The Mumpsimus

I've got one very special post saved for tomorrow, but this post will end my own contributions to the Third Bear Carnival . To bring things to a close, I recorded a reading of a very short story hidden in the Afterword to the book, called "The Magician"... (It may take a few seconds to load and buffer.) [Direct link]

I've been meaning for a while to record a reading of my story "A Map of the Everywhere", first published in Interfictions , because when I've done a reading of the story, the response has often been somewhat different from the response to the text on the page -- many people have told me they hadn't realized the story was humorous until I read it aloud. Here, then, is an mp3 of me reading the story. It's not particularly high quality -- the microphone I have is one step up from something in a Cracker Jack box. I'm also a better reader with an audience. And there are some glitches in the first minute or two. But for what it's worth, here is "A Map of the Everywhere". Here's a direct link to the file.