Audiobook blog tour - #The Cross of Ciaran, @AMatthewsAuthor @AnAudiobookworm

Author: Andrea Matthews

Narrator: Liam Gerrard

Length: 9 hours and 18 minutes

Series: Cross of Ciaran Series, Book 1

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Released: Jan. 25, 2025

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Audiobook blog tour #Halfway Hunted #Halfway Witchy #UltimateIndulgence @TerryMaggert @ErinSpencerLA @AnAudiobookworm

Author: Terry Maggert

Narrator: Erin Spencer

Length: 6 hours 56 minutes

Series: Halfway Witchy, Book 3

Publisher: Maggert and Spencer

Released: Apr. 3, 2018

Genre: Paranormal Fantasy

Audiobook blog tour #Halfway Bitten #Halfway Witchy @TerryMaggert @ErinSpencerLA @AnAudiobookworm

Author: Terry Maggert

Narrator: Erin Spencer

Length: 7 hours 19 minutes

Series: Halfway Witchy, Book 2

Publisher: Maggert and Spencer

Released: Mar. 6, 2018

Genre: Paranormal Fantasy

Audiobook blog tour #Halfway Dead #Halfway Witchy @TerryMaggert @ErinSpencerLA @AnAudiobookworm

Author: Terry Maggert

Narrator: Erin Spencer

Length: 7 hours 12 minutes

Series: Halfway Witchy, Book 1

Publisher: Maggert and Spencer

Released: Feb. 13, 2018

Genre: Paranormal Fantasy

Audiobook Blog Tour #The Witches of Vegas @MarkRosendorf @AnAudiobookworm

Author: Mark Rosendorf

Narrator: Jeffery Lynn Hutchins

Length: 7 hours 9 minutes

Publisher: The Wild Rose Press

Released: January 21, 2021

Genre: Fantasy; YA

Audiobook Tour: #Wrong Side of the Storm - #Mothman Mysteries, Book Two @mogdocnews @AnAudiobookworm

Author: Bryna Butler

Narrator: Michael Mola

Length: 3 hours 2 minutes

Series: Mothman Mysteries, Book 2

Publisher: Swancrest Publishing

Genre: Paranormal Mystery; YA

Audiobook Tour: #Wrong Side of the Grave - #Mothman Mysteries, Book One @mogdocnews @AnAudiobookworm

Author: Bryna Butler

Narrator: James Fouhey

Length: 4 hours 40 minutes

Series: Mothman Mysteries, Book 1

Publisher: Swancrest Publishing

Genre: Paranormal Mystery; YA

Audiobook Blog Tour #Donn's Hill #Soul Searchers Mysteries # Ultimate Indulgence Book Award @carynlarrinaga @jnmcevoy @AnAudiobookworm

Author: Caryn Larrinaga

Narrator: Jessica McEvoy

Length: 9 hours 54 minutes

Series: The Soul Searchers Mysteries, Book 1

Released: Aug. 1, 2017

Publisher: Twisted Tree Press

Genre: Supernatural Cozy Mystery

"Grief can change us... rewire our brains and shift the way we look at the world..."

After returning home from her father's funeral to find her boyfriend in bed with another woman, Mackenzie Clair is looking for a fresh start. She thinks she'll find it in her favorite childhood vacation spot, but returning to Donn's Hill awakens more than nostalgia. Mac regains a lost psychic ability to talk to the dead, and the poltergeist haunting her apartment is desperate to make her use that gift to find his killer.

Aided by her new roommate - a spirited Tortoiseshell cat named Striker, and the ghost-hunting crew of the nationally televised show Soul Searchers, Mac struggles to learn how to use her powers. But she'd better get a handle on them fast, because someone in town is hiding a deadly secret. If Mac can't somehow divine the truth, Donn's Hill will never be the same.

Caryn Larrinaga is a self-described horror evangelist and paranormal junkie. Her debut supernatural mystery novel, DONN’S HILL, won the League of Utah Writers 2017 Silver Quill Award in the adult novel category and was a 2017 Dragon Award finalist. Her short fiction has won multiple honors and been featured in local and international anthologies. Watching scary movies through split fingers terrified Caryn as a child, and those nightmares inspire her to write now. She lives near Salt Lake City, Utah, with her husband and their clowder of cats. Visit www.carynlarrinaga.com for free short stories and audiobooks.

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Between peddling video games and teaching yoga in her home state of Arizona, Jessica McEvoy attempts to conduct a career as a professional voice actress. This, however, is moderately undermined by the fact that she records in a dimly lit closet with her microphone balanced on a stack of old board games (Junior Scrabble and Powerpuff Girls Monopoly form a strong foundation), but she hopes that no one holds that against her.

Though her main work consists of narrating audiobooks, her first dive into the voice world was through the NoSleep podcast after answering a post from the LibriVox forums. Having been raised on horror movies and scary stories, she was beyond excited to be able to work on the show. Many stories, tortured screams, deranged villains, and creepy little girl giggles later, Jessica hopes to work on the podcast for seasons and seasons to come.

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Donn's Hill is the first book in the new "The Soul Searchers Mysteries" series. As one unfamiliar with this author, I was simply intrigued by the book teaser. Donn's Hill was a fresh and unique surprise in that it didn't fall squarely into a "typical" paranormal or murder mystery or thriller categories but was lovely, cozy blend of all the best. Mac is a wonderful protagonist - the fact that she is so vulnerable, grieving her father's death and the disastrous lossof her long term relationship, and fighting the realization that she has psychic ghost connection skills makes for an interesting heroine. She is a loner who finds what she never knew she needed in her new friends, gifts and town as she untangles the mysterious world of the dead and the dangerous world of the living with the help of the Soul Searcher crew.

The writing was well crafted, the characters fully developed and dialogue flowed easily. It made for an amazing audiobook - with Jessica McEvoy narrating brilliantly. As a narrator, she manages to capture every unique character's voice, including Striker the cat's (seriously, she can trill just like my cat does when watching birds!). The cast of ghost-hunting crew and the folks of Donn's Hill will take up residence in the reader's brain as the story flows with perfect pace and pitch. Caryn Larrinaga has managed the perfect storm, creating a story that reads out loud as well as on the page. I am absolutely looking forward to the next installment in this captivating series.

I give Donn's Hill 5 Chocolate Dipped Strawberries and our Ultimate Indulgence Award.  I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Caryn Larrinaga. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

Q&A with Author Caryn Larrinaga

• Tell us about the process of turning your book into an audiobook.
  
  • I had so much fun working with Jessica as she adapted both of these novels into audiobooks! Luckily, I had already worked with her on a smaller project before, and I knew she would be the perfect Mackenzie from her reading of my novelette Hide and Seek and her amazing work on the NoSleep Podcast, so we skipped the audition part of the process. Once each of the novels were ready, I sent them to her to read and crossed my fingers she’d like them enough to want to perform them. (When looking for a great narrator like Jessica, there’s definitely a “She said YES!!” moment that involves much shrieking and jumping up and down.) We decided on a reasonable production schedule, then she started recording chapters and uploading them for me to approve. I love that I get to listen to it as she’s working, so we can make sure we’re both on the same page about personalities, accents, and cat-related awesomeness. Then we get to celebrate together once the book is finally live on Audible and iTunes, which is always super exciting!
  • My favorite unexpected bonus about this process is that it happens while I’m working on the next book in the series, so I’m listening to my characters “talk” to me through Jessica’s performance, and that actually has a huge impact on my writing. Listening to her narrate Donn’s Shadow definitely helped me overcome a bit of writer’s block with the third book, and I’m so grateful!
• How closely did you work with your narrator before and during the recording process? Did you give them any pronunciation tips or special insight into the characters?
  
  • Jessica made it really easy to work very closely with her. She requested a pronunciation guide, and since even my own name can be tricky for some people, I sent over an audio recording of me saying the different character names and any other oddball words. For the first book, I even sent her an audio clip of me making Striker’s trademark “Brrrllll,” since that was based on the real Striker’s habit of trilling at us instead of meowing. :)
  • Every once in a while, while listening to a chapter, I’d hear Jessica pronounce a word differently than I do (like “ylang ylang”). Before reaching out to ask her to change it, I’d look it up online… and pretty much every time, I’d learn that I’ve been saying something wrong for literally YEARS! So that’s another nice little bonus of working with a good narrator, haha.
• Were there any real life inspirations behind your writing?
  
  • Absolutely! Mackenzie’s first encounter with a ghost is based on a friend of mine, who mentioned (far too casually for something this spooky) that ghosts who are “just passing through” will sometimes sit for a spell at the edge of her bed. In the night. In the dark. It doesn’t bother my friend, but it bothered the heck out of me, so I had to go home and start writing a story about it.
  • Mac’s additional encounters with poltergeists and other paranormal entities were also based on a few real-life events, like an experience my mother had with some kitchen chairs that moved on their own (six of them, all at the same time).
  • I get freaked out pretty easily and I like to let myself lean into those fears and write them down, especially when they take me to weird or scary places in my mind. But in real life, I’m a huge scaredy cat. Let’s just say Mackenzie is much, much braver than I am!
• What do you say to those who view listening to audiobooks as “cheating” or as inferior to “real reading”?
  
  • Wow, is this something people say? Everyone starts out listening to stories before reading them. If there’s someone out there shaming audiobook listeners, the first thing I’d say is, “Stop it.” Because if they don’t like it, that’s fine, but there’s no wrong way to enjoy a good story. It’s like how everyone has their own learning style; we all have our own leisure style, too. Don’t be ashamed if you prefer one format over another. Whether you prefer to experience good stories via ebooks, paperbacks, books, movies, games, or whatever… just enjoy it! And then do all the content creators a favor and leave reviews. :)
• Have any of your characters ever appeared in your dreams?
  
  • Striker visits me in my dreams all the time, which I’m sure is because I miss her. Not long after she passed away, we fostered and adopted some special-needs kitties, one of whom passed away after only a couple of years with us. The pair of them show up in my dreams together, always snuggling and cleaning each other.
  • None of my other named characters have really shown up in my dreams. But many of the monsters I write about definitely appeared in my nightmares before making it onto the page, like the monsters in the corners of the ceiling that I wrote into my story “Watchers’ Warning.”
• How do you select the names of your characters?
  
  • I put a lot of thought into naming my characters, especially for Donn’s Hill and Donn’s Shadow. Mackenzie is named after my favorite character on a TV show called “The Newsroom,” and I thought that if I was the kind of person who wanted kids (I am not), I’d name a daughter after her. Instead, I named a character after her. :) Her last name, Clair, comes from the fact that she’s a clairvoyant.
    Mackenzie’s handsome landlord, Graham Thomas, is named after one of my favorite fictional men and the man who created him: Thomas Harris’ Will Graham.
  • I’ll usually look up common names from the year a character was born, or names that represent their heritage. Then, to make sure I’m not reusing the same name over and over (my placeholder for characters who identify as female tends to be “Megan” and I have no idea why), I check them against a spreadsheet I keep of every character name I’ve used and where I used it. Yep, I’m one of those people who (rightly) thinks spreadsheets are fun.
• Who is your favorite character to write?
  
  • In the Soul Searchers mysteries, I love writing the characters who antagonize Mac. For some reason, creating moments where they get under her skin is incredibly fun. I also love writing Kit, because our personalities are really similar but I do a better job acting polite than she does. I like living vicariously through Kit and just saying whatever I want, doing what I think is best, and fighting for the people I love regardless of the consequences.
• What is your writing Kryptonite?
  
  • Books and video games. If I’m on a deadline, feeling stressed, or--let’s face it--just awake and at home, it’s soooo tempting to spend the entire afternoon living in someone else’s imaginary universe instead of working on my own. I have to work hard to keep myself on task some days, but I try to find a balance between working and relaxing.
• Do you write listening to music?
  
  • Most of the time, yes. I like to listen to Delerium’s Poem album on repeat so it sort of fades into the background, filling up the part of my brain that wants music without distracting the part of my brain that needs to imagine things and think of the right words to describe them. If I need to set a specific mood or get into the mind of a particular character, I’ll switch it up. Emotional scenes with Graham get written to ‘90s alternative rock, for example.
    But when I need to write a scary scene, like Mac attempting to summon a spirit, I have to turn the music off.
• What’s next for you?
  
  • Right now, I’m working on the third and final book in the Soul Searchers Mysteries. It’s bittersweet to be wrapping up Mac’s story, but I’m excited for her to get to solve her personal mysteries on top of yet another murder (poor girl - she’s such a body magnet!).
    Apart from that, I’m also working on a standalone horror novel that pulls from my Basque heritage. We have some deliciously terrifying folklore and it’s so much fun to explore the dark things that scared my ancestors. I also have three short stories coming out in a few different anthologies this year, and hopefully more to come!
    Definitely subscribe to my newsletter at www.carynlarrinaga.com -- you’ll get a free ebook, plus you’ll stay in the loop about everything I have coming up!
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Audiobook Blog Tour #Second String Savior @RickGualtieri @TotalRECarr @aemmes @AnAudiobookworm

Author: Rick Gualtieri, R.E. Carr

Narrator: Andrea Emmes

Length: 12 hours 46 minutes

Series: False Icons Series, Book 1

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Genre: Contemporary Fantasy

Jessie Flores is having the ultimate bad hair day.

Imagine going to bed with mousy brown locks and waking up with a headful of supernova scarlet. It's a hot new look for me - literally, because it bursts into flames whenever I'm threatened.

My magical makeover is all Gary's fault. I knew there was something off from the moment he transferred to my school. Go figure. He's a wizard with a trust fund and an inferiority complex.

Now, thanks to him, I've graduated from high school bullies to supernatural terrors and that's not all. Fate has chosen me to face the legendary vampire destined to destroy the world.

If I want to survive, I'll have to dig deep and discover whether I'm truly worthy of this new power. Because if not, everything I hold dear will soon burn even hotter than my hair.

Rick Gualtieri loves to write adventure, mayhem, and snarky dialogue. His bestselling Tome of Bill series combines all of this into a world of supernatural danger with hard-hitting action and plenty of sharp-tongued geeky humor.

Rick lives alone in a dark, evil place called New Jersey with only his wife, three kids, and countless pets to both keep him company and constantly plot against him. When he’s not busy monkey-clicking out words, he can typically be found either playing Dungeons & Dragons, losing at video games, or jealously guarding his collection of vintage Transformers from all who would seek to defile them.

Defilers Beware!

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E. Carr likes to split her time between the alien (well resident alien) she married, her two adorable offspring and the vast army of characters who constantly argue in her brain. She uses her past life as a video game reviewer to remind herself just how awesome it is to be writing novels now.

Rachel writes because she knows so many people and places that never quite made it into this version of the universe. It’s her duty to let them out. Writing also gives her mind a certain peace and calm rarely felt in this multi-tasking, wired world.

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Best Selling, Award Winning Audiobook Narrator, Andrea Emmes was born in Hollywood, Florida, grew up in both Tennessee and Rhode Island and started her career in musical theatre. She’s enjoyed an eclectic career as a singer, dancer, Vegas Headliner, Magician’s Assistant, a Recording Artist and a Video Game Designer.

A total book nerd, Andrea, now enjoys narrating all genres of audiobooks, especially YA, LitRPG, Mystery, Romance, and NonFictionat her professional home studio in San Jose, CA.

Her wide range of character voices and dynamic/emotionally invested performances has reviewers and listeners alike commenting on how she effortlessly pulls listeners in and has versatility and charisma.

Fun Facts: Andrea has a Bachelor of Science in Game Art and Design; was a game designer for Disney Interactive; and gets her gamer-geek on playing games of all kinds!

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SECOND STRING SAVIOR is a novel set in the Tome of Bill world. Which is something that I personally knew nothing about prior to listening to this audiobook but will be remedying rather quickly now that I have finished it.  I am a complete sucker for urban fantasy and if you can mix in comedy, snark, sass and bad puns you had me at hello.

I adored the protagonist, teenage Jesse Flores, a comic book nerd from a family of renowned MMA fighters just trying to make her way in a school way above her zip code.  She is like a combo of Buffy, Veronica Mars and all the other kickass teen heroines that are just trying to get by and like a boy who may or may not like them back.  Rick Gualtieri and R. E. Carr have written a story that takes the reader on a serious Mr. Toad-style wild ride - introducing a world of magical creatures, Magi, vampires and everyone's favorite prophecy about the end of days.  As long as Jesse can avoid being grounded long enough to do something about it, it should be no problem, right??

As a self professed queen of my own Nerd Herd, the plethora of Buffy references lead one to believe the story will take one path - especially with the multiple "dust ups" in the early parts of the story.  However, apparently those in the know, know that the "False Icons" subtitle lets the reader know that all is not what it seems and perhaps there are multiple potentials for the savior of the world and even if Jesse isn't the Chosen One, perhaps she has a roll in this fight because as a Flores, she was taught to fight for herself if that was necessary.  Certainly the authors had devious plot bunnies (or Sasquatches) in mind when writing this because the first and second halves of this book go from fast paced to full steam ahead.  The secondary characters are every bit as delightful as the main one - I adored Jesse's family, Gary and the witches and they are what make this book so endearing when it might teeter on the verge of eye rolling at moments.

Andrea Emmes does a fantastic job narrating this book.  Honestly, the first chapter was so jarring that I almost passed on it but her voice and her characterization of Jesse kept me intrigued long enough to get invested.  She was the hook and the key to the ultimate success of this audiobook for me.  Capturing the teen heroine, her posse of friends and allies, weird magical creatures and the wicked awesome Boston suburb accents that help it have that tiny ring of truth that every great urban fantasy needs to plant a seed and make it grow.

I'm eager to see how her journey progresses and what's going to happen next in the series.  You can bet I'll be checking out the rest of the universe! As for Ms. Emmes, she is now one of my auto-buy narrators!

I give Second String Savior 4 Chocolate Dipped Strawberries.  I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Andrea Emmes. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.



Oct. 13th:

The Book Junkie Reads . . .

Viviana MacKade

Turning Another Page

Oct. 14th:

Valerie Ullmer | Romance Author

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Always Love Me Some Books

Oct. 15th:

Dab of Darkness Book Reviews

Eileen Troemel

Oct. 16th:

All the Ups and Downs

4 the Love of Audiobooks

Oct. 17th:

Nesie's Place

The Book Addict’s Reviews

Oct. 18th:

Cafeyre

JBronder Book Reviews

Oct. 19th:

Dazzled by Books

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Guilty Indulgence Bookub