I loved this story. The lyrical prose was so rich I was able to linger over it…like rolling around high-quality chocolate in your mouth before eating it…but no so overwhelming as to lose me. I’ve not only shared this story with all my friends, I’ve tweeted it and posted about it on my blog. It’s rare that a short story will do that to me. I’m a consumer, not a fan. I use them and throw them away, rarely revisiting them. This story, though, is a treasure.

Great job Leah and Word Whore. I’m not blind enough not to notice that yes, story and narrator go hand in hand.

My only critique is the same as many others, the music was too loud at the most imporant parts. I liked it (especially the sound effects, I too had a huge furnace in my basement as a child and it terrified me) but it needed to be turned down…a lot.

3.The music itself wasn’t bad per se. There is a skill to scoring to film (or scoring to story in this case, though the film is in your mind) and this I imagine is why the complaints. They didn’;t score for the story at that monet to create suspense, or build suspense. It didn’t really lend itself to the story other than it was scary sounds for a scary story. It also wasn’t mixed well at all; thus why the complaints. :)

Can we get Brian Ibbott from Coverville for a reading. He might be better suited for a more upbeat story.

Like Ogion, I wasn’t sure at first whether the sounds were coming from outside or from the podcast, and that made it delightfully jarring. I found myself looking forward to the swells of sound in the silent parts, and I felt drawn to the character, because I felt that she was listening as well.

The story itself reminded me of a Minature storyon PodCastle a few months back; I think someone mentioned it above. I like houses that are alive.

And I loved the twist of this story. It was surprising, and yet felt inevitable, which is the best kind of twist.

Thom Merrilin once said, “A woman will kill you for half the reason of a man, but cry twice as hard afterward.”

He must have crossed paths with Leah Bobet.

Well done.

“She whispers, with the internal voice nobody else can hear.”

I believe that’s called “thinking.” Sorry for the snark, but overwriting like this grates on my nerves. He wrote, his fingers contacting the plastic keys of his keyboard that caused his words to appear on the monitor before him.

The story isn’t helped either, at least to my ears, by the reading. It’s not so much the flat delivery as the fact that every sentence is read with pretty much the same rhythm and inflection, the effect being almost comically monotonous. That deadened, flat voice seems to be a trademark style for female Pseudopod narrators, but it makes every female protagonist sound like a Prozac-bombed basket case.

Anyway, mixed feelings for this listener. I enjoyed the author’s style except for a few places where the writing gets a little out of control, and the character’s situation really came alive for me — I didn’t expect to really care about her, but I did. With a bit more ruthless editing I think this would be a top-notch story. As it is, it’s still enjoyable.

By the way, I don’t know whether or not the author is a fan of the Simpsons, but if I were editing this, I would change the line, “the house smelled like burning,” since it’s close enough to a famous Simpsons quote to be unintentionally funny.

Otherwise, I think the music added a lot, those creepy sounds in the background just tickle the edges of your consciousness and are really disturbing in addition to complementing the tenor of the reading and content of the story. The way it reinforced the clean break was a nice effect as well, since the reading didn’t really give me enough time to contemplate what happened before starting in on the next day. And that faint wavering staticky sound in the epilogue conceptually fit with the story while keeping me on edge.

The addition of effects and music worked best, when it was more in the background. It reminded me a little of the Fatal Frame (Project Zero) videogame series.

I actually liked the sound and the reading. I thought word whore’s voice was great, and I found the sound of the boiler refreshingly creepy. Perhaps its because I was always scared by our heater as a child: it kept me awake nights imagining monsters at the door even when my mother sat on my bed explaining each mechanical sound. I just never believed her explanations.

so, don’t despair.

I thought the music got too loud, overpowered the reading.