The 9th chapter of The Everyforest was at long last completed late last week, both the text and audio (via The Side B Anthology podcast) available to read or listen to for whoever is interested. It should be noted that the instrument whose strings I pluck at (amateurishly) at the beginning of the audio version is not a lyre but a ukulele; I had to use what I had on hand.
Recording the audio to upload for the podcast is quite different from the headspace necessary for performing the reading in full in real time, so especially with long readings like this one, I end up editing the recording afterward. This usually means removing long pauses, breaks to drink water, heavy sighs, moments where you can hear a car passing or neighbours talking in the hall, or else my fumbled attempts at reading full passages resulting in me starting over again.
And of course, the occasional interruption from Scout.
I use very rudimentary tools to create and edit the recordings (read: the voice memo app on my phone) so editing is limited to removing sections from a single audio file and nothing more.
In the beginning, I was rather a purist about it and would often just keep deleting and restarting the entire recording until I could read the text properly the whole way through, but as texts got longer, that stopped seeming reasonable. So, for anyone interested, the raw audio for TE9 is below.
If you just want to hear Scout interrupt me and then say “mrrrrrw?”, skip straight to the 44:50 mark.
I had long intended for this novella to be nine chapters, but after careful consideration I eventually decided to split that last chapter in two for a total of ten. It was getting much too long… and now it matches the length of ALICE NINE.’s album GRACE as well. That final chapter is largely written, so It will be out (and this incredibly dense, weird novella finished) in 2023.
And now I’m off to do a bit of reading before bed…