The Old Man And The Sparrow, A Touching Short Story By Sarah Dame (known Around These Tumblr Parts As

Cry It Out Baby, a short story by Ariadne Paige aka mslabyrinth, narration by Russil Tamsen. What a touching piece of magical realism this is. Or you might call it a parable. So beautifully written - not a comma out of place, nor an unnecessary word! Original text here.

A dumped lass slowly repairs her emotional self one step at a time, but her decision to skip the grieving stage has some paranormal consequences. Is she losing her mind - as well as her hands? It's only through the kindly intercession of a nearby babushka in the girl's greatest moment of need that the healing tears are finally triggered.

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

Cry It Out Baby, a short story by Ariadne Paige aka mslabyrinth, narration by Russil Tamsen. What a touching piece of magical realism this is. Or you might call it a parable. So beautifully written - not a comma out of place, nor an unnecessary word! Original text here.

A dumped lass slowly repairs her emotional self one step at a time, but her decision to skip the grieving stage has some paranormal consequences. Is she losing her mind - as well as her hands? It’s only through the kindly intercession of a nearby babushka in the girl’s greatest moment of need that the healing tears are finally triggered.

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

Autumn Wing, a monologue by Blank's Page, performed by Russil Tamsen. 5 mins. Written version here.

A wistful piece from the windowless halls of an insane asylum, with its routines of meds and scheduling... and one redemptive walk per day past a mystery lady in the courtyard.

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

The Future of Poop, comic monologue penned by Peter Bradley, performed by Russil Tamsen. Original here. 6 mins.

This was just too fucking funny for me to pass up! The conceit is simple: earthlings in the future invent time travel technology... and use it as a waste disposal chute. We in the past, specifically our bodies, are the hapless recipients of future waste. (It's probably going to happen, too, right?) There's only one way to solve this problem.

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

The Cleanup, excerpted from a novel by Ravi Kotecha, narrated by Russil Tamsen.  13 mins.  Written version here. A couple of young dudes from India - runaways from an earlier chapter - have inserted themselves into the business of smuggling guns and opium. They are now wandering around the rutted back tracks of Afghanistan, haggling and trying to spend as much of their arms trade money as possible buying up as much opium as their rickety vehicles can carry.  Wow, this was a vocal actor’s challenge. Jumping between several Indian and Arabic voicings, phew!  I love picturing these exotic locales… And it’s a nerve-wracking tale too: we’re just waiting for the shoe to drop, for their hubris to catch up with them! That, however, would be part of a later chapter. I initially voiced the narrator as an Indian, but later decided to go with my regular voice. It’s a tough call when the narrator is first person, but it seemed like too much Indian the other way. What do you think?

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

Second Story Window, a short story by Gibson Grand, narrated by Russil Tamsen. 6 mins. Original here. It's a night of awkward teenage blues when a fat boy and a homely girl are the only ones not hooking up at a basement party... She is soon blossoming into a beauty. To his chagrin, she will catch him peeping when she is bathing. They will manage to become friends anyway, but there will still be an elephant in the room... All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

Quirky little flash fiction by Niven aka monkeyerror, as narrated by Russil Tamsen. 5 mins. Original text here.

It's about a bored chick whose day at home is interrupted by a perp on the run, breaking and entering. She nearly fractures his arm using furniture in self defense, but as the two get to know each other he turns out to be as harmless as wet noodles.

Whoa, dude, I think that guy was Spiccoli's brother.

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

At The Whisky Girl, a flash fiction by Scott Syx aka cheshirecatgrins, read by Russil Tamsen. 4:21 mins. Original text here. 

An unlikely romantic encounter between a pair of drinkers starts at a noisy night club. The two grapple cautiously on the perilous road to intimacy - their respective emotional baggages casting long shadows along the way...

This piece said noir to me (although updated). So I said noir back! 

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

A steamy erotic story by Wonderstruck on Tumblr, narrated by Russil Tamsen! 3 mins. Original text here.

I needed a change of pace from the sad and dark, so I narrated this tasteful yet scorching scene where we stumble into a couple having a quickie in a doorway. (If that doesn't sound pulse-quickening to you, scroll down my blog, poke around, there are plenty of pieces to choose from.)

Wonderstruck's poetic cadences made me reach fo' a spoken word artist's kind of microphone flow. No I didn't do any accent for this narration, WS, I just didn't hear one in my head!  Maybe next time :-)

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!

The rough and tumble erotic story of disturbia by Molly Cupcakes, They'd Fucked Five Times So Far. Russil Tamsen's second audio version of the piece. 3 mins. Written text here.

It's fascinating how different acting choices by a speaker can create vastly different results. This was the first time I'd ventured two very different versions of a story, and it was enlightening. Feedback from one listener of the first version got me imagining how this flash fiction story would sound delivered in a normal narrator's voice. Using a resonant, understated approach, one that let the language do all the legwork: a very different choice from overstated version one.

To me it sounds really good this way. It might possibly be the better choice!

All rights reserved. Russil Tamsen: narrator, comic improv actor, book editor, and author of 21 ebooks. Please visit my ebookstore at QuirkEbooks.com and follow audiobooknarrator. Know a piece of Tumblr fiction that deserves a great reader? Run it by me!