One of my favorite genre magazines is Shimmer Magazine. General Editor Beth Wodzinski and her staff have truly terrific tastes — they’ve bought three of my pieces so far (the latest of which was commissioned) — and the art direction, by Mary Robinette Kowal, is simply second to none. Seriously. Cover to cover it’s the most beautiful magazine out there.
Anyway, with the publication of my first piece in Shimmer I was accorded the honor of being their second “featured author.” Quite nifty. Part of this honor involved me sitting in front of my computer for an evening, recording myself reading my tale, a pretty substantial piece entitled “Gnome Season.”
While I’m no particular voice-acting talent, I think it’s still a decent listen:
[audio:GnomeSeason.mp3]Jason Sizemore, himself the editor of a terrific genre magazine, Apex Digest, reviewed this story for Tangent Online. What he had to say:
Michael Livingston contributes the dark, endearing story, “Gnome Season.” To tell the truth, Livingston did much more with a story about hunting live garden gnomes than I expected. Wrapped around an intense (and often amusing) urban hunt for gnomes is a wild treatise about parenthood, expectations, and the scars of a lifelong resentment. . . . This is an effective, weird story that is the hallmark of what makes Shimmer good.