New Amazon Review!

5.0 out of 5 stars The genius of this book is that the familiar is also the fantastic. We're hurled immediately into an astonishing action scene July 23, 2014

By gridprice

Format:Kindle Edition

Although the story is set in the future, one wouldn't have to search far to find parallels in the present-day world... or in the past. The genius of this book is that the familiar is also the fantastic. We're hurled immediately into an astonishing action scene, written with gorgeous cinematic vividness, and plunged instantly into a universe of great peril and even greater heroism. It is a wild ride. Plan to stay up all night with this one; it is difficult to put it down.

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The Gold Stone Girl Series

The Gold Stone Girl Series, soon out in Kindle and Audiobook formats, is a hero's journey, by, for, and about human females, set in the distant future.  

In It's Nightmare,  we meet Mina.

Mina lives in a world where dreaming is outlawed.  Blinkin is the sole continent of the planet formerly known as Earth and Winkin is its only city.  There are no women here, only breeders.  Women were reclassified by the Night Mare in the long ago.  

The Night Mare is the supreme dictator of Blinkin, and the head of its government-church.  She is the sole architect of the stone-rule, the method by which the Gold Stone Girl, the breeder who will be raised as human sacrifice, is identified.  These rare girls are eaten alive, on a live broadcast, by the Night Mare herself.  It has something to do with ancient rites, planet-wide renewal, and how the dread demon first came to power, but mostly it’s just gross.  

Mina won’t learn any of the details of this her fate, until she’s surrendered to the government, as is required by law.  She grows up in the Off-grid land that surrounds Winkin City, with Bubba and Dee-Dee, who rescued her as a baby, from inside the trunk of the willow tree where she gestated alongside lygaeids hibernating as larvae.  They raise her as their own in this land where the birth of girls is legally discouraged and privately-owned females are licensed as domestic pets.  They don’t know that Mina is the Dream Weaver, a being who will discover that if she is to survive the Night Mare’s land, she must change everything. 

Comfy chair, sexy mic...

Sophia Raab Downs, my friend and producing partner, (Racing Daylight), dropped by for coffee and a chat the other day.  When she arrived I was recording.  She found me in my cosy chair, reading into my sexy Spark microphone.  She said I should post a photo of myself recording, but I never look like what I think I look like, so instead I'll share the chair.

In the beginning of my short audiobook career, last February to be exact, I recorded Street: Empathy, by Ryan A Span, Dalston Junction, by MeiLin Miranda, Unraveled, by Courtney Milan, and Desiree, by Annemarie Selinko, with a borrowed mic and mixer (thanks, Jason Downs) on my Mac Book Pro with Garage Band.  

I upgraded to my own system when I got the first audiobook paycheck: a Sparks mic and an Avid mini mixer, still on my Mac Book Pro.  Thanks to the very helpful sound specialist Chris at Sweetwater for making the distinction between spoken word versus music recording.   

The Queen of Last Hopes, The story of Margaret of Anjou, by Susan Higginbotham is the first I've recorded on this system.  I didn't believe it was possible, but it's clearly better.  The voice almost floats in space.  Sounds weird, but it allows the reader to be more intimate with the listener.  Thanks to Paul Ruben for teaching me about the less is more of audiobook recording.

Once I moved my Itunes to an external hard drive, the whole system works more efficiently and at a good speed.  I can't figure out how to speed up the editing process though.  Maybe there is no way, and I just need to learn patience.  It is the part that cleans up much of the cracky mouth sounds and the melodramatic breaths. Patience, patience, patience ... is not working.  Maybe tomorrow. 

I have found, to my somewhat naive surprise, that my narration is not to everyone's taste, via the often bruising customer reviews on Audible and Amazon.  My advice to the vitriolic, PLEASE LISTEN TO THE SAMPLES!  It will save us both a lot of buyer's remorse.  Some people just prefer oranges to apples, it's okay, nobody died making these recordings, and so far even those who haven't liked them are still living, I think.

Next up:  Farm Stand, my own novel, shopped by agent Claudia Menza for years, (thanks!), self-published long ago, soon out in Kindle.  My daughter Caitlin (who will be at the 3W Holiday Craft Fair in Brooklyn this weekend, selling handcrafted napkins, tablecloths, pillows ...)  will be improving the cover for me in the New Year.