Thanks to the wonders of the digital age, Middleburg and the world at large, now have access to the tales of Loudoun author John Rolfe Gardiner. Not just text but audio files of Gardiner reading his own work. And the stories are free; available at www.johnrolfegardiner.com. They can be accessed for later play or listened to immediately.

For a start, the prize-winning author, whose work has appeared in publications from The American Scholar to the New Yorker, is posting three stories; one the tale of a school-boy's death at sea at the beginning of World War II, one about an FBI sting during the protest years of the Vietnam War, and the third a rare-book dealer's discovery of a very valuable volume.

Author Gardiner's introduction to the internet was suggested by his daughter Nicola who heard him reading a passage from his most recent collection and proposed the story site. When she introduced him to the Garage Band and iTunes programs on his computer and her friend Kris gave him a Rode microphone there was no turning back. Nine additional stories have already been recorded in Gardiner's home in Unison, in the writer's study, now converted into a creditable recording studio. Each story on the site is accompanied by the sketch of a scene from its text drawn by his artist-wife Joan, with a quotation, and a brief description of the tale's origin and theme.

Three stories will be added to the site each month.

Asked by the Eccentric why he would do all this for free, Gardiner said there was nothing especially altruistic about it. It was simply a way to offer his work to a world-wide audience, however sparse that audience might be. And there is a way to help sustain the site, a button which leads you to an account if you care to make a voluntary contribution.

The whole thing is a little intimidating for a writer, Gardiner admits, "with millions of people shouting 'look at me' on the internet, why would any self-respecting soul, add his voice to the cacophony? There's some conceit in suggesting that you might have something worthwhile to say. But the same could be said of publishing a book."

"One of the oddest things about the internet phenomenon," Gardiner says, "is the wondrous circuitry and capability hiding behind such a juvenile nomenclature. Google? Yahoo? iTunes? Garage Band?"

Former readers of John Rolfe Gardiner's stories in the New Yorker and many other publications can now imagine themselves lounging in his study listening to the author read aloud from work he's accomplished over the last thirty years, stories informed by his observation of life from France and Portugal to the back porch of his home in Unison. An appreciation in the Hudson Review called this "the work of a master."