(Clearly with apologies to Walter Brasch.)

Welcome to his vorpal sword‘s  Seventh Annual presentation of “The Saint Nick Case,” a Christmas radio play of approximately one-half hour.

Click for the radio play

For a special treat,  The KOPT Radio Theater Players in the 2005 production of “The St. Nick Case,” in wide-spectrum, full color stereo. The radio play was broadcast live on Eugene’s Air America affiliate KOPT-AM 1600 on December 23, 2005.

The St. Nick Case — a Sebastian Cole Mystery*

Right click and “save as.” It’s an mp3, 20 minutes, 4.4 megs. Professionally produced, and just as you heard it on the radio in 2005. NOTE: It is a radio play, there are no visuals.

[* NOTE: Some screenwriter had a movie a few years back called "The Adventures of Sebastian Cole," but I have Cole mysteries in print as far back as 1985, and he can't have the name. Sorry, dude.]

Starring scintillating Host Nancy Stapp, protean producer Shelly Gaske, McGruff-voiced Mac McFadden and radio newsman extraordinaire Rick Little as the detective, with yours truly adding miscellaneous voices and sound effects, The KOPT Radio Theater Players presented their first and last production on Christmas Eve Eve, 2005.

I wrote this during the amazing Summer and Fall of 1986, when I wrote two books, two screenplays and a slew of short stories and essays, and fathered a daughter in my Hollywood office on Kingswell, in what turned out to be Walt Disney’s original studio. (OK: He originally started in his garage,which was two blocks down the street. I used to walk by it, nights.)

As Christmas approached, I had this idea of an interesting “film noir” radio play, a kind of Sam Spade meets Miracle on 34th Street. So I wrote it.

I tried on and off to get it produced. It never was.

In the mid- 1990s, I booked time with a local studio, and enlisted some actors to do the play, and, while the actual recording went great — very little need for second takes — the fellow who owned the studio completely screwed up the cross-channel tracks (we’d been recording it on discrete channels, so that we could intercut the parts, rather than as an ensemble recording) and the bleed-through made editing all but impossible.

OK: Impossible. I’ve still got the 16-track master tape, though, but it’s mostly good for a paperweight.

I had a local non-profit theater producer interested, that we might do it as a reading for Christmas, but he and the script vanished. That was about 1999.

We move on. But then luck decided to start acting like a lady, and a chance appeared.

Fast forward to 2005. I was a regular “pundit” on Fridays on the local AirAmerica affiliate, KOPT. And I thought it might be fun to broadcast it live, as a Christmas special.

And this we did. It was well-received.

It takes place during the Depression, and seems particularly appropriate for hard financial times.

So: my Christmas gift to you.

Here’s the complete Christmas Radio Play for you for FREE, originally broadcast on KOPT-AM in Eugene, Oregon on December 23, 2005.

Merry Christmas.

Courage.

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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog. No Christmas pun intended.