The Tyee ? An Early Holiday Gift: Steve Burgess's Poignant Family ...

The tale begins with a crisis and a Dickensian voyage though Christmas Past. The first installment in an 11-segment series.

Steve Burgess, writer, former CBC radio host and deliquent son.

Welcome to the first of what we hope will become a regular feature on The Tyee. Audio books! But first, a quick word about how this came about.

It started with Tyee regular contributor, Steve Burgess. As you may be aware, in 2011 Steve wrote a humorous and heartfelt memoir last year called, Who Killed Mom: A Delinquent Son?s Meditation on Family, Mortality, and Very Tacky Candles. The story begins at Christmas at Steve's parent's house in Manitoba. So, we thought, how can we package it up as a gift for our loyal Tyee readers this Christmas? That's where our able and enthusiastic intern, Stacey Sellars, stepped in a few months ago. She approached a local audiobook company, Post Hypnotic Press, to find out how much it might cost to produce an audio version of Steve's book.

Post Hypnotic Press is a relatively new audiobook company, one of only three in Canada, publishing a variety of titles, but with a core of strong, intelligent books by thoughtful, and thought-provoking, Canadian authors. When they heard what we had in mind, they saw an opportunity. "Why stop at offering Steve's book?" they said. "We're offering some really great non-fiction books, many by local authors, some of them Tyee builders, and we're huge fans of The Tyee. Couldn't we work together to make something happen?"

And so, this is what we're doing. We're starting with Steve's touching memoir, audio-book-style, in full, for free, for you. We're publishing two chapters a day for the next 11 days. But, if you like it and want the full version, not broken into chunks, do consider buying it from Post-Hypnotic books or the print version from Douglas & McIntyre.

Once those are done, we're we're going to offer individual chapters of other great Post Hypnotic Press audio books in the weeks and months to come. Sometimes, we'll offer the whole book, in pieces, as with Who Killed Mom. Sometimes, we'll offer a chapter or two (Post Hypnotic does have to pay the writers, actors, and other staff that work to produce the audiobooks).

Speaking of which, to learn more about Post Hypnotic Press, browse their catalogue and perhaps buy some audio books in time for Christmas, go here:

If you want to set up your system to automatically download these books as they are published, do this:

? For those using iTunes, go here: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/podcasts-from-the-tyee/id557209921?mt=2

? For those using other subscription services, here's the raw RSS feed: http://feeds.feedblitz.com/tyee-podcasts

? And the mobile version of that raw RSS feed: http://m.feedblitz.com/tyee-podcasts

Enjoy!

Dear readers and commenters, you may notice that comments are not enabled for this story. In what has become a Tyee tradition, we're closing the commenting system for the holidays to allow our hardworking team a brief respite and chance to recharge. Thanks for all the insightful, informative comments in 2012. We look forward with happy anticipation to more of the same in 2013.

Steve Burgess is a freelance writer, regular contributor to The Tyee, and author of Who Killed Mom?, published in 2011 by Greystone Books.

Source: http://thetyee.ca/Books/2012/12/22/Burgess-Audiobook-Memoir/

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