It’s time to kick-off another week of fabulous story-telling in Voice, brought to Second Life by the staff of the Seanchai Library SL. This week features the usual tea-time date at Baker Street, and a visit to the quirky world of one Frank Key.
As always, all times SLT, and unless otherwise stated, events will be held on the Seanchai Library’s home on Imagination Island.
In March and April Seanchai are inviting library guests to join them in supporting their featured real world charity Project Children! Have questions? IM or notecard Caledonia Skytower.
Sunday April 14th, 13:30: The Adventure of the Naval Treaty
The 19th on his list of nineteen favourite Holmes stories, Conan Doyle uses a letter received by Dr. John Watson as the springboard of this adventure.
The letter is from an old friend of Watson’s, one Percy Phelps, now working for the Foreign Office. It appears that Phelps has been recovering at the home in Woking he shares with his fiancée and her bother after a most distressing incident at his place of work, which took place over two months previously.
While working on an important naval treaty at his place of work, Phelps had requested a cup of coffee. Unusually, the office commissionaire’s wife had responded to his summons, rather than the commissionaire himself, but she had promised to deliver the coffee as requested. When the beverage failed to arrive, Phelps left his office by one of the two entrances to find out why. To his surprise, he found the commissionaire – who would normally be watching the main entrance to the office – fast asleep, the kettle boiling and the commissionaire’s wife nowhere to be found. At that moment, the bell from his office rang, indicating someone was inside – and much have used the side entrance. Fearing for the treaty’s safety, Phelps rushed back to his office to find the treaty had vanished.
Holmes and Watson set out to investigate, first at Phelps’ place of work, then by visiting him in Woking. All the evidence points towards espionage on the part of the commissionaire’s wife – but Holmes is far from convinced; particularly as the treaty has yet to be divulged by a foreign power in order to embarrass Her Britannic Majesty’s government.
Then someone armed with a knife attempts to break-in to the room in which Phelps is still convalescing at his Woking home …
Once again, Caledonia Skytower brings us another tale from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
Monday April 8th, 19:00: Classic Tales from Russia
Join Caledonia Skytower as she brings tales from the ródina to life.
Tuesday April 9th, 19:00: Selections from The Hooting Yard
Frank Key is an English self-published writer, blogger, broadcaster and voice behind Resonance FM’s long-running radio series Hooting Yard on the Air, a weekly show broadcast live and consisting almost entirely of Key narrating his own short stories and observations.
Frank Key’s prose reduces meaning to dust and then resurrects it in his own skewed image. But no creative genius is less godlike than Frank: his world is mournful, crazy, stupefyingly complex, hilarious and dark, peopled by characters at once engaging and perverse.
– Edmund Baxter
Join Crap Mariner as he presents a selection of Key’s writings.
Wednesday April 10th, 19:00: Spring Into Stories
Spring is sprung, the grass is ris.
I wonders where the birdies is.
They say the birds is on the wing.
Ain’t that absurd?
I always thought the wing was on the bird.
(Ogden Nash or ee cummings)
Gina Pralou-Maven and Faerie Maven-Pralou get together a rich bouquet of Spring Stories to delight your fancy. The trees are budding, the flowers are blooming, the bees are beginning to buzz and all the world seems bursting with new life and new possibilities! Presented live in voice.
Thursday April 11th, 19:00: The Darkside: Tales of Guy De Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th Century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form’s finest exponents. During his life he authored some 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse, prior to his premature death.
Here Shandon Loring brings some of Maupassant’s dark tales to life; stories of the supernatural which explore the furthest reaches of the macabre and at the same time parallel de Maupassant’s own descent into madness and death.
