Jon and Stephen Recorded Readings

On a covert mission to photograph the wreck of a Soviet submarine on the sea floor, Chief Signal Officer Carey Willow discovers it’s not just the camera looking down. Something is looking back at them from the deep. Now awoken by this intrusion into Its domain, Carey is the first to hear the entity’s call over the waves. And she is the first to serve Its will. View the original story on Vocal to r...

Content Warning : This story contains blood, graphic imagery, violence, and murder. Listener discretion is advised. A down-on-his-luck police officer finds himself assigned to the graveyard shift, casting him into the middle of a duel between exhaustion and boredom. Until one night the doldrum of patrolling the dead-end town of Hydewood is shattered when he encounters a shadow figure with glowing...

Content Warning : This story contains violence, graphic imagery, depictions of war, and allusions to murder. Listener discretion is advised. A combat veteran returns home after many months away at the front. The inhabitants beyond the door of his flat are not expecting his arrival, especially since his departure from their lives was less than graceful. No matter, now he is a hero, the sins of his...

Content Warning : This story contains blood, death, graphic imagery, and allusions to cannibalism. Listener discretion is advised. Navy divers manning a top-secret underwater lab discover they are not the only intelligent life forms plumbing the depths for knowledge. And unlike the human researchers, their contemporaries are quite well-suited to the murky blackness and crushing depths. What happen...

Content Warning : This story contains blood, graphic imagery, violence, torture, and allusions to cannibalism. Listener discretion is advised. An escapee from the prison camp of an authoritarian state, we join our haggard protagonist as he stalks the streets of the crumbling nation’s capital. His only companion? A mirror that shows a reflection that is not his own. But with the counsel of an ancie...

For this bonus addition to Season 3, we present two additional stories for your listening pleasure, neither long enough to warrant its own episode and together… still not long enough to be considered a true episode. Thus we present a bonus helping of comedy to go along with the main course we have presented over the past eight regular episodes. You’re welcome. The unifying theme for our pair of vi...

For the eighth and final episode of Season 3, we conclude young Jason’s first assignment as junior and senior Nightingale, now armed with a plan to flush out their target, do what they do best: wanton violence. However, the golden-locked girl that confronts them turns out to be more of a mask for a golden-locked demon hiding beneath. Lusario and Jason will find themselves facing physical, magical,...

For the seventh episode of Season 3, we rejoin Jason Nightingale as he settles into guard duty. But our go-getter knows better than to sit idle. On the agenda: archery practice, discussions of unconventional foods, and self-esteem exercises for a certain bear cub feeling down on his romantic prospects. Jason may even make his first-ever friend—and proceed to have a panic attack at the idea of havi...

For the sixth episode of Season 3, we join a youth from humble origins who is eager to climb the ranks of an up-and-coming private security firm known as the Nightingale Agency. Young Jason brings several advantages to the organization: no family, no friends, and no ties to otherwise distract him from his training. Just so long as the Nightingales continue to feed him, he’ll do whatever they ask....

For the fifth episode of Season 3, we have a triple header. That’s right, not just one, but three stories unified by theme and even recurring characters. That theme? Economic satire. Proceed at your own risk. You’ve been warned. For our first stop, a dastardly scheme unfolds against the innocent residents of Virginia and the supply-side economics they hold so dearly within their hearts. But can on...

For the fourth episode of Season 3, we visit the far-off future to join the CEO of SimCorp at an inflection point in his posh life built off deluding the rest of the globe. SimCorp, a corporation that has grown wealthy and powerful on the mass production of virtual reality technology. The world sits squarely under its profit-driven thumb. If, as the company promises, “reality is as near or far as...

For the third episode of Season 3, we join the Earth after the bombs of The Final War have ceased falling and the irradiated dust left over from the Very Bad Week has settled. The final vestiges of humanity have emerged and set to work on rebuilding that which represented the greatest epoch of humanity: the online writing platform Vocal. Unfortunately, the other survivors across the globe have not...

For the second episode of Season 3, we ask the age-old question: If walls could talk, would they turn out to be opinionated know-it-alls eager to talk a haggard detective’s ear off about all they had picked up from watching Jeopardy! for decades on end? That’s right, we’re taking the “If walls could talk” maxim to its logical endpoint as a wall provides a statement to the police about a grisly dea...

For the inaugural episode of Season 3, we ask the age-old question: does being the best magic wielder truly earn you the title Chief Sorcerer when everyone on the planet is learning it from scratch, including you? Forgotten by their futuristic sci-fi government, the settlers of a desolate world must learn to make do with what is left behind. Fortunately, the planet offers one advantage: the existe...

From absurdity to economic satire to meta humor, Season 3 has something for everyone. Unless you hate to laugh, in which case, who hurt you?

Stephen takes the mic for a special announcement and promise: from Jon's lips to your ears, no ads shall ever sully this space for independent writing and narration. Not now. Not ever.

For this special presentation, we feature our first-ever guest author Matthew Fromm. But fear not: our trusty narrator Jonathan Kilgore remains at the helm. When fire altogether wilder than that brought on by the Santa Ana winds sweeps across Los Angeles, a highly trained and secret team of elite warriors is dispatched to deal with its source. Instead of an unattended campfire, a downed power line...

This week's episode is a follow up to our previous special episode. Following the events of Dick Winchester Book 1 ( The Opening Salvo ), the war for the soul of the Arlington, Virginia food delivery industry is turning hot. A ragtag band of underground delivery drivers must overcome the combined forces of Öber Eats, FloorDash, and their local real estate kingpin backer. Assuming the lizardmen...

This week's episode is a special feature that may be some of the best comedy writing I've ever done. "The Box with No Name" created title character Dick Winchester, a protagonist so zany and fun that he in turn inspired me to create the Dick Winchester Adventures, a series that just debuted with Book 1: The Opening Salvo . "The Box with No Name" kicks off as Dick receiv...

This week's episode is a special feature near and dear to your author. "Sinking Prospects" not only netted me my first ever Vocal challenge win, Runner Up in the Vocal Ship of Dreams Challenge, but it also inspired an entire series around our indomitable protagonist Martin Williams that is now Stephen's first-ever book . "Sinking Prospects" follows Martin as he fights t...

This week's episode follows a fictitious figure during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Though our protagonist Ezra and his actions are the product of the author's imagination, they are based on the real heroes who fought back against their Nazi captors in the dark days of 1943. You can read the episode transcript as well as the Author's Note on Vocal to learn more about this event: https:/...

This week's episode follows the sailors of Oyster, a lifesaving ship stationed on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. When a distress call goes out that a merchantman is sinking in a winter gale, Oyster's crew jumps to, unaware that they will soon come to face with the United States' newest enemy: a hunter that prowls the depths and claims its victims from beneath the waves. View the ep...

This week's episode presents Stephen's first and only fan fiction to date. Inspired by his editing work on Book 2 of the Echoes trilogy, he set out to predict how it would all end in the third and final installment. Along the way, he had a heck of a lot of fun introducing time travel to the series and thrusting the series protagonists Laura and Maverick up against the nefarious Dr. Alice a...

This week's episode features "The Rocks," a nautical tale of stoicism and faith in the face of a withering storm set in the 17th century. This story was written for the Vocal Painted Prose challenge and placed 2nd overall. As part of the challenge, "The Rocks" is based off a real painting: Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast by Ludolf Backhuysen (1667). The author was lucky...

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