The Hound and the Hedgehog: A Radio Play

This is the handmade cover for the original “The Hound and the Hedgehog” which was made out of a Harry Potter book that fell apart.  I later acquired a stuffed hedgehog and gave him the features of our lovable and fearless Pokey.

Weatherhill and Raven Heights Radio Presents

The Hound and the Hedgehog
Written by William Hardy
Script Adaptation by Heather Brooks & William Hardy
Directed by Heather Brooks

Private eye Don Keyhote knew he was in for it the minute he laid eyes on the gorgeous dame in the red dress who walked into his office that gray December day. But what starts out as a lost pet case turns into a whole kennel full of trouble for the doubtful gumshoe as he encounters a shifty bird, a hulking gorilla, and a slippery weasel—not to mention a hedgehog who’s handy with a cocktail sword—in this semi-hardboiled shaggy dog story.

The Players

William Hardy as P.I. Don Keyhote & Pokey

Erica Smith as Heather Fields (the Woman in Red) & Myra

Robin Elaine

Erica Winter

Heather Brooks

Robin Elaine, Erica Winter & Heather Brooks as Ferret, Monk, Detective Brannigan and sound effects.

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Coming for the holidays is a fun little radio play that has been adapted from an adorable book written by William Hardy.

“The Hound and the Hedgehog” was a short story written for me as a gift one fine winter holiday season several years ago.  It contains lots of little inside jokes, like many of the animals mentioned happen to look a bit like our family pets.  Not to mention (though it seems I am mentioning it) the damsel in distress is named Heather and she bears a striking resemblance to another Heather you might have heard of (me) before I let my hair go white and pink and cut it all off.

This is Hera.  She used to live with me when I had a house and a yard and my family was still all together.  She now lives with Robin in the most doggiest of happy dog havens.  Hera is part hound and therefore sort of a mascot for “The Hound and the Hedgehog,” even if the hound in the story is the gumshoe.

I think about this little story every holiday and Will reads it to our family (at my pressing) from time to time because it’s just short enough to do that.  My love of radio plays, which started with Seeing Ear Theatre’s production of Snow Glass Apples written by Neil Gaiman, had me thinking maybe I’d like to be involved with a radio play some day.  Then, after a couple of podcasts with Raven Heights Radio I read some of “The Hound and the Hedgehog” to Raven Heights mastermind and podcast goddess Erica Winter and asked her if she thought she’d be interested in it as a voice play.  She loved the story and the idea, and so we thought it would make a good bit of story-time around the holidays.  Partly because some of it takes place around the holidays and partly because it’s family friendly and fun.

We’re set to have a rehearsal in a couple of weeks, then we will record in early December.  Erica tells me she will be putting it on the Raven Heights website right before the holidays.

Below are some of the other animals that make cameos in the story.

 

Copyright 2015 Weatherhill

Reading in Baltimore

Please hop over to the Scarborough Fair Bed & Breakfast website and look at this place.  It’s the cutest and has the best theme ever:  literary.  They are a highly rated B&B that is in a wonderful section of Baltimore within walking distance of great shopping, food and one of my favorite museums The American Visionary Arts Museum.

Don’t forget to check out their packages page – one of them includes some theatre and dinner and flowers.

Scarborough has graciously offered to host a reading of Red August just in time for the holidays.  Also, did you know that you could get a room discount of 30% until March!?  Trust me, I don’t even live that far from Baltimore, but I got the Grimm room (I mean, seriously – how could I NOT stay in the Grimm room?) for Will’s birthday a couple of years ago and we loved it.  We kicked around town all day and then rather than driving back, we lounged around in our room, being sweet to each other and eating Dangerously Delicious blueberry birthday pie.   Then to top off the amazing decadence of it all, we got to eat the wonderful breakfasts that Barry makes.  Everything was fresh and homemade.

They also have a sampling of locally made items near the entrance – including locally roasted coffee and scarfs and stuff.

Erica Smith & William Hardy

The reading in Baltimore will be an expansion of our last reading at The New Deal Cafe.  Actors Erica Smith and William Hardy will be reading passages for about an hour. The theatre in one of the packages mentioned above?  That theatre is Spotlighters, which William Hardy (who also happens to be an amazing writer, and my lovah) used to perform pretty regularly at years ago.  Baltimore is full of great stuff.

There will be some hot cider and traditional Scottish black bun (a Hogmanay tradition) as well as other refreshments.  Stop by for the reading, check out the B&B and then go shopping.

There is a Facebook Events Page for this event.

December 5th  from 1-3pm
at Scarborough Fair Bed and Breakfast801 South Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21230

The Sky Ride

I was twelve, or thirteen, busting out all over and quiet at the same time.  Testing the waters, with my feathered hair and lip-gloss.  I wore my 501 button-down jeans and a black Jack Daniels tee shirt and we piled into the car and took a long ride to a  theme park.  Everybody with me was too young, or too old, and I wanted to have some time to myself, so they reluctantly let me go off on my own without too much protest.

I wandered around, watching people try to win stuffed animals, tee-shirts, or plastic cups with logos and big straws sticking out of them.  I wanted a boy to win me a giant stuffed prize so I’d be forced to lug the symbol of is affection and prowess around the park for all to see.  Big stuffed, fluffy validation of my worthiness.

The day was exquisite, balmy and slightly breezy with a sky the color of a Sky Blue Crayola crayon.  I stuffed my hands into my front pockets and pondered the scarier roller coasters.  Eventually I found myself in front of the sky ride that slowly glided high above the crowd and across the park.  That ride was just what I needed at that moment.  I could observe the world in the way it actually felt like I was observing it here on the ground.  In a detached way that also filled my longing heart with a sort of awe at everything around me.

People gliding the opposite direction would smile or wave, I’d give a tentative wave back.  Sometimes boisterous guys and quiet men would glide by and smile or wave, and I’d smile and look away.  Then a boy a few years older than me passed by.  Brown hair, tanned, shy-looking, he strummed every string in me.  Our eyes met.  It took a long minute for him to come into view and pass. I took another ride around and he passed again, this time with a bigger smile.  Me too.  I didn’t know what to do.  I wanted to meet him, but I was going to end up on the opposite side of the park if I got off.  So I rode around again, and there he was, again.  He hadn’t gotten off either.  And we did that, over and over – eyes meeting, shy smiles, small waves, and knowing.  Knowing that if we weren’t separated by that eight feet of air and a sixty foot drop, we’d be sitting close and telling each other everything you could share in a few hours.  And he would walk me to a game where he would win me a stuffed animal and I would carry it around as though he’d slayed a dragon for me.  We rode that way until the sky got dusky and purple and I knew I had to find my family.  I got off the tram, feeling a little heartbroken for what was never going to be, and hoping he got off too, so I wouldn’t disappoint him as my empty seat glided by.

Summer in Autumn

Probably because I’ve had a cold and have been binge watching The Wonder Years on Netflix, I’ve spent a couple of these brisk autumn days thinking about summer flings.  Those brief shining moments of intense connection you form with somebody during your hormonal adolescence, where your body chemistry is calling out to every other transmitting body in the vicinity, to see if you get a signal back.  Sometimes I did.

H.L. BROOKS’ TOP 3 QUOTES ABOUT LOVE