Listen Up: Lauren Proves Magic is Real

After last year’s successful resolution, I decided to dip my toes into a new-to-me spec-fic area — podcasts.

The rules for 2018:

• I will listen to twelve spec-fic oriented podcasts, one per month.
• For each podcast, I will listen to a minimum of five episodes per podcast before I either give up or add it to my entertainment cycle.

This may be much less of a triumph. It may in fact be doomed to failure. The reasons:

• I am not good at listening or paying attention. Yet most forms of multi-tasking are out when you’re listening to audio. It comes down to baking or exercising for me, and those are not always easy to fit into my day.
• I am not patient. Reading is faster and more efficient.

But when I asked for podcast recommendations, they came fast and furious, so podcasts are obviously something people enjoy. I want to be one of them.

Last month, I didn’t make my goal of listening to 5 episodes. So this month, I stacked the deck. I chose a Lauren Proves Magic is Real. It’s a podcast that’s short (six episodes total), funny, and created by Nicole Kimberling. Nicole was my editor for Renovation, so I already have positive feelings and know where our senses of humor overlap. I figured with those things accounted for, I’d have an easy shot at success.

Last time, I had some mechanical issues that made listening to podcasts difficult. This time around, I figured out my currently ideal way to listen: on the iPad, hooked up to a speaker, while sweeping the house — a nice quiet chore, if you discount the puppy’s occasional attempt to catch the broom in her mouth. Kept my body occupied, and my brain receptive.

So… did I succeed?

Yes.

Personal triumph aside, did I enjoy this podcast experience?

Overall, yes.

Mild Spoilers for Lauren Proves Magic is Real.

Lauren Proves Magic is Real is about a twelve-year-old cat sitter who discovers that the man she’s cat sitting for is an agent for the magical NIAD agency, first seen in the anthology book, Irregulars. He’s a chef whose entry into the magical world came from learning that some of his catering clients weren’t human, but the meat provided for his entrees was. Now he’s a supernatural food inspector.

I like stories about weird special agents, and I adore stories about plucky twelve-year-old cat sitters. I always have. I blame the books I grew up on in the 70s. There seemed to be an endless array of stories involving young teens, cats, and mysteries. I still have The Cat Sitter Mystery on my shelf. I adored this book and managed to preserve it all these years. The illustrations are glorious.

The way I’m going to judge podcasts going forward is a binary: yes, I would listen to more, or no, I wouldn’t. Lauren gets a “yes.” If there were more episodes, I would have listened on.

That said, I had some issues. I am always going to have issues.

My personal issues, which are taking clearer shape with each podcast that I listen to are: a) I don’t like being read to — which I already knew and b) my inability to process spoken word stuff smoothly means that I really don’t like “voices.” It takes me too long to get used to the change in sound. Music is one thing, but speaking…. This is probably why I also have a hard time with plays: often the actors have a “mannered” way of speaking (to carry through the theater), and there are no subtitles.

So while Lauren’s voice (adult woman portraying a kid) was jarring at first, I had time to get used to it. I had fewer problems with Keith Curry’s voice, because while the podcaster was channeling “noir,” he was still an adult playing an adult. But the guest voices, especially those of the supernatural creatures, were often a loss for me. By the time I adjusted to them, they were done speaking. Which means there was plot stuff I missed. There was a pigeon that Keith kept feeding, and after a fun series of events, it began speaking.  Unfortunately, I never quite figured out what she was saying, which was a problem when she showed up for the climactic act.

That’s not on the podcasters. That’s all me. I am either going to have to allot two or three listens to each podcast episode or simply accept that I’m going to miss stuff. This time I feel like I got the gist, so kept moving forward. (Except the pigeon. I know I missed the useful details about the pigeon. I get there was a curse and some transformation, but….)

Things I liked about the podcast: “Lauren” was charming as she introduced the recordings of Mr. Curry’s case files to her audience. She felt like a plausible twelve-year old, a little too smart for her own good, yet missing the big picture entirely. She’s so excited to share what she’s learning that she doesn’t stop to think about the “secret” part of secret agent.

I am familiar with Keith Curry, the character from the Irregulars and the short stories, and I like his exasperated, burned-out take on the world. He’s just so done with it all, all the time. Who can’t sympathize with that? He’s definitely the straight-man (in the comedic sense, not in his private life — we get to “meet” Mr. Curry’s Hot Boyfriend) in a world gone mad. Of course, he also is feeding the pigeon outside his apartment, so his sanity level is questionable.

There was really only one thing that kind of irked me about the podcast: for a podcast ostensibly about Lauren, it was really all about Keith. His case files, his over-arching plot, etc. So even though Lauren learns some fun stuff about herself, it’s still all about Keith. He even got all the last words. I would have liked Lauren to have a farewell podcast.

But hey, maybe the lack of one means she’ll be back.

A smaller thing that bugged me: in Irregulars, we get page space to explain Keith’s cynicism about the agency he works for. Here, it felt a little inexplicable.

A six episode run made this pretty easy to digest. Lauren Proves Magic is Real gave me a couple of stand-alone episodes but also a reasonably engrossing larger plot-line to encourage me to move forward. Is Lauren going to get in trouble for podcasting secret files? Yes, but when? What’s going on with the pigeon? Who’s out to get Keith now?

For March, I’m going to cheat again, just a bit.  I’m going to select Steal the Stars because it’s a complete storyline in 14 episodes, and because if I get really desperate — there’s a novelization to hone my interest.

Featured image courtesy of Pexels.