Reading my audiobook was 10 times scarier than writing it.

The voicing of my words was unassailable proof I wanted this. It was irrefutable proof that it was me, I put this story out into the world. It happened with my consent, my participation. The book and the audiobook were products of my ambition and my desire.

SOUND CHECK BY CHRISTIE TATE 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 84

On the third day of recording my audiobook at a studio in downtown Chicago my back seized up with a hot, quick pain. I was reading a chapter about a guy I slept with for months but never truly knew.

I named him Brandon, and not until I’m reading the edited pages aloud into a giant silver microphone with a black mesh screen over it do I realize that I chose that name because he reminded me of Brandon Walsh from Beverly Hills 90210. Both Brandons were rich and had impressive hair.

After I’d read the Brandon chapter, the producer, whose voice beamed into the studio from Europe where she was waiting out the pandemic with her family, read me all the “pick ups”, the lines she wante…