A confession:  Iambik’s description of Toby Frost’s Space Captain Smith sounds frightfully similar to descriptions of jobs I’ve had.  And I’d be willing to bet that I’m not the only one “destined to take on the alien threat because nobody else is available.  Together with his bold crew- a skull-collecting alien lunatic, an android pilot who is actually a fugitive sex toy and a hamster called Gerald- he must collect new-age herbalist Rhianna Mitchell from the New Francisco orbiter and bring her back to the Empire in safety.”

If not, you should consider yourselves lucky.  Or send some sympathy my way.  Or both.

In the meantime, Clive Catterall was clearly a narrator born for this book, which will be obvious to anyone listening.  Below, he and I had a few select questions for author Toby Frost.

Clive Catterall: Toby, I must say I had an absolute gas narrating your book. I have rarely enjoyed myself as much, though it did cause some problems during the recording. Sometimes things creep up on you from behind, because it’s a strange business reading out loud. However carefully you read through beforehand, when you start to read out loud you pick up funny bits that you missed. I had to go for a walk a couple of times when I got the giggles. Made myself a strong cup of tea. Sorted.

You reference a lot of sci-fi in this book! As well as Asimov, Anthony Burgess and steampunk, there are a lot of references to sci-fi movies. But all of the sci-fi is handled with a great deal of affection, even though you poke fun at it. Do you remember when your interest in sci-fi started, and who were the first authors who hooked you?

Toby Frost: I’m very glad you enjoyed narrating the book. I think you did a really good job and seemed to capture the characters very easily. As to when my interest in science fiction started, I’m not sure – I think I always liked spaceships. But I can remember reading H.G. Wells when I was about 10 and the Golden Age authors slightly later – Asimov, Clarke and co. And of course Dune.

Narrator Clive Catterall

CC: Besides those mentioned in the book, what sci-fi authors excite you?
TF: I think it’s very rare for me to parody a writer I don’t like, so almost all the authors/books that get a mention are ones I’ve enjoyed. In science fiction Wells, William Gibson, John Wyndham, H.P. Lovecraft are all interesting writers. None of them is perfect, but they all produced some very good work.

CC: What inspired you to weave elements of satire and comedy through your story rather than write a “straight” sci-fi story?
TF: I think it just felt more fun this way. In a lot of ways, I just wrote the story I would have liked to read. For a long time I felt that there was a link between the British Empire and the sort of generic space empires you see in science fiction, and it seemed interesting to compare the two. A lot of the comedy flows from the idea of transposing the Victorian outlook onto outer space.

CC: Some sci-fi authors seem to want the science bits to take centre stage and the characters seem almost secondary. Your books don’t strike me that way; you seem to be more interested in story and characters. Just how important are the future world elements to you? Could you imagine yourself writing in other genres? Maybe even satirising other genres?
TF: Although the world of Space Captain Smith does interest me a lot – and is meant to have a sort of bizarre internal logic of its own – the characters are what produce a lot of the story and the comedy. The four main characters were created so that no matter who was in the room, they could still have an argument and still come out with funny things. I like to think that the books make sense in their own weird way, though.

I have tried writing a serious novel set in a sort of fantastical Renaissance, where Leonardo’s machines all work. It’s a sort of thriller and is as yet unpublished, but you never know…

Author Toby Frost

CC: Many authors say that to create characters they have to build on elements of their own character. How much of Captain Smith do you see in yourself? Do you actually come from Surrey? (I’m not actually asking if you are a qualified Space Captain… Are you, by the way?). And my wife wants to know if you look like Suruk at all?
TF: I don’t come from Surrey – thspae Woking reference is a nod to War of the Worlds – but there is a reasonable amount of Smith in me. All four of the main characters have varying amounts of me in them. I don’t resemble Suruk, although I do find his sense of being slightly baffled by the ways of Earth familiar – I suspect a lot of people secretly do!

CC: You now have three Isambard Smith novels. How long will you keep the series up? Do you have another character you’d like to pursue? Lastly, that for this. Would you like a nice cup of tea now?
TF: I don’t know how much of the series I’ll do. I’ve really enjoyed writing them, and it would be fun to do a fourth, but there are a lot of other things going on at the moment, so it’s hard to say. But I do enjoy spending time in their world and would love to write about more of Smith’s adventures. And now, I will have a cup of tea, thanks!

Miette Elm: Did you have any reservations about allowing Space Captain Smith to be turned into an audiobook?
TF: Yes: I was worried that the reader wouldn’t capture the feel of the story or be able to deliver the jokes properly. In fact, Clive has made a great job of it.

ME: Have you listened to any of the audiobook of Space Captain Smith? Did anything in the voicing or Clive’s delivery surprise you?
TF: Yes, I really enjoyed it. I was quite surprised by the range of voices Clive does really well. On balance, Captain Gilead is slightly more quietly insane than I imagined, but I think that works out fine in the reading.

ME: Do you listen to audiobooks at all? If so, do you have any favourite titles?
TF: I used to listen to a lot of audiobooks, but I’ve not done so for a while. When I was young I had a lot of Sherlock Holmes on tape, as well as a version of Treasure Island. I think that was my favourite: it’s a great book.

ME: Do you still work within the legal system by day? Do your colleagues or superiors know of your literary moonlighting? What has been the reaction to your double life?
TF: My colleagues do know, but are surprisingly low-key about it. I do still work in the legal system, but I do a lot of writing for work as well, except with less spaceships.

ME: Is anyone else writing smart satiric sci-fi these days? Anyone else you can think of whose work we should be turning into audio?
TF: Tricky one. Robert Rankin writes steampunk-influenced comedy science fiction with a very wacky sense of humour. Kim Newman did a great book called Anno Dracula, set in Victorian London, in which various characters from older novels try to catch Jack the Ripper. It’s much more serious, but has a slight tongue-in-cheek feel.

ME: Thanks so much for Space Captain Smith and for letting us make the audiobook!
TF: No problem. I think the audiobook is really good!

Toby Frost’s Space Captain Smith, published by Myrmidon, is available from Iambik as an audiobook for only $6.99.  You can also buy it as part of our Complete Science-Fiction & Fantasy Collection of 9 titles for $43.00.  May your next job be free of hamsters and lunatics, unless that’s your cup of tea.

Did you know that here at Iambik, we’ve made audiobooks of all FOUR of Rick Collignon’s Guadalupe novels?  Just the thought of that much Rick Collignon on a cool spring day makes my tongue all salty with longing for a tequila in Taos. But until I should be that lucky, I asked Charles Bice, who narrated three of the novels, if that experience left him with any questions for Rick. And, because I might have treated myself vicariously to a whiskey or two (though not in Taos), I added a couple of questions myself.

Narrator Charles Bice

Charles Bice: Hi, Rick. It was such a pleasure to read your wonderful collection of stories and an added honor to get to narrate a few of them. You really created a world unto itself that was hard to leave behind. So, have you listened to the Guadalupe audiobooks at all? When you wrote the stories did you ‘hear’ the words and the voices in your mind’s ear? How is what you might have heard or expected different from the new audiobook releases?
Rick Collignon: No, I haven’t heard the audiobooks, but I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t heard anyone else read from any of them other than myself so the cadence and sound of them is either my voice or in my head.

I think the voice in all four books came fairly easy to me, or it did once I had the characters. The moment I had Obie Poole in Madewell Brown or Ramona in The Journal of Antonio Montoya, the way they spoke and what they thought fell right into place. The struggles I had were more about who they were. I have a really hard time outlining a book and seem to approach it in a roundabout way, such as, ‘okay, I’m going to write a book about Negro League baseball and then I’m going to have a ballplayer mysteriously die in Guadalupe, NM. And then I’ll have his granddaughter tell half the story from somewhere else and some other guy tell the other half of the story and then they’ll fall in love…or something.’ And then I end up writing and throwing away until some spark hits. In Madewell it was finally seeing Rachael as a young girl in relationship to Obie Poole that kicked the book in gear. In The Journal of Antonio Montoya it was having Loretta sit up in the coffin and speak. None of those were planned. It’s sort of like being lost in the woods for a year and suddenly finding a path. But once I see it everything seems to fall into place.

Author Rick Collignon

CB: Is there a real village somewhere that served as the inspiration for Guadalupe? From where did you derive the templates for the characters?
RC: I’ve lived in New Mexico for thirty-five years, a lot of that in a small village just south of the Colorado border. I used that village geographically for the setting and stole from everywhere for the characters, from myself to old midwest farmers to my father to old relationships to my kids to moments of sadness to whatever. I imagine the people in the books are composites of things until they all meld together into one identity. Right now when I think of them, they are themselves and no one else.

CB: Your stories are leavened with magical realism, giving them a Latin American flavor above and beyond the obvious cultural backdrop. How did you derive this style? In general, who are your literary role models?
RC: If anybody influenced me, it was Gabriel Marquez. Especially One Hundred Years of Solitude. I wasn’t even writing at the time I read it, but the experience was that anything can happen at any time and realizing that freedom of expression opened up an enormous door for me.

CB: While each book can be read entirely independently, they are also highly interwoven in terms of characters and events. Even Madewell Brown, which was released after the initial ‘trilogy,’ is seamlessly melded in among its predecessors.

That said, the last book in the collection, Madewell Brown, represents somewhat of a departure relative to the first three. In it we are introduced to places, characters and events from far beyond Guadalupe. How did you come to create the Madewell Brown story line? How much of the series was planned or outlined ahead of writing?
RC: I always thought I wanted to write three books about the village of Guadalupe, but what got me after I burned it down was that I didn’t want to leave. Which created some dilemmas since I’d freaking destroyed the place. Anyway it was great to hang out with Obie Poole along the river… what that means, I don’t know.

Miette Elm: You came up with a musical playlist for the Largehearted Boy site where you say you “don’t have time to sit and listen to” music. That said, do any other sounds particularly stand out to you, or bring you great comfort? What sounds strike your particular chords?
RC: That was tough to write. My brain doesn’t seem to function in a linear way and when asked to write about what influenced me musically was enough to make my brain stop in place. I think for me it’s more like sounds, like the sound of a kid crying or one note a singer will hit or the hollow sound of the wind. Stuff like that.

ME: What literature excites you the most right now? Any specific authors you’re recommending to friends these days?
RC: For the last few years I’ve been reading Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, EX Ferrars and PG Wodehouse. I’ve disappeared into village life in England where someone’s either getting murdered or doing something stupid. And since each writer has written about a hundred books, I think I’m going to be stuck there for awhile longer.

Rick Collignon’s four novels in the Guadalupe series, as narrated by Linette Geisel and Charles Bice, can be purchased for $6.99 individually, or you can pick up the entire series for $19.99. The novels are published in print by Unbridled Books.  May they leave you dreaming of hangover-free tequila and hot white sands. Thanks for your time, Rick!

I recently reached out to He of the Honey Voice, Iambik narrator Gord Mackenzie, to see if he had anything to ask the author about his experience narrating Fade to Blonde.  Max Phillips, who is the co-founder of Hard Case Crime in addition to writing Fade to Blonde, had a few thoughts of his own.

Narrator Gord Mackenzie

Gord Mackenzie: Many authors have divided feelings about audiobooks. Some are of the opinion that their words are meant to be read by the eyes, and that introducing a narrator’s voice takes something away from the book as written. How do you feel about audiobooks in general, and in particular the process of turning Fade to Blonde into an audiobook?
Max Phillips: I don’t really have strong feelings about audiobooks one way or the other.  I certainly don’t think they take anything away from the original work.  I’m afraid I’ve never listened to one, aside from Fade to Blonde, since I like books as objects and would rather read than be read to.  It seems to me that they’re a different form than the written novel, and in general, I’m happy to see my novels (and anyone else’s) turned into different forms: plays, movies, TV shows, comic books, strings of linked haiku, what have you.  I may not always like the result, but I like the possibilities.  And you never know when you’ll get something like The Godfather, where an indifferent novel becomes a masterwork in another medium.

GM: Fade to Blonde won the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America. That puts you in good company, with other winners including Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton, and Walter Mosley. But, your protagonist, Ray Corson, isn’t really a traditional private investigator. If you had to put a genre label on Fade To Blonde, what would it be?
MP: Just hard-boiled.

Hard Case Crime

GM: You’re one of the founders of Hard Case Crime imprint (along with Charles Ardai). What was it about the paperback crime novels of the 40’s and 50’s that inspired you to start Hard Case, and to write Fade To Blonde?
MP: Charles and I share a love of two-fisted fiction, though we don’t always admire the same writers.  But we both loved the look, feel, and philosophy of the old rack-size paperbacks: lurid, entertaining, quick, and cheap.  Of course, we can’t make our books as cheap as the old ones.  We wish we could.

GM: Of the “classic” crime writers, who would you say is your favorite? Do you have a favorite hard-boiled character (other than your own Ray Corson, of course)?
MP: Hammett’s one of my favorite writers, regardless of genre, and Sam Spade may be my favorite hard-boiled character.  Not the cartoon version of a trenchcoat-wearing Bogart that most people think of, but the genuine article, the merry blonde bruiser in the actual book.  But in some ways I prefer Hammett’s Continental Op, a short, fat, matter-of-fact middle-aged man whose name we never learn, who appears to have no personal life, and whose only desire is to get on with the job and maybe get home alive.  He was the protagonist in the extra-pulpy The Dain Curse and the magnificent Red Harvest, a film that, speaking of crossing from one form to another, has inspired countless movies, including Akira Kurosawa’s samurai epic Yojimbo.

GM: Fade To Blonde is set in Hollywood in the 1950s. The “movies” (in one form or another) seem to permeate the story… right up to the climactic scene. How important was this setting, and why did you select it?
MP: Fade to Blonde was never meant to be a novel.  I came up with the title and tagline (“She Was a Little Piece of Heaven… And a One-Way Ticket To Hell!”) simply because I needed a title and tagline to design a sample cover around, back when Charles and I were trying to figure out the look of the line.  But one night I actually got curious about what sort of book Blonde would be if somebody actually sat down and wrote it, and started making a few notes.  I wound up working all night and in the morning had an opening chapter, a rough outline, and the notion that I maybe ought to go on and write the rest.  The title, of course, mandated that the movies be part of the mix.

GM: One of the things I loved about Fade To Blonde was the strong supporting characters that fill the book. There are times when I wanted to follow some of those characters after Ray leaves them (I’m particularly fond of Miss Bellinger). As an author, do you find at times that these “minor” characters sometimes call out to you to tell more of their story?
MP: I’m glad you like Lisa Rae.  I’m fond of her myself.  I try to write by imagining characters and then waiting around to see what they do.  If there’s nothing more to be said about a supporting character than what’s in the book, I feel like I haven’t done my job.

GM: Ray Corson is a bit of an eclectic. He’s played many parts in his time: soldier, writer, actor, bodyguard, boxer. He’s a tough guy, who reads Chekhov and Stephen Crane. You yourself seem to have some eclectic interests. Besides writing the hard-boiled Fade To Blonde, you’re noted for writing more “serious” literature, including Snakebite Sonnet and The Artist’s Wife. But you also write 1960’s espionage thrillers under the pen-name “Forrest Devoe Jr.” (Into the Volcano and Eye of the Archangel). On top of that, you’re a creative director and a graphic designer with a background in marketing, branding and social media. Did some of Ray’s eclecticism come from your own varied interests?
MP: I never thought of it, but of course you’re right.  I probably made Ray a bit of a dilettante because I’m one myself.  (Don’t know how you got the idea I had a background in social media, though.  I don’t even have a Facebook page.)

GM: Ray Corson, Mike Hammer, Phillip Marlowe and Jeff Markham are in a bar and get into a drunken brawl. Who’s going to win?
MP: Jules Maigret glares at them over his beer and they all slink out in shame.

GM: And, finally, what’s next for Max Phillips? Do you have another book in the works?
MP: I’m actually shopping around a children’s picture book I wrote and illustrated.  If you liked Fade To Blonde, your four-year-old daughter will love Lois Gets Lost.

Fade to Blonde

Max Phillips’ Fade to Blonde was published in print by Hard Case Crime, and as an Iambik audiobook narrated by Gord Mackenzie.  If you hurry, you can still use the code our-favorite-customers for a 25% discount on Fade to Blonde and all our titles through the end of April 2011.

If you have any burning questions for any of Iambik’s authors, publishers, or narrators, drop me a line at miette@miettecast.com, and I’ll see what I can do.

I recently asked Diane Havens, the enchantress voicing Iambik’s new audiobook of Katharine Beutner’s Alcestis, if the experience had left her with any sizzling questions for the author.  Narrating a novel is a hugely engaging process– which is especially true when the novel in question is as intimate as Alcestis, so Diane had plenty on her mind.   Fortunately, Katharine was forthcoming, and offered some insights into writing for a character’s “voice,” editing sex scenes in a laundromat, and bringing humanity to the ancient gods.

Narrator Diane Havens

Diane Havens: First of all, let me start by saying what a truly enjoyable experience it was to narrate Alcestis. She is a real woman as you have portrayed her, not a character out of a dusty ancient myth — and she is authentically complex. It was gratifying to voice her as she develops throughout the book as a woman who discovers much about herself, life, and in this story, death.

What inspired you to write it?

Author Katharine Beutner

Katharine Beutner: I’m thrilled that you found Alcestis a compelling character to voice, because the question of “voice” was what inspired me to write the book. I knew the basic story of Alcestis, but I didn’t know the entire thing — I thought it concluded with her descent into the underworld after she chooses to die in her husband’s place. In fact, at the end of Euripides’ Alcestis, Heracles brings Alcestis back to her husband after three days, but she refuses to speak. Nobody seems particularly bothered by this. But I was bothered. I was reading the play during my lunch break at a part-time job the year after I graduated from college as a classics major, and I was, to put it bluntly, pissed. I decided to write a version of the story that followed Alcestis into the underworld, and to make Persephone, rather than Hades, the deity most interested in keeping her there.

DH: Sexuality in the book is dealt with honestly, and in a more psychological way than commonly found.  That’s important, since Alcestis’ sexuality is integral to fleshing out her character. Was it difficult for you to find the right tone and balance when writing those scenes?

KB: I didn’t find it that difficult to write the sex scenes in which Alcestis is participating, though I do remember copy-editing one of the Alcestis/Persephone scenes at the laundromat and really hoping nobody was reading over my shoulder. What I found challenging was the visual description of sex between gods from Alcestis’s POV. There’s a fine line between disturbingly hot and ridiculous.

DH: Though the style of the book has a a period feel, it nevertheless comes off as very contemporary fiction. At first the book reminded me of Ursula LeGuin’s writing, but as I narrated it, it seemed much more modern a tale. That’s no small feat. What was your stylistic approach?

KB: I love Ursula Le Guin’s writing very much, especially The Left Hand of Darkness. And I think her notion of science fiction as a thought experiment is related to what you’re asking here. My stylistic approach grew out of a desire to psychologize the content of the myths — to portray what it might really have been like to live in a world full of gods in a stylistically accessible way. I’d guess that’s what makes it feel contemporary.

DH: You made each character, gods and goddesses included, motivated by that which makes us human. Yet the gods and goddesses in the story do keep that otherworldly distance. Persephone especially remains enigmatic. It was her character which I found most perplexing. The relationship between Persephone and Alcestis is so pivotal — and the lure of both death and Persephone to her seem almost interchangeable by the book’s end. For all the powerful male figures in the story, Persephone ends up coming off as the most powerful of all. Was that intentional?

KB: Yes, Persephone is the most powerful figure in the underworld in this story. She doesn’t have power over the Fates, though, given the way the Greek mythos was constructed, and I think she maintains power over Hades partly because he allows her to — because they both get something out of that imbalance. I wanted all the gods to keep that distant nature, to seem both fascinating and repellent to Alcestis. Since Persephone is the god with whom Alcestis has the closest contact, she should seem the most enigmatic, so I’m very glad that worked for you.

DH: During the writing process, do you read passages aloud to yourself? If so, how do you find this helpful?

KB: Yes, often. I don’t read out loud constantly while I write, but any time I’m getting even slightly bogged down, I read that sentence aloud. A writer friend, Kate Elliott, talks about knowing that a section of writing needs revision because it just sounds off, and that’s true for me too. The problem may be deeper than the prose rhythm, but the prose rhythm often won’t sound right if something else is wrong.

DH: How is the experience of hearing your words performed in audio? Any surprises?

KB: Really exciting. It’s one thing to know that readers are privately experiencing the book for themselves, and another to hear a unique recorded interpretation of it. As I said on Twitter, I’m used to the intonation choices I make when reading aloud at book events, so that’s the only surprise so far, I think — the surprise of how accustomed you can get to your own reading voice!

DH: I love narrating in first person as it is more liberating for the actor to become fully immersed in the story and provides consistency of point of view from which to work. As the author do you find it at all limiting?  What are some of the challenges?

KB: That makes a lot of sense in terms of characterization. For the writer, first person is limiting in that you create that consistency through limitation — leaving out anything that doesn’t suit the main character’s knowledge and perceptions. I originally began writing this book in third person POV, but it was such a tight, limited third that it became obvious that it ought to be in first person. I also think a lot of writers of historical fiction choose first person POV because it is a comparatively easy way to immerse your readers in another time period. I’m trying to write a third person omniscient historical novel right now, and it is incredibly challenging to find the right distance for each character and to construct a narrator who organizes the entire work.

DH: There is so much beautiful imagery in Alcestis. Do you also write poetry?

KB: Thank you! I wrote poetry in high school and college, but I eventually realized that my poems were turning into poetic line-broken prose, so I started trying to learn how to tackle characterization, plot, and the other components of fiction. I’m still working on that.

DH: What would you say to someone who might classify Alcestis as feminist literature?

KB: Alcestis is absolutely a feminist text. It’s inspired by the desire to give voice to a woman who is silenced in the play that bears her name, and it’s concerned with portraying the balance of power between men and women in Alcestis’s profoundly unequal society. To me, those narrative goals are feminist.

DH: I understand the book has been nominated for some literary awards — and they are…?

KB: The book is a finalist for a Lesbian Debut Fiction Award from the Lambda Literary Association, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award from the Publishing Triangle, and the Compton Crook Award from the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. I haven’t seen a list of the Compton Crook finalists, but the other lists are pretty astounding and I’m honored that the book was included.

=====

And, because I’d recently been listening to the audiobook of Alcestis, I couldn’t help but sneak in a few additional questions for Katharine:

Miette Elm: Do you listen to many audiobooks?  If so, when and where do you listen, and what are some favorites?

Katharine Beutner: I haven’t been commuting to campus as frequently this year since I’ve been holed up writing my dissertation, so I haven’t been listening to much of anything, unfortunately. I do have a bunch of LibriVox recordings waiting on my iPod, though — mostly Victorian novels.

ME: Who else is writing smart literary historical fiction right now?  What titles would you like to see made into audio?

KB: I can’t get enough of Sarah Waters’s historical fiction. I loved The Little Stranger. I’m really looking forward to reading Elizabeth Loupas’s The Second Duchess, which was inspired by the Robert Browning poem. Regarding audiobooks, I was surprised to discover that there aren’t many audiobook versions of Georgette Heyer novels, and the ones that exist are pretty expensive.

ME: What other mythological or historical characters are underrepresented and deserving of their own novel?

KB: Mythologically, Selene the moon goddess. She must have gotten to see so much. Historically, I’ve wanted to write a novel about Samuel Johnson for years, even though he’s had plenty written about him.

ME: What book would you most like to personally narrate into audio, if you had the time and resources to do so?

A Room of One’s Own, I think, though what I really want is an audio version of Virginia Woolf reading it herself.

ME: What are the world’s 5 best sounds?  And what are the five sounds the world can do without?

KB: Top 5 sounds: the grumpy sounds my cats make when they’re receiving insufficient attention, cello music, grackle calls, someone else putting away dishes when I’m in another room, utterly helpless laughter.

Top 5 sounds the world can do without: leaf-blowers, repetitive noises in public places, uptalking, neighbors who play loud music — I’d add that annoying low battery alert smoke alarms make, but the world probably shouldn’t do without that.

ME: I love how Alcestis opens:  “They knew the child’s name only because her mother died cursing it, clutching at the bloodied bedclothes and spitting out the word as if it tasted sour on her tongue.”  That’s ONE HELL of a first sentence.  Was it a moment of inspiration?  Came to you in your sleep?  Slaved over it for days/weeks/months?  How’d it come about?

KB: Thank you. I just went back and opened my earliest saved document in my Alcestis folder, and the opening line is exactly the same. I don’t remember writing it, but I usually write in order, so I probably did write it first, right after I typed in the epigraphs at the beginning of the Word document. (There were originally two epigraphs, the Narihira poem and this line from Sheri Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country: “You’ll understand when you come there at last, Achilles… Hades is Women’s Country.”)

ME: Thanks so much for Alcestis, and for letting us turn it into audio!

KB: I’m so excited that you have! Thank you.

Katharine Beutner’s Alcestis was published in print by Soho Press, and as an Iambik audiobook narrated by Diane Havens.  You can use the code our-favorite-customers for a 25% discount on Alcestis and all our titles through the end of April.