The fairy
tale fantasy adventure epic
you’ve been waiting to hear!
One Last Chance To Save Happily Ever After!
Can a group of heroes, including Goldenhair, Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel, help General Snow White and her dwarven resistance fighters defeat the tyrannical Queen Cinderella? Will they succeed before a war with Wonderland destroys everything? Their only hope to stop Cinderella's quest for power lies with a young girl named Patience Muffet, who carries the fabled shards of Cinderella's glass slippers, as well as the dark secret of who murdered the last of the fairy godmothers.
Expertly told by narrating sensation Christopher Crosby Morris, the Shards 16-hour audio book is enhanced with music and sound for an immersive listener experience.
Watch the promotional video:
“Audiobooks are a fantastic format,” Roy Mauritsen explains. “With today’s technology, audio books are the fastest growing part of today’s book market. Producing them—the equipment, technical knowhow, and distribution—has been cost prohibitive until recently. Now, with computers, digital formats, and Internet downloading, all that has changed. Readers can download audio-books in moments from Amazon, iTunes, Audible.com and more. Authors and narrators can collaborate to produce works in real time at a distance with complete control of the results.
That same technology which benefits the creative process makes it easier now than ever before to create a professional-level audio book that incorporates sound effects and music, and distribute it worldwide via digital formats.”
“I jumped at the chance to collaborate with such a great vocal talent like Christopher Crosby Morris. It was a unique opportunity that turned into a synergistic partnership; what a great chance to showcase Christopher’s incredible voice coupled with my own idea of what I wanted to do with my audiobook! Chris is very much on board with my vision,” says author Roy Mauritsen.
“Storytelling with music and sound effects isn’t new. This is the way we first told stories to each other. Today’s technology makes it possible to bring the audience a more compelling experience than previously , and I have the skill and resources to put all that together.”
Roy Mauritsen explains that he mixed the Shards narration and sound effects himself, working days, nights, and weekends over a three month span. “It’s always a labor of love to bring your vision to life.” Carefully selecting the right sounds, Mauritsen made sure not to clutter the reader’s experience, even recording his own sound effects. His concern, he says, “always is to always is to enhance and support, not overpower, the narration.”
Not every author has the opportunity, knowledge, and resources to put together something like an enhanced audiobook. “I work a lot with audio and video as a graphic designer involved with broadcast commercials in my day job, so it was not a stretch for me to take this on myself. Though I would not recommend every author do this: It’s a lot of work and it’s important to know what you’re doing.”
Mauritsen has appeared at several conventions since his book was first published in 2012 by Padwolf Publishing. “At author signings, and at every convention I’d meet people who, due to an injury, reading disability, or visual impairment, had difficulty reading traditional paperback books. They‘d ask if I had an audiobook. Due to increasing demand for an audio version of Shards of the Glass Slipper: Queen Cinder books, I began thinking seriously about a full-fledged audio version of the story.”
Inspiration for this enhanced audiobook mainly comes from Mauritsen’s love of the movie-making process. “I’m the guy that gets excited about the sound mixing and sound editing categories at the Oscars,” Mauritsen admits with a grin. Shards is his first opportunity to explore his passion for cinematic sound.
“This book isn’t everyone’s cup of tea,” Mauritsen acknowledges. “Some people will prefer their audiobooks with just a single voice reading. My audiobook probably isn’t for them. If a voice is an instrument, why not bring the whole orchestra into play? I want the listener to enter a world of sound—to be there in that moment of action, fighting alongside iconic fairy tale characters in a story brought to life by such a skilled narrator as Christopher Crosby Morris.
“It’s a whole new way to experience Shards of the Glass Slipper… even for me, and I wrote it!” Mauritsen laughs. “It was an amazing experience to hear this story as Chris read it, and then add the sound effects. Underscoring moments with music really added a unique emotional impact to the story, elevating it to a whole new level of storytelling.”
Mauritsen also says he’s fortunate to have the opportunity to work with such a top notch narrator. “Chris knocks it out of the park. His nuance and inflections are incredible. He brings every character to life, which is impressive, as Shards of the Glass Slipper boasts an ensemble cast of nearly two dozen fairy tale characters.”
Emboldened by the positive results of their collaboration, author Roy Mauritsen and narrator Christopher Morris will soon team up again to bring to life the prequel story of the character Syrenka, and later this year they will begin work on the second novel, Shards of the Glass Slipper - Book II Queen Alice. Stay tuned for more exciting audiobook releases from this pair!
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