On tonight's podcast, I'll be looking at For Ten Thousand Years, the fourth piece I wrote in January as a part of my Year of Stories project.  When I'm recording this, it's somewhere near the end of April, and I've managed to gain a bit of perspective on some of the patterns that have developed in my writing since I began this project. One of them started here, the Thursday "letter." When you write like I do, between late and very late at night, you sometimes find yourself grasping at narrative threads. You want them strong enough to hold a story together, but not so long that you find daybreak on the other side.  Letters, especially late in the week -- when the Muse decides to toddle off on vacation -- can really help. They carry less narrative baggage than many other formats, but still have enough room in them to provide some emotional heft.  For Ten Thousand Years is a letter, and the emotional heft comes from three of my favorite places: dark magic, delightfully strange hand's behind the curtain, and vivid descriptions of deeply unpleasent things.  It was also a fun read, how often do you get to talk about jars of human fear? I hope you enjoy.   Background music provided by: https://soundcloud.com/michel-escaillas/classik-electro Additional Sounds by: Mike Koenig Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/steve-reads-stories/id1087197185 Follow us on Twitter @StoriesCast