Q & A With Mur Lafferty author of Heaven series

I am so excited to have my first Q & A with a wonderful author and well known name in the podibook world. On her Heaven series of books, I introduce to you Mur Lafferty! (I can hear the applause :P)

Q: What are your inspirations for writing the Heaven series?

I was thinking about how anticipation is often better (or worse) than the reality we anticipate. And I wondered if the ultimate reward turned out to be not as good as expected when we finally got it. Then I just started playing with mythologies and different afterlives.

Q: Did you already know a lot about the major religions or did you have to do a lot of research?

About half and half. I was familiar with Greek and Norse mythology, and passing knowledge with Native American. I had to do lots of research on Chinese and Egyptian and Japanese.

Q: What were you favorite parts of the series or each book?

Gosh. That's hard. I think Wasteland and War, flipping between the wasteland and afterlives and building a new world were my favorite. I also liked giving Heaven to a hobo for safe keeping in Earth.

I thought there was something left unanswered and that was the battle between Heaven and Hell.

Q: Was it intentionally left to the imagination or are we going to get to hear about the final battle between Heaven and Hell?

Sure. Every story is going to have open threads for the reader's interpretation.

Q: Is there anything you would like to say to the people reading this? Maybe about your future projects

I don't have any podcasted fiction coming up right now, nothing that I can talk about, anyway. I'd just recommend listening to the Tor.com podcast for fiction and listening to my podcast I Should Be Writing for writing advice.

Q: What you would like  listeners to have taken away from the Heaven series?

I never look at writing that way. I tell a story, I hope people enjoy it, and walk away with a desire, perhaps, to hear more stories, from me, from others, doesn't matter. And Heaven was really a love letter to all the stories that are the foundation storytellers rely on today.

Thank you so much Mur for you wonderfully open and honest answers. I hope to hear more from you in the future. I will be adding Playing for Keeps to this blog soon.

I hope my readers enjoyed this Q & A portion of my blog. Please download the Heaven series and give it a listen. Feel free to post your comments and your own reviews as well. 

~JadeDragoness

Lisenting to Brian Rathbone's- Dawning of Power: Trilogy

Hey Ya'll,
I am listening to Brain Rathbone's- Dawning of Power: Trilogy. Actually, I am going back and listening to it again; its that good. I want it fresh on my mind when I post my review. I have friended him on Podiobooks.com's Community pages (its kind of like face book without all the games). Anyway, he made an interesting suggestion in an email I received. He sometimes does interviews over Skype, records the conversation and makes it into a podcast to be downloaded and listened to. So, I was thinking I would do some Q & A with him over Skype, transcribe what was said, then add both the vocal recording and transcription to the review posting.

This is getting good ya'll. I am so excited to be able to reach out to the authors and have them respond rather fast and with enthusiasm.

As for the Dawning of Power: Trilogy I am loving every bit of it all over again. This is one story that will grab hold and not let go; more of that in my "official review".

I am going to link the first book, Call of the Hearld, to you from iTunes. Its free so subscribe and listen. You can listen on your PC or Mp3 player. If you don't have iTunes, get it, it is free too.
I am so excited to introduce this trilogy to you all. Imagine me jumping up and down and telling you to go get this podiobook. Get it! Get it! Get it! I promise you will be enthralled with it as much as I am.


So check back in and keep an eye out for my review and hopefully my first, live recorded, interview.

Here is Call of the Hearld. Get it!


Until next time, read until your eyes burn and listen until your ears bleed,.

JadeDragoness

Review of the Heaven series by Mur Lafferty

I'm sure you have heard of that old adage "never judge a book by its cover", well think of that when you look at the cover for this book. Yes the name is "Heaven" but there is so much more to this series than Heaven.


  Heaven is a series of five books written by Mur Lafferty.
It is a whimsical, thought provoking series about two people who are best friends in life. Daniel and Kate die, go to Heaven, see that the "Christian Heaven" isn't what they expected and wasn't really "all that and a bag of chips". So, they set out as travelers wondering around and visiting all the different religions' Heavens; from Greek mythology to Dog Heaven. They discover that they are prophesied to bring about the end of times. That is only the beginning, the book just keeps getting better. I won't put anymore spoilers than that in here.
We go from Heaven to Hell, to Earth, to Wasteland and then to War in this unconventional journey of the afterlife.

  I highly recommend this funny and wonderfully adventurous series. You can get these podiobooks from www.podiobooks.com as well as iTunes. If you have iTunes the links in the review will take you to each books download and information page. They are free for your enjoyment and no you don't have to have an iPod or Mp3 player. You can play then through iTunes or any media player on your PC. After you have listened to them feel free to come back and leave your own review in my comments.

Until next time, read until your eyes hurt and listen to podiobooks until your ears bleed.
JadeDragoness

An Introduction

Hello Readers,

     My name is Brandie Vizzier (last name is pronounced like cartier or perrier; its french). I am better known in the podcasting world as JadeDragoness. I am a newcomer and fresh face on the podicasting and podiobook scene.

  For those of you that do not know what a podcast or podiobook is, I will tell you. To put it simply, podcasting is blogging in audio form. Some think of it kind like radio broadcasting. It is done through RSS feed and Mp3s. People make an audio recording of whatever they want to talk about and upload it to the web for listeners to download. Podiobooks are podcasts of books, much like audiobooks, that authors have recorded or have had people act out. They then put these on the web for us to listen to and enjoy; usually for free.

  An excellent website to check out and get to know the podiobook community is www.podiobooks.com.

  In my future blogs I will be reviewing podiobooks that I have listened to and will introduce them to you. I also hope to have Q & A interviews with the authors of these books.

  I am a budding author and am learning all I can about podcasting thanks to Tee Morris "The Father of Podcasting" and his books Podcasting for Dummies and Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies; both can be found on Amazon.com. I hope to bring you along on this journey with me. In future blogs I may even posts little tid-bits of books I am writing. I hope you will follow along and enjoy the ride.

Jadedragoness