Saturday, June 21, 2014

Release Tour: The Summer Sacrifice by Holly Hinton + Giveaway

Upper middle grade fantasy THE SUMMER SACRIFICE will be available to buy from major online retailers as of June 21st 2014. Available in ebook and paperback form. (Audiobook to follow.)

Click here to read Chapter One of The Summer Sacrifice.
Click here to listen to the first chapter of The Summer Sacrifice’s audiobook.
Click here to watch Holly visiting Dancing Ledge: the birthplace of The Summer Sacrifice.

Praise for The Summer Sacrifice

”The present world is often terrifying to a sensible adult. Hinton reflects its effect on youngsters in a powerfully imagined world that hums with poetry. In its pages, in the words of Yeats, a terrible beauty is born. Herein lies empathy, barreling adventure and an iconic heroine, Jamie Tuff.”

Charles Bane Jr., award winning author of The Chapbook, and Love Poems; creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for The Gutenberg Project, and nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida.

AUDIOBOOK DRAMA

The actor in me wants to read everything out loud.

Reading The Summer Sacrifice aloud resulted in multiple revisions being made to the book. Voicing the text let me get close to my characters, see the world from outside of my own head, and it helped me gauge flow, pace and tone. Recording an audiobook seemed a natural conclusion to the publishing process. I looked forward to bringing The Summer Sacrifice to life in this way, and was excited about the potential the book would have to reach a broader audience.

When I was researching how to make and produce an audiobook, I found a podcast on The Creative Penn website, a great site for writers created by author Joanna Penn. During this podcast, acclaimed audiobook producer and author J. Daniel Sawyer talks prospective producers through the process of recording an audiobook, from preproduction to distribution.

Sawyer’s advice is fantastic. Though he stresses it’s a time-intensive and potentially expensive enterprise, he gives clear examples of how to go about creating your audiobook so that neither its quality nor your sanity is compromised.

On his list of things you need, I already had my voice, a good microphone, a basic knowledge of Audacity (an open source sound editing program), a wonderfully geeky boyfriend with a not-so-basic knowledge of Audacity, and a quiet room. I was so excited to commit the story to tape, but on the first day of recording, my preamp broke.

Luckily, my boyfriend gave me a Zoom sound recorder for my birthday.

The actual recording was a bit of a learning curve, and it took twice the time I had anticipated. I was much more adept at the process towards the end of recording the book. With the knowledge I had gained, I then rerecorded The Summer Sacrifice from the beginning.

The audiobook has some sound effects and original music. A few of the sounds are sampled from Sound Jay. Most of the sounds are recorded by me. For example my cat Max has a starring role. He can deliver up indignance, joy and “please feed me!” on a sixpence.

As soon as I know when the entire audiobook will be available to buy, I shall shout loudly about it here. Until then, I hope you enjoy Chapter One!

About the Author:

Holly grew up in a small, sleepy village in Suffolk. The acting bug hit her at age nine, when she was asked to play Baboushka in the school nativity. That same year she played the lead role of a naughty black poodle in a pet parlour themed ballet, and she thought she had made it. Years passed, but the acting bug didn’t. She went to Goldsmiths, University of London to study Drama, after which she completed her actor training at Arts Ed.

Writing a book was never part of the plan. But life’s full of swerves and surprises and ideas dropping into people’s heads. Holly had an idea drop into hers, and that idea became The Summer Sacrifice, and The Summer Sacrifice became the first book of the Master Game Series.

For more information please visit:
http://www.hollyhinton.com/

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