My story “Godzilla as a Young Man Named Mike” will be featured on PodCastle’s Disability Pride & Magic special at the end of July, 2025.
I’ve been talking about this over on BlueSky, but here’s some more detail for the curious!
Disability Pride?
This is an event celebrating another spectrum of the human experience. Like the other famous Pride, it’s not about hiding who you are or feeling shame. It’s about being who you are.
PodCastle’s Disability Pride & Magic month-long special features stories of disabled characters living their lives, struggling with the world, taking centre stage as the heroes of their own stories.
And yes, in this case, it is an “Own Voices” story.
(That will take a whole other post. I’ll put it up sometime soon. If I remember.)
What’s this story about?
It’s contemporary fantasy fiction set in Glasgow. The eponymous Mike finds himself going through alarming changes after the pandemic lockdowns. His skin is getting scaly, his spine longer, and his eyes more suited to a swamp than a computer monitor. But he’s still forced to go back in to the office of his tech job like everyone else.
Kaydee’s used to slipping though life unnoticed. The clouds of fog that hide her from the rest of the world don’t do much to change that. But something about her work colleague, Mike, means he can see her where others don’t.
This is a story about finding a friend when the world’s built specifically to exclude you, and about one person’s monster being another person’s hero.
Putting a voice to the words
As a podcast, it naturally has a recorded version, which needs a narrator. I’ve only ever had one other story, Broken Blue, recorded to audio podcast, so this was still pretty nerve wracking! PodCastle were kind enough to ask if I had a narrator in mind. At first, I was a bit stumped – so many great possibilities exist.
But then I remembered, PodCastle had already used someone just perfect: Eliza Chan!
Eliza Chan is a Scottish-born speculative fiction author living in Manchester, UK. Her #1 Sunday Times bestselling debut novel FATHOMFOLK and sequel TIDEBORN— inspired by mythology, East and Southeast Asian cities and diaspora feels — are out now. Her short fiction has featured in The Dark, Podcastle, Fantasy Magazine and The Best of British Fantasy.
Photo credit: Sandi Hodkinson
Not just an author of fabulous books, but a narrator too!
The story’s set in Glasgow, so having a person who had the accent and could pronounce all the names of things was going to make things easier, but more than that, Eliza’s the right age for Kaydee, and an awesome person! I gave them her name and hoped.
Hurrah! She was available and happy to read the story.
So what now?
We listen to the other stories in the PodCastle special in July! Mine should be out on the 29th, a Tuesday, all being well.
Hope you like it. 🫶
More info
Read more about the PodCastle Disability Pride & Magic special here, including all the other episodes’ authors!
https://podcastle.org/2025/06/30/disability-pride-magic-month/
