The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts — Prologue: The Clinic

The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts — Prologue: The Clinic

Tall And True Short Reads

The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts — Prologue: The Clinic

Episode 102 (6 February 2025)

The terrace house door creaks open, and the women sitting in the converted front room glance at the newcomers: another nervous-looking young woman in her late teens or early twenties and an older woman, probably her mother, judging by their shared chubby features. The two women cross to the receptionist’s desk.

READ SHOW NOTES

The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts — Prologue: The Clinic

Show Notes

Season Five: Episode 102 (6 February 2025)

The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts — Prologue: The Clinic is a short story by Robert Fairhead from the Tall And True writers’ website.

Read Robert’s writing on Tall And True: https://www.tallandtrue.com.au

Listen to podcast episodes on Tall And True Short Reads: https://www.tallandtrueshortreads.com

Listen to the Season Five Trailer: https://www.tallandtrueshortreads.com/introducing-season-five/

Support the podcast: https://supporter.acast.com/tall-and-true-short-reads

Buy Robert’s short story and microfiction collections online:

Story Insight

As I explained in the trailer Introducing Season Five, the first four seasons of Tall And True Short Reads featured the short stories, blog posts, and other writings I’ve shared on Tall And True. Most were standalone episodes, but I also released multipart episodes for longer stories and posts.

For Season Five, I’m doing something different. I’m writing and narrating a series of interconnected short stories titled The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts. Prologue: The Clinic is the first episode.  

In the Season Five trailer, I quoted the Gotham Writers Workshop’s definition of the interconnected or linked stories genre as “stories that are complete in that each story can stand alone, but when put together, they interrelate and create a larger whole.” 

My goal with Season Five is to explore “sliding doors” moments. Each episode will be a standalone story set at a different time in Leo’s life, but his nine lives will interconnect to create a “larger whole”. 

As with my other writing, I will draw on elements of autofiction in The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts. For example, while I don’t specify a date for The Clinic episode, I wrote the prologue story with a 1960s or ’70s setting in mind. I was born in England in 1962, and researching the contraceptive and unplanned pregnancy options for women like Rita in my story at that time was a sobering insight into the predicament faced by my teenage mother. Thankfully, unlike Rita’s Billy, my father kept his promises!  

The next episode in Season Five, and the first of Leo’s nine lives, will appear in your podcast feed shortly. In the meantime, browse your feed or the podcast website to listen to 101 episodes from the past four seasons.

You can read my short stories, blog posts, and other writings at TallAndTrue.com. You can also buy my short story and microfiction collections, including my latest collection, One Day in the Life of Alex’s AI and Other Speculative Fiction, from the Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Kobo online bookstores. 

Please follow or subscribe to Tall And True Short Reads and rate and review it via your favourite podcasting app. Doing so helps me share my storytelling with other listeners.

You can financially support the podcast and my Season Five stories by making a small one-off or regular donation through the Acast Supporter Page

Finally, please share this episode with family and friends and spread the word about Tall And True Short Reads and the Tall And True writers’ website.

Podcast Theme and Sound Effects

Royalty-free music from Pixabay.com: Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 15 in D major, Op. 28 ‘Pastorale’ – IV. Rondo. Allegro ma non-Troppo, performed by Karine Gilanyan.

Sound effects licensed under Creative Commons 0 from FreeSound.org:

Production Notes

Tall And True Short Reads is produced using Audacity. Podcast episodes are recorded in Sydney, Australia, on the traditional lands of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation.

Acast Podcast Supporter Page

Support this show: https://supporter.acast.com/tall-and-true-short-reads.

Contact Us

The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts — Prologue: The Clinic

Introducing Season Five

Tall And True Short Reads

Season Five Trailer

Introducing Season Five (23 January 2025)

Most episodes from the past four seasons of Tall And True Short Reads are standalone, but I’ve also released multipart episodes for longer short stories. For Season Five, I’m doing something different. I’m writing and narrating a series of interconnected short stories titled The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts.

READ SHOW NOTES

Season Five Trailer

Show Notes

Introducing Season Five (23 January 2025)

Tall And True Short Reads is a storytelling podcast featuring short stories, blog posts and other writings written and narrated by Robert Fairhead from the Tall And True writers’ website.

For Season Five, Robert is doing something different: He’s writing and narrating a series of interconnected short stories specifically for the podcast, The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts.

Robert’s Insight

I launched my storytelling podcast in September 2020 with Episode 1, Five Meet on Zoom, releasing the milestone Episode 100, Twin Souls in the Universe, during Season Four in October 2024. 

The first four seasons of Tall And True Short Reads featured the short stories, blog posts, and other writings I’ve shared on the Tall And True writer’s website

Most were standalone episodes, but I also released multipart episodes for longer stories and posts, such as Both Sides of the Story from Season One, Two Visits to the Berlin Wall from Season Three, and Some Things Change from Season Four.

For Season Five, I’m doing something different. I’m writing and narrating a series of interconnected short stories titled The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts

I learned about interconnected stories from hearing the Australian author Nick Earls on ABC Radio National’s The Book Show. In a 2021 episode, he discussed his five-part interconnected novella, Empires (on Amazon), and the “interconnected novel” that inspired him, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (on Amazon). I read both books and was fascinated by the possibilities of genre. 

The Gotham Writers Workshop defines the interconnected or linked stories genre as:

Stories that are complete in that each story can stand alone, but when put together, they interrelate and create a larger whole. 

My multipart Both Sides of the Story fits this definition. It consists of four self-contained vignettes and a fifth piece (split into two parts for the podcast) that ties together and resolves the larger story. So, although I didn’t know it then, I have shared an interconnected collection of stories on Tall And True Short Reads!

However, this will be my first conscious attempt to write interconnected short stories. It will also be my first time writing stories specifically for the podcast and not adapting them from Tall And True.  

The first episode of The Nine Lives of Leo Roberts, Prologue – The Clinic, will appear in your podcast feed shortly. In the meantime, search your feed or the podcast website to listen to 101 episodes from the past four seasons.

You can read my short stories, blog posts, and other writings at TallAndTrue.com. You can also buy my short story collections, including the latest, One Day in the Life of Alex’s AI and Other Speculative Fiction, from the Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Kobo online bookstores. 

Please follow or subscribe to Tall And True Short Reads and rate and review it via your favourite app. Doing so helps me share my storytelling with other listeners.

You can financially support the podcast and the Season Five stories by making a small one-off or regular donation through the Acast Supporter Page.

Finally, please share this trailer with family and friends and spread the word about Tall And True Short Reads and the Tall And True writers’ website.

Podcast Theme and Sound Effects

Royalty-free music from Pixabay.com: Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 15 in D major, Op. 28 ‘Pastorale’ – IV. Rondo. Allegro ma non-Troppo, performed by Karine Gilanyan.

Sound effects licensed under Creative Commons 0 from FreeSound.org:

Production Notes

Tall And True Short Reads is produced using Audacity. Podcast episodes are recorded in Sydney, Australia, on the traditional lands of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation.

Acast Podcast Supporter Page

Support this show: https://supporter.acast.com/tall-and-true-short-reads.

Contact Us