So, about a month ago, a friend at work mentioned casually to a group of us that she was listening to a podcast that someone had started where they were reading Grimm's Fairy Tales.
It was indeed a life-changing moment for me.
My brain went: "...what?!? Someone's reading stories... and getting their voice heard?"
And my voice went: "HELL, I CAN DO THAT!!"
Which surprised everyone, including me, because normally I'm a very quiet person at work. Unless I'm making a sarcastic comment, or offering someone a piece of advice, I generally keep to myself. I am the very model definition of an introvert.
But, in that moment, I pivoted. A lightbulb went off. And I fell down a rabbit hole.
Very quickly, I found a podcast hosting site, an audio editor for podcasts and several marketing tools. And then came the daunting task of finding material to read. I say daunting, because it truly is.
In order to be able to read aloud in a public forum like a podcast, one has to stay within the realm of Public Domain. And there are literally thousands of stories to choose from. So, where would I start?
Since I was a child, my favorite stories were always mysteries. When I was about 7 years old, which would have been about second grade, I was gifted a book. By this time I was already reading at a 5th grade level easily, so naturally a book was a perfect gift for me. To this day, I remember quite clearly which book it was: The Hardy Boys mystery series, book number 52 - The Shattered Helmet, Grossett & Dunlap, publishers. I inhaled this book, literally cover to cover. I soon began to seek out more Hardy Boys books at the library to borrow, a little sad that I couldn't purchase the entire series to keep for myself, to read at my leisure. But, thank God for libraries! I finished what few my school and local public library had, and moved on to other series that piqued my budding interest in mysteries. I found Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol, and then in Junior High I found another series: Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators by Robert Arthur. Every single story captured my imagination. Heroes, all of them, for using their brains to solve mysteries and help misfortunate people in dire situations. For me, there was no better superhero. No comic book story could sway me from this genre. Not even Batman, who IS a detective, could draw me in like those three book series could.
Eventually, in high school, I stopped reading. I was trying to figure out where my place in this world was, so I kept trying to adapt myself to finding myself in whatever things older kids did. It was the mid 80s, so I listened to popular music. I watched blockbuster summer movies. I browsed through my local video store. Stories always held their sway on me, and eventually I went to work at a hybrid record and video store, moving up to assistant manager in the video department, because I became very adept at finding the right movie for each personality. My next job was working for a brand new movie theater that opened up in my town. During this time I also, quite accidentally, found myself being the lead in a college production of The Wind in The Willows where I played Mr Toad. I had never acted before, but infusing my soul with so many stories, from the printed page, to Weekend specials on TV showcasing Abbott & Costello, Hope & Crosby, Martin & Lewis, gave me an innate sense of comedic timing and reaction.
Now, I was hooked. Telling stories was something special. Wherever I could find time as an adult, I joined local community theaters and have done several different shows. During this time, I rediscovered my love of reading, and I was instantly drawn to Cozy Mysteries. I became enamored with wonderful, amazing stories by authors such as Daryl Wood Gerber, Paige Shelton, and my personal favorite, Ellery Adams, and so many others.
So when it came time to find stories to read for this new venture, I immediately scoured Project Gutenberg for mysteries. I found, of course, stories by Agatha Christie - which I considered for a bit - and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were there as well. But many of those had already been done, and it wasn't something that I felt called to do.
So I kept looking. I eventually found myself following a link for one of Project Gutenberg's newest releases, which was a sci-fi story written in the 1930s. The description said that the story was originally published in a magazine called Astounding Stories. The cover image was quite striking, one of those images you see in pulp magazines with a rocket ship, and some guy in a spacesuit firing a laser gun at some weird-looking alien.
Fascinated, I began researching pulp magazines which led me to the discovery of their origins: dime novels and weekly story papers, which had been around since the early to mid-1800s, around the time of the Civil War! My heart leaped! These were stories that hadn't been read or heard from in well over 100 years - and they deserved to have their day in the sun again. And thanks to Project Gutenberg, that seemed to be happening. But I was faced with the same dilemma as before: where do I begin?
I followed my gut instinct, much like a detective, and found myself researching the mystery stories of the pulp magazines. One name began to stand out time and again: Nick Carter. It definitely helped that he had his own weekly magazine, and the more I read about him, the more I became convinced that this was where I was going to start - and more than likely, stay for quite a while.
Nick Carter was a detective modeled in the same vein as my early heroes: he used his brain to figure out the crime and he always helped those who couldn't help themselves. Always cool, calm and collected, he never drank liquor nor smoked, which in the late 1800s was a rarity. He immediately struck me as the kind of character that deserved to be recognized in American fiction, but unfortunately since his stories appeared in what was considered low-quality crap for the masses, our American Sherlock has never been given his proper due. The stories were well thought out and written, and he remained in print from the early 1890s to around 1910 in the first version of the Nick Carter character. He was revived in the 1930s as more of a hard-boiled detective - think Humphrey Bogart-style - but that version never really caught on as the early stories did.
And so, it struck me that this character needed his own "Nick Carter" to right his wrong, and hopefully I can do that over the next several months and years, because there are literally hundreds of Nick Carter stories to tell. Only a few have been so far digitized by Project Gutenberg, at the time of this writing there are about 48 titles. However, hundreds more exist in digital form in online libraries in major universities and colleges. They still need to be digitized as e-books, and eventually I'm certain that the tireless volunteers at Project Gutenberg will get to them. It just takes a lot of time and money. So as I mentioned in the last blog post, I will gladly donate to Project Gutenberg for every "coffee purchase" or monthly membership subscription supporting me and my efforts to revive the past. With the help of many more listeners, hopefully Nick Carter will again rise to a place of honor in our American history.
