writers conference, famed novelist Tom Robbins had us do a writing exercise.

1. Write down your favorite word...  (Then we all read out our favorite words. Mine was Australopithecus. Say what?)

2. Write a first sentence of a story/novel/whatever, using that word... (Oh, if had known that's where he was heading!... So we read out our sentences. I had the class laughing.)  

3. Write a second sentence that connects to that first one and opens up the potential of the story.  (We all read our completed sentence pair.) Here's what I came up with:

"Most early hominids sported shaggy manes, but none had a more luxurious, enviable head of hair than Bob the Australopithecus. His sweaty female, Boo, however showed little interest in his chevelure and seemed far more jazzed by the rugged Javamen who had been beaching their sea canoes that morning." I didn't get a chance to explain away the time travel aspect... ;-)

The rough and tumble erotic story of disturbia by Molly Cupcakes, They'd Fucked Five Times So Far. Russil Tamsen's second audio version of the piece. 3 mins. Written text here.

It's fascinating how different acting choices by a speaker can create vastly different results. This was the first time I'd ventured two very different versions of a story, and it was enlightening. Feedback from one listener of the first version got me imagining how this flash fiction story would sound delivered in a normal narrator's voice. Using a resonant, understated approach, one that let the language do all the legwork: a very different choice from overstated version one.

To me it sounds really good this way. It might possibly be the better choice!

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

A steamy erotic story by Wonderstruck on Tumblr, narrated by Russil Tamsen! 3 mins. Original text here.

I needed a change of pace from the sad and dark, so I narrated this tasteful yet scorching scene where we stumble into a couple having a quickie in a doorway. (If that doesn't sound pulse-quickening to you, scroll down my blog, poke around, there are plenty of pieces to choose from.)

Wonderstruck's poetic cadences made me reach fo' a spoken word artist's kind of microphone flow. No I didn't do any accent for this narration, WS, I just didn't hear one in my head!  Maybe next time :-)

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

The Cleanup, excerpted from a novel by Ravi Kotecha, narrated by Russil Tamsen.  13 mins.  Written version here. A couple of young dudes from India - runaways from an earlier chapter - have inserted themselves into the business of smuggling guns and opium. They are now wandering around the rutted back tracks of Afghanistan, haggling and trying to spend as much of their arms trade money as possible buying up as much opium as their rickety vehicles can carry.  Wow, this was a vocal actor's challenge. Jumping between several Indian and Arabic voicings, phew!  I love picturing these exotic locales... And it's a nerve-wracking tale too: we're just waiting for the shoe to drop, for their hubris to catch up with them! That, however, would be part of a later chapter. I initially voiced the narrator as an Indian, but later decided to go with my regular voice. It's a tough call when the narrator is first person, but it seemed like too much Indian the other way. What do you think?

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

Quirky little flash fiction by Niven aka monkeyerror, as narrated by Russil Tamsen. 5 mins. Original text here.

It's about a bored chick whose day at home is interrupted by a perp on the run, breaking and entering. She nearly fractures his arm using furniture in self defense, but as the two get to know each other he turns out to be as harmless as wet noodles.

Whoa, dude, I think that guy was Spiccoli's brother.

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

10. The Thief and the Poet, part 2.

Short story written by Jen Mountebank, narrated by Russil Tamsen. Original text here.

Here's the conclusion to the saga of a strange trio who find themselves in the same prison cell: one 'uninhibited' nutjob of a thief, a distressed poet who likes to pontificate, and a stammering Manhattan Jew of a narrator. They will wrestle with the inability of writers to keep an audience's interest without in some way plagiarizing. Part 2 is 7 mins. 

This short story was pretty intellectually funny, and dark too. A warning for all youse authors like me who find youse selves straddling both high brow and low brow worlds! 

Part One here.

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!