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Thursday, May 31, 2012

UNRAVELED APPROVED!

UNRAVELED has been approved by the author!

Dalston Junction, a chilling novella with a twist, by MeiLin Miranda, is in the ACX quality check queue.  Unraveled by NY Times bestselling Harlequin Romance author, Courtney Milan, will join the approvals line today!

Dalston Junction is Victorian, atmospheric, baby-farming with a sci-fi twist.

Unraveled is an epic romance set against the backdrop of the legal system of Bristol, England, 1894.  A Dickensian cast of characters in a literate romp - I laughed and I cried.

Street: Empathy, book one of a cyberpunk series by Ryan A Span is on sale now! (Audible, Itunes, Amazon)

I've started giving voice to Desiree by Annemarie Selinko, and with each new chapter I'm reminded anew of why I have read this sweeping account of Napoleon's first love, again and again.   Wonderful intimate storytelling set against the backdrop of epic history (herstory?).  The narrator is cheeky and bright, a shaper of history, as all women are, by just living her life!

Many thanks to  Annemarie Selinko's estate -  Annemarie and Erling Kristiansens Foundation, and to Anneli Høier, of the Leonhardt & Høier Literary Agency, in Copenhagen, Denmark, for making this happen.



Tuesday, May 22, 2012

It's a Nightmare!

If you're at all interested in what I'm writing these days, I'll be posting chapters from IT'S A NIGHTMARE! the first of THE GOLD STONE GIRL trilogy -- dystopic, feminist, fantasy, novels I've been working on these last four years.

In 2008 Sophia Raab Downs and I went to the Women's International Film Festival with RACING DAYLIGHT (now on Showtime).  It was there I saw the trailer for the winning foreign documentary from India.  Its opening credits featured thousands of colorful cloth bundles damming a two river swirl.  The words that crawled up the screen told us that the bundles were the bodies of castoff baby girls, many of whom were still alive when they hit the water.

Why are human females counted as less than males?  Is this true of any other species?  Why are our bodies the subject of legislation, as if we were not capable of deciding what is best for ourselves?  How do we dream a different future?

THE GOLD STONE GIRL trilogy is a cautionary tale, one made up of dreams and of nightmares.



Synopsis: The Gold Stone Girl - Book One

It’s a Nightmare!  is set a million years in the future.  The planet Earth has reformed itself into the one-continent world of Blinkin.  God and his devil have given way to a new polarity --  the Night Mare and the Dream Weaver.  But the Night Mare co-opted her opposite in the beginning, and she now rules both the night and the day.  

Into this nightmare world, where human females are kept as cattle, and licensed as domestic pets -- inside the stone-system designed to prevent the enemy’s return -- Mina, a rogue DreamWeaver, is born in the Off-grid of Winkin City.  She’s found inside the mossy womb of a willow tree, alongside lygaeids hibernating as larvae.  Mina’s is a hero’s journey, as she lives the life of a human-breeder, who discovers that in order to survive the Night Mare’s land, she must change everything.


The prologue for It's a Nightmare can be read now at:

http://itsanightmare.blogspot.com/

Thursday, May 17, 2012

DESIREE!!!!!!

It's official!  I've partnered with Annemarie Selinko's estate, thank you Anneli Høier, of the Leonhardt & Høier Literary Agency, in Copenhagen, Denmark, for being open to my offer.  


DESIREE, is the first of a series of novels about great women in world history I'm producing as audiobooks for sale on Audible, Itunes, and Amazon.  


Desiree






Eugenie Bernardine Desiree Clary was born a silk merchant's daughter in Marseilles.  At the age of 14, in post-revolution France, she was wooed and engaged to a young Corsican General, Napoleone Buonaparte, who would jilt her to marry his legendary Josephine.  


Desiree later marries Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, himself a French General, who will be adopted by an ancient dynasty and become King Johan Karl of Sweden.  DESIREE is told as a first person diary about a woman who finds herself at the pivotal center of European history.  A woman the French and the Swedish called Notre Dame de la Paix, (Our Lady of Peace).








Napoleon Bonaparte



Jean Baptiste Bernadotte

Josephine DeBeauharnais


This book deserves an audiobook!







Monday, May 14, 2012

How?

In April of 2011 I entered a contest to read on Neil Gaiman's 10th anniversary edition of AMERICAN GODS, and with the help of hundreds of social networking friends, I won.  I find that contests are a good way to get noticed quickly.  I don't win all the time, but if the wind is in my sails, I've found that it's a quick way to vet a project.  Everything has a contest, so why not enter?  The worst that can happen is that you don't win, and you're out a small marketing investment in your creative future.





I LOVE audiobooks, but I didn't know if I had the stamina for it.  I've read chapter books to my kids, great childhood classics CHARLOTTE'S WEB, by E.B. White, who also reads on the audiobook, WALK TWO MOONS by Sharon Creech, LITTLE WOMEN, by Louisa May Alcott, THE GIVER, by Lois Lowry, among so many others.







Voicing video game characters isn't the same as reading a whole book with lots of personalities, lots of emotional landscape.  It wasn't until I started sharing books with Annette Finestone, a friend with macular degeneration, who's also 95 years old and exquisite, that I realized I had it in me.



First we read Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, narrated by the author in audiobook.  Annette's dear friend Frances Goldin represents Barbara Kingsolver, and had sent a copy, which Annette couldn't read to herself.  It's an epic journey through the politics and mores of both the U.S. and Mexico from before the first world war though Macarthyism and beyond.  It was a wonderful read!

Annette and I have shared several journeys since then, among them, DESIREE by Annemarie Selinko.  It's my favorite book from adolescence, when the nuns at my convent boarding school let me into the adult section of the library, age 12.  Now we're on book one of THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins.



Today my first audiobook launches (I narrate) the first of what I hope will be many journeys I share with many others.

STREET: EMPATHY is available on Audible today!  Itunes and Amazon in the coming days.

If you like fast paced action in a cyber-punk world, a sassy heroine with an MK5 taser, then this may be the listen for you!