Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

 As those who read my fiction know, my main fantasy series is "The Royal Wizard of Yurt," six novels plus some novellas and a separate "next generation" series.  The final novel in the series is Is This Apocalypse Necessary?

 

Over the last decade, I've been slowly putting the novels into audio book format, and Apocalypse has just become available, on Audible, iTunes, and Amazon.  These days books can be read (or "read") in a variety of formats, in physical print form, as an ebook (on a computer, smart phone, or e-reader like a Kindle), or as an audio book, and I wanted to make my books available for whatever works best for the reader.  I know a lot of people enjoy audio books on long drives, or while jogging, or even while washing pots and mopping the floor.

The narrator for the whole series is Eric Vincent.  Some authors record their own audio books, but given that Daimbert, the wizard of Yurt who tells the stories, is male but I am not, I really needed a separate narrator.  (To say nothing of the fact that you need professional equipment and a sound studio to do it right.)  Originally it was sort of a shock to hear a voice that isn't the voice in my head doing the first-person narration, but Eric does a terrific job of voicing Daimbert.

For those who would like to try audio books for the first time, here are the Audible links for people in the US and in the UK to get you started.

Or for those of you who prefer a physical book, here's the link to Amazon, which is selling new signed copies.

And if you've never read Apocalypse, here's the opening to give you a taste.

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The midnight knock came sharp and hard.  I had no way of knowing that the knock meant that in two minutes I would be kidnapped and in three weeks dead.

I rolled over, too sleepy to bother with a spell.  It had to be, I thought vaguely, someone from here in the castle, so eager for my wizardly wisdom that he couldn’t wait until morning.  “Mmm?”

The knock came again.  “Come in,” I mumbled, not recalling for the moment how rarely my wisdom was sought this eagerly.  “The door’s unlocked.”

It slowly creaked open, letting in a cool, damp wind but at first nothing else.  It was the darkest hour of the night, the hour when it seems that the sun must this time be gone for good, and the furniture has taken advantage of its absence to metamorphose into something large and predatory.  I sat up, abruptly wide awake.  Through the doorway stepped a pair of hooded figures, barely visible in the shadows.

Just inside, they paused to light a magic lamp, but their hoods hid their faces from the lamp’s glow.  The aura of wizardry emanated from them like heat from a stove.  Two strange wizards, in a kingdom where I was the only one?  My heart slammed against my ribs as I scrambled belatedly for a spell.

“Don’t struggle, Daimbert,” said one, “and don’t make a sound.”  His was no voice I recognized, though he seemed to know who I was.  “Is anyone here with you?”

“No!” I said loudly and stretched out a hand, adding the two quick words that should have knocked them flat.  The words had no effect.

Instead a loop of air around my chest suddenly became solid.  They were using a binding spell on me.
I struggled to free myself, but with two of them joining their magic together I didn’t have a chance.  The binding spell held me tighter than any rope and kept my mouth closed, so I could do no more than thrash and make inarticulate grunts as they advanced toward the bed.

“We told you not to struggle, Daimbert,” said one reprovingly.  “And stop making that sound before we have to paralyze you, too.  Good thing we practiced our binding spells before we came!”

So they wanted me alive.

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© C. Dale Brittain 2023

The Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint

The second book in a series never gets the love or attention of the first book.  So today I want to talk a little about The Wood Nymph and the Cranky Saint, the second of my Yurt fantasy series.  (Available both as an ebook and as part of the print omnibus, My First Kingdom.  Here's the link on Amazon.)

Here our young wizard hero, who realized in the first book that if he was going to be a competent wizard it might have helped to pay attention in the wizards' school, has been a Royal Wizard for two years and has actually become sort of good at magic.  But then he has to deal with two extremes of renegade magic--the old retired wizard, who learned his magic back before the wizards' school even existed, and a newly-graduated young wizard who is just as feckless as our hero was a few years ago.

Plus cranky religion!  I'm a medievalist, so I've put into my medieval-themed fantasy genuine medieval stories about relics, saints who appear in visions, saints who blast their enemies with lightning, and other exciting tidbits.

For any book, catching the reader's eye is important, and the cover is a big part of that.  The book was originally published over 25 years ago, with the cover below.  I guess it's eye-catching, but the wood nymph of the title here looks sort of like Disney's Snow White, which she certainly shouldn't, and my young wizard hero looks like an old geezer, which he also shouldn't.

So when I made this into an ebook, I did my own cover, as seen below.  It is meant to suggest an old hermit in the woods.  (Did I mention there are hermits in the woods?)

The book is also now an audiobook.  This requires a separate, square cover.  I used an image of a mossy stream, because a lot of the book's action takes place in the woods (the hermits' woods) where there's a mossy stream that comes out of a cave in the side of a cliff.  (The actual stream is in Burgundy, if anyone is interested.)

Now I like this cover just fine, but my narrator finds it unexciting.  So I've created a new cover that now appears on Audible.  This is a reliquary from the Middle Ages and evokes the reliquary of the Holy Toe in the book.  (I told you there were relics in it.)

So if you're interested in listening to audiobooks, you'll get the above cover.  My narrator does a great job, so I highly recommend the audiobooks.  Audible, where they are to be found, is so eager to get new listeners that they're usually running a free trial, so give it a whirl!

Here's the link to the first audiobook in the series, A Bad Spell in Yurt, where you might as well start, for US and for UK listeners.  Enjoy!

© C. Dale Brittain 2019

Daughter of Magic

I've got a new audio book just out!  It's called "Daughter of Magic," part of my Royal Wizard of Yurt series.

It's available on Audible as well as Amazon and iTunes.  You can get it for free with a trial membership in Audible, or buy it for $1.99 from Amazon if you also buy the ebook version.  And if you're an Audible listener, make it one of your choices this month!  It should soon have "Whispersync" turned on, where you can alternately read and listen, read and listen, and have your devices (Kindle and mp3 player) remember your place.

Here's the description (a ruined castle plays a prominent role):

She's the daughter of a witch and a wizard, with the talents of both - and the world had better watch out!

Daimbert the wizard just wants to spend some quality time with his daughter Antonia. He loves his peaceful kingdom of Yurt, but he and those around him are increasingly finding themselves hampered by their society's strictures and silent rules. The king doesn't want to marry any of the princesses offered to him, the duchess' twin daughters want to be respectively a knight and a priest, and Daimbert himself is forbidden by the norms of wizardry from a liaison with a witch - much less having a daughter.

And then the peaceful kingdom is suddenly not so peaceful, between the arrival of an exotic eastern princess and her elephant, a ravening wolf, an army of undead warriors, a bogus miracle worker, and an old enemy seeking vengeance.

Can Antonia save the day? She already knows how to turn someone into a frog. But she is after all only five years old. And the bogus miracle worker has a strange power over children....

An audio book (what we used to call "Books on Tape") is an interesting experience.  It gives you more of the feeling of stories-told-out-loud around the campfire than sitting and reading.  The narrator is called on to do different voices, to bring out the tension in the exciting parts, to make you want to know what happens next.  The story is told by Daimbert the wizard, and when I first heard my stories being narrated, it was an odd sensation, because in my own head of course Daimbert sounds like me.  The excellent narrator, Eric Vincent, brings out intensity I hadn't realized I'd put in.

If you've never read or listened to any of the Yurt series, you could plunge in here for a wild ride, but you might prefer to start at the beginning, with "A Bad Spell in Yurt."  Happy listening!

© C. Dale Brittain 2017

The Witch & the Cathedral

"The Witch and the Cathedral."  Sounds like an interesting scholarly book about women and heresy during the twelfth century, doesn't it?

Well, it's not!  This is me in my fantasy-author mode, not my medieval-scholar mode.

One of the things that I think makes my fantasy different from most of the genre, however, is that I have real, working Christianity in it.  It's not that my books are pious, however--the wizards are always leery of religion, and the priests are leery of wizardry.  But as a medievalist I would have trouble creating even a semi-medieval setting for my stories without including a functioning church.

In this book, as well as the tension between religion and magic (a thinly disguised version of the modern tension between religion and science), I also focus on the tension between the sexes, the female magic-workers the wizards distrust and call witches versus the male version of magic.

And besides, the book is funny.

The reason I'm talking about it right now is because it's just been released as an audiobook, available on Audible.com, on iTunes, and on Amazon.  You can also get it as an ebook through Amazon (details here) and go back and forth between reading it and listening to it.

If you like the Yurt books but haven't tried audiobooks yet, I suggest you start at the beginning with "A Bad Spell in Yurt."  Eric Vincent, the narrator, does a great job.  In my own head of course Daimbert (my wizard hero) sounds like me, but Eric voices him very well.

Enjoy!

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

Stories Told Out Loud

Medieval entertainment consisted largely of stories told out loud.  Before radio, before TV, before the internet, one mostly had to rely on other people for entertainment.  There were books, but before printing developed (late fifteenth century), books had to be copied by hand and were rare and expensive.

The great mass of the population could not read or write, so they would have to rely on someone remembering or making up a story.  Among the aristocracy, most people could read at least to some extent, although writing was a more unusual skill.  Aristocrats could and did own books, at least a few. So an evening's entertainment could be everyone sitting around while someone with good reading skills read a story out loud.

Even in today's culture, we like the sound of a human voice.  Listening to someone reading a book out loud is different from reading it to oneself.  Hence the popularity of audiobooks.

Above is the cover of the audio version of my first novel, A Bad Spell in Yurt.  It's read by Eric Vincent, who does a very good job with the voice of my wizard hero.  When I first heard the audio files it was a little startling, because of course in my own head he sounds like me.  But a good narrator can bring out aspects of a story that a rapid reader might miss.  I've been so pleased that I'm having all the Yurt books done as audiobooks.

They're available on iTunes, Amazon, and Audible.com.

For more on my books and audiobooks, go to www.Daimbert.com.

© C. Dale Brittain 2014