It's the audio version of the first of the Yurt novellas and is entitled "The Lost Girls and the Kobold." It is about, big surprise, missing girls and a kobold. Daimbert, the wizard hero, has to find the girls, figure out why and how they disappeared, and deal with the magical forces of the kobold, before rather than after generations-old legends come to horrifying life. The narrator of the audio book is the same terrific guy who has narrated all the Yurt books so far, Eric Vincent.
It's available from Amazon, Audible, and iTunes, and if you sign up for a new Audible membership, you can get it free. (You can also just buy it.) Here the link on Amazon.
In my own head, of course, Daimbert, the first-person narrator, sounds like me, but Eric does a far better job of professionally narrating an audio book than I ever could. He's now at work on "Is This Apocalypse Necessary?" the sixth and last of the main Yurt series of novels, though there are still two more Yurt novellas I'm hoping to get him to do.
The book mostly takes place in steep, rocky mountains, which is why I have mountains on the cover. (The picture is of the real Rocky Mountains in Wyoming. Shhh, don't tell anyone.)
Audio books are becoming more popular, something people can "read" while commuting, jogging, sweeping the floor, sitting in the same room as someone who wants to watch a football game in which you're not interested.... You can even listen for a while and read the ebook for a while, then switch back and forth.
Here's the opening, to give you a taste.
________________________________________________________________________
“She put on her best dress, walked out the door and
up into the mountains without a word to anyone, and has not been seen since.”
“So how long ago was this?” I asked
cautiously. The woman in front of me had
the worn, rangy look of someone who had worked too hard for too much of her
life, but her eyes were large, dark, and compelling. She pushed back a strand of graying hair with
a hand red and rough and held my gaze with hers.
My first mistake had been agreeing to talk to
her. My second would be trying to
dismiss her.
“Two days.”
She put her hands on her hips. “A
girl can go off with her young man for one day, but not for two.”
“And you expect me to find her?” A few men with dogs, I thought, could find
the girl far faster than I could. But
somehow, with her looking at me intently, I couldn’t manage to say it out loud.
“You’re a wizard, aren’t you? What else is a Royal Wizard for?”
I could have made several answers. A Royal Wizard is responsible for protecting
his kingdom from dragons and demons. A Royal
Wizard keeps overly energetic knights from killing each other. A Royal Wizard provides illusions to
entertain the court over dinner.
And is bound by great oaths sworn on magic itself
to use his powers to help others. Some
within organized wizardry might have made dismissive comments about the extent
of my own powers, but I was the only Royal Wizard the kingdom of Yurt had.
“I’ll come right away, of course,” I said, doing my
best not to sound resigned. “You’ll have
to show me where she disappeared.”
© C. Dale Brittain 2018
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