The Godward Sea Saga is an Audiobook

Before I start going on and on about how much I love these characters, how much time I’ve devoted to them bleh-blah, it only makes sense to present a synopsis of their story first. I don’t want to jump ahead of myself, but if I do it’s only because this is something I’m extremely excited about and proud of and swinging on cloud nine for because we finally completed the first audio chapter after months of collaboration and hard work and ideas—some failed, some successful, some forgotten or misconstrued; some completely spontaneous. And here’s the product, very near to how I dreamed it.

First, a basic summary of my motivation (a query, so to speak) and the synopsis of my novel, The Godward Sea. (Note: The “query” is written in the style of the novel so as not to mislead anyone who may or may not be interested!)

---------------------------
Query and Synopsis
---------------------------

The universe and its natural workings are intricate; so too the Epic Fantasy Saga of the Godward Sea, whereby a panoramic cast advances the plot of love and despair between gods, angels, and men. Book One introduces the concept of a sea of gods over mortals, a heaven divided into one hundred kingdoms, each respectively ruled. In the spirit of Greek tragedies, driven by a rebel god and his lust for earthly dominion, the saga of the Godward Sea is steeped in emotional drama and eroticism, subtle magic and flamboyant sin, swordplay and spirituality, politics and betrayal.

In the seductive City of Angels, amid an alternative retelling of the story of Adam and Eve, rivals take center stage--the One God Yeovah and his brother the All-Father Odin. But which is good, which is evil? Book One follows one god in his quest for love and the other in his debt to loyalty. Eve, beautiful and clever daughter of Odin, Princess of his earthly City, is torn between them. At the helm of an angelic army, as she seeks to unite a divided realm, her choice brings about the end of the Golden Age.

After years of soul searching, of studying old and new age theology, I came to a few mellow conclusions about faith, but was most intrigued by the unanswerable questions--and these inspired adult “science fantasy” tales: A sea of gods and angels, their obsession with mortals, the tragic results. A series came about. The Godward Sea Saga: Book One is complete at 104,000 words. Book Two, a sequel revolving around the same cast, is near completion. Three is in outline stage.

***

Synopsis for The Godward Sea: “When you are fully aware of your own propensity for evil, you can sincerely turn it off ....”

War between divine kingdoms imperils Heaven, thus a dark angel journeys to Golden Age earth in search of her fugitive God to restore order. With her at his side, he regains lost memories of Heaven and spreads black wings thus to return. However, Odin the All-Father has other plans--namely, to rule mortals and fallen angels with his newfound wisdom. He rises to become the Moon King of Darkland, where Those That Leapt hail him as God for laying magic as the foundation of their new faith.

On the dawn of his daughter Eve’s coronation he presents a mind-reading jewel, the crimson Sphinx Rose, and asks her to exclude all men but him. He warns that if she forfeits her purity, the jewel will lose its magic. Hence, despite her blooming love for Astrian Zend, God-Prince of the Aeonikan Empire, she makes a promise to the All-Father.

Astrian Zend, a brooding priest, carries the holiest blade known to earthiankind, Oriadne. To all but Astrian--The Shepherd, he is called--it is heavy as a rooted oak. At the peak of Eve’s coronation night, dissent over Oriadne between Prince Astrian and the All-Father thrusts Eve headlong into an ancient divine feud. Scion of Odin, she alone must retain her right to his heavenly throne and outwit his cunning Nephilim lords who scheme to claim it. She will choose between her gods, and between Heaven and Earth, as the greatest era known to man suffers a violent death.

------------------------------

A lot of work went into this audiobook project. What started out as an experiment kind of escalated until we realized we had about twenty-five hours of music and spoken word to edit down, splice together, and synchronize. I had to eat many, many lemon-honey cough drops in order to keep my voice after several hours-long sessions; Ricola were the least nauseating.

So far we’ve got nine chapters completed. After a few tweaks and edits—which is more time-consuming than it sounds—they’re good to go. We had to do this late at night, so I speak softly so as to avoid convincing the neighbors that I’m nuts. I’m lucky to have a musician/recording engineer in the family, and I’m wildly pleased with the result. Each chapter of the novel runs about twenty minutes, and there are thirty-seven chapters in Book One. That’s a whole lotta hours of original music and spoken word. It doesn’t quite account for the hours of mistakes I made, which probably should be released as a blooper reel at some point, if only to show that despite the dark, emotional severity of some parts of the book we had a ridiculous amount of fun.

Writers, take note! When you love your stories, devote yourself to them, stretch them and bend them into new shapes. Sure, this is just a simple DIY; it's also a way for you to control the promotion of your own work and pay homage to your characters, and if there's a following a way to give them a treat! For the curious, I used Windows Movie Maker for the video, Cubase for recording music and vocals, Photoshop for images, the Internet for everything else.


Audio/Visual Novel: The Godward Sea Trilogy; Book 1, Ch 1 Kosmos from Tanisha Mykia on Vimeo.