Author Topic: CoW Ep. 279: Random Play All and the League of Awesome  (Read 3677 times)

danooli

  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1745
    • Who Doesn't Love Stories?
on: November 13, 2017, 12:30:35 PM
Random Play All and the League of Awesome

Author: Shane Halbach
Narrator: Justin Thomas James
Host: Dani Daly
Audio Producer: Jeremy Carter

Originally published in Oomph: A Little Super Goes a Long Way from Crossed Genres Publications, in October 2013, as well as Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction 2013 published by Twelfth Planet Press.

The full text is published on the new Cast of Wonders website! Check it out!
Click here to listen to Episode 279

Shane Halbach lives with his wife and three kids in a secret lair located deep under Chicago. There, he hones his superpower of being exactly wrong about which direction he needs to turn. His fiction has appeared previously at all four Escape Artists podcasts.

Justin Thomas James grew up on audiobooks and now is thrilled to be narrating them full time! Some of his works include REBOOT: Afterlife Online by Domino Finn and The Wizard Killer series by Adam Dreece. He enjoys narrating short stories on the side for fun and also has a number of children’s joke books recorded in his name.



Cyrus sat on the couch and crunched on a bowl of frosted wheat. Normally he would have sat at the table, but the table was currently covered with papers, folders and charts. His mom was finalizing her budget with her new business partner, Herman. There wasn’t much room in the one bedroom condo, so Cyrus was bumped to the couch.

He was sick to death of business plans and marketing and how much will it cost, so he put in his ear buds and switched his mp3 player on. He hit next to get a random song.

         Can’t trust me but it’s not about trust
         I make no sense, I am the walrus

Cyrus sprayed milk all over the coffee table.

He had been looking directly at Herman when that line played. He always though Herman looked like a walrus, with his droopy mustache and big belly.




Tags: betrayal, Cast of Wonders, chance, con man, fidget, friendship, information, Jeremy Carter, Justin Thomas James, music, playlists, Shane Halbach, superheroes, teamwork, trust, unique, Young Adult fiction



Michael W. Cho

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 24
Reply #1 on: November 25, 2017, 04:58:25 PM
Cute story.

One of the things that struck me afterwards was that there were no mobile phones. This seems pretty unrealistic, although completely understandable from a dramatic perspective. The author and narrator carried me along expertly so that I didn't even notice it during this very engaging story. I think the phones were taken from them in the warehouse.



Fenrix

  • Curmudgeonly Co-Editor of PseudoPod
  • Editor
  • *****
  • Posts: 3996
  • I always lock the door when I creep by daylight.
Reply #2 on: December 08, 2017, 02:13:54 PM
This was a lot of fun, and showed what could be done with seemingly lame powers. I hope StakeoutMan has someone behind him pushing him to do greater things, as he could way too easily get stuck (not unhappily) in an existential pit of awful jobs.

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”


astrokath

  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 1298
  • -between the singing stars-
Reply #3 on: October 09, 2018, 05:49:37 AM
Bouncing this one back to the top because this episode is a 2018 Parsec Award finalist!

Not the droid you're looking for.