I’ve just podcasted a reading from my forthcoming young adult novel, “Little Brother,” about San Francisco hacker kids who fight back against the Department of Homeland Security. Tor will publish it in May, 2008.
I really went to town on the samples and mixing in this one, hauling out Audacity, the free/open sound-editing program, and grabbing a boatload of samples from the Freesound project, and a little punk guitar from the Anchormen, a great Boston act.
As soon as we sat down, she unrolled her burrito and took a little bottle out of her purse. It was a little stainless-steel aerosol canister that looked for all the world like a pepper-spray self-defense unit. She aimed it at her burrito’s exposed guts and misted them with a fine red oily spray. I caught a whiff of it and my throat closed and my eyes watered.
“What the hell are you doing to that poor, defenseless burrito?”
She gave me a wicked smile. “I’m a spicy food addict,” she said. “This is capsaicin oil in a mister.”
“Capsaicin –”
“Yeah, the stuff in pepper spray. This is like pepper spray but slightly more dilute. And way more delicious. Think of it as Spicy Cajun Visine if it helps.”
My eyes burned just thinking of it.
“You’re kidding,” I said. “You are so not going to eat that.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “That sounds like a challenge, sonny. You just watch me.”
She rolled the burrito up as carefully as a stoner rolling up a joint, tucking the ends in, then re-wrapping it in tinfoil. She peeled off one end and brought it up to her mouth, poised with it just before her lips.