Author John Ashbrook was the only author in Twisted50 volume one who chose to narrate their own story – and what a great job he did too with ‘The Spider Taketh Hold’.

He recently did a radio interview for BBC Radio Humberside and you can listen to it here… We hope you enjoy!

If you have an audible account you can now download and listen to the Twisted50 Audiobook. If you don’t have an account, you can sign up for the free account (30 days) and download it now.

Twisted50 is the first book to come out of the Create50 process, with 50 authors writing 50 horror stories read by 50 narrators. It’s truly exceptional.

Sign up HERE and get the Twisted50 Audiobook free…

And if you do sign up and listen to it, please do leave a review to help bolster ratings, it’s VERY important to our continued success.

UPDATE: Twisted50 is now on iTunes also. get it HERE.

The Twisted50 Audiobook (along with selected stories from Evil Little Sister) is now on Audible. This means you can buy it or get it as part of your Audibile subscription online. How cool is that?

Here is the link... http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Twisted-50-Audiobook/B06W9KHGBR/ref=a_search_c4_1_2_srTtl?qid=1487597401&sr=1-2

Other Audiobook platforms will follow soon. And of course you can still get physical CD copies from us HERE and will send them out after the weekend when they are signed by the Audio narrators.

I suffered from insomnia as a child. I still do. When I was little, I had a huge selection of audiobooks. At bedtime, my mother would pick one, click it in the tape deck and flick the light out. I would cocoon myself in the blanket against the malevolent night, reach a careful finger out into the black and press play. Lying there, I'd listen to the dead space of the tape as it turned around, its circular ticks tocking through time, my ears full with the audible fuzz of recorded silence. And then a voice.
 
I listened to the usual things: Lewis Carroll, Tolkien, Alan Garner. I am still able to repeat sections of these, learned via repetition each night. Those types of strange stories were the perfect bridge to traverse that foggy, unmapped landscape at the edge of dreams.

Marvel if you will, at the trailer for the Twisted50 Audiobook, produced by the fabulous Helen Lloyd. 50 Writers, 50 Stories… 50 Narrators…

Enjoy it and please share with your communities.

If you want to get the audiobook, the digital version is now shipping and CD version shipping after the launch party (as we will get disks signed by authors and narrators).

What I’ve noticed about listening to these excellent stories is how much I’ve invested in them, It was my privilege to help edit about half of them and that was a learning curve in itself, so when I listened to those particular stories I found myself remembering so much of them and also crucially noticing new elements that hadn’t struck me before.

Even though I was less familiar with the stories that Cristina edited, I was still rooting for them, having read many earlier drafts of the finalists. And what a difference the music makes! The actors brought the stories gruesomely alive in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

The Twisted50 Audiobook has been ‘beta’ listened to by five people. During this process the feedback surprised even us. It seems that Twisted50 narrated is EVEN better than the written word. Here is feedback from three of the listeners…

‘The Twisted50 audiobook is a compelling, unhurried, lingering, luxurious, silk-lined, creamy-dark, downy flick-knife musk-rose experience. So treat yourself!’
Richie Brown

‘The acoustic, the sense of 'being there' with a stranger whispering your deepest fears right into your ears, and a freak-out playlist of fantastic musical intros is nerve jangling…’

Kendall Castor-Perry

When I was coming through arrivals at Heathrow Airport one day, I was struck by the sea of signs bearing names. I wondered – how do the people holding these signs know for sure that the person approaching them really is Michael Smith or Sophie Brown? What if that person was just pretending to be Michael or Sophie? How long would they be able to keep up the pretence? Where could it lead? That’s where my idea for ‘Trying On Tobias’ came from.

I have to admit, I didn’t want to write a horror story at first because… I’m afraid of horror. It’s not a specific book or film that frightens me, more the feeling I know it’ll conjure up inside me. That crawly feeling. I don’t like it.

If you have pre bought the Twisted50 audiobook, in the next day or so you can expect a download link to land in your inbox.

This will take you to your private download page where you can download the high bitrate, music enhanced MP3 audiobook for Twisted50.

Plus you get the bonus of five more stories from the Twisted50 initiative and Evil Little Sister!

How cool is that!

The ‘Five Days’ story in Twisted 50 superbly read by the inestimable Fenella Fudge really got me thinking. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to it (or read it), it is about a woman in her late 40s, who is concerned about how she looks, the increasing wrinkles, the eye bags and the general sagging that happens when gravity takes its toll … I know the feeling all too well … and who buys a miracle remedy.

However, why it particularly exercised my brain is not to do with vanity or ageing … it’s to do with how a voice and a face sometimes don’t match … and what voice actors can do to negate those comparisons.

When I was young (and flying to the other side of the world was still relatively new and special) my father brought me back an elaborately carved wooden boomerang from a business trip to Australia. So in awe of this object was I that I dare not throw it for fear it may break.

Years later, I plucked up the courage and sent it off on its inaugural flight. Granted, when it returned and I failed to catch it, it landed on a stone which took a small chip off one corner but the joy of accomplishing something so singular, far outweighed the now slight imperfection.

So much happening at Twisted50 HQ!

Evil Sister Paperbacks

We finally have paperbacks headed to the printers and we will have a limited edition first run batch available in a week or two. You can pre-order your copies now on the Twisted50 shop. We are printing 100 copies of this first edition so act now if you want to reserve your copy. CLICK HERE

Helen Lloyd has just uploaded the final reading for Twisted50 and the final mastering has begun. How exciting.

Viktoria made a video blog of the process which you can watch below…

(and you can get the Audiobook in the store HERE).

There’s something surreal about pulling off the M5 into a faceless service
station car park, on a crisp, cloudless day, to listen to the audio version
of your short story for the first time.

Even stranger, as innocent, post-Christmas families mill aimlessly past my car, to hear an actor brilliantly capture the understated relish in the supermarket butcher’s voice, as he reveals his fascination with meat and dismembering.

When I’m not writing twisted tales, I’m a playwright. And when I initially
wrote MEAT, it was as a short play.But I loved the idea of adapting it as a short story; a confessional monologue to be happened upon and savoured alone; a blood-curdling cry for attention to thrill-seeking voyeurs.

If success lies at the crossroads between experience and opportunity, then the simple act of creative collaboration is by far the best strategy to increase your experience and opportunities.

When we create, be it writing, making movies, marketing our stuff, we more often than not work in partnership with others, sometimes even a bigger team. Relationships are made, debts and favours exchanged, experience gained…

It’s like each major act of creativity is like throwing a stone in a pond. The ripples spread out and often, keep going, sometimes even for decades. That same pond has others creating too, and their ripples are bound to interact with yours too, creating yet more crossroads and opportunities.

Winning Twisted50 was my first writing success and so the opportunity to listen to the audio interpretation would be another new experience.

Inevitably I have a clear image in my head of the characters in my story; particularly “Miss Smith” who is the main protagonist. But would she be as I imagine her? Would the whole tone of the audio interpretation be in line with my thoughts? If it was different, would I be disappointed? But then would that different interpretation necessarily be a bad thing?

So, with fingers crossed, I listened to the extract.

I’m sitting with my dad in his kitchen in Glasgow having just listened to the audiobook excerpt of my story. It was awesome! 

When I wrote “The Audition Altar” I was thinking of John Waters films, and Anna Parker Naples, the voice actor, nailed the lascivious and sometimes hyperbolic tone of the text. I didn’t expect Ms Naples to do both the male and female voices, so it was a joy to hear her capture the gormless and naive Geoff as easily as the creepy and presumptuous Zoe Trope, and yet she made them her own. Even although I wrote the story, I was excited to hear what happened next!

As the Audiobook project for Twisted50 evolves (produced by the amazing Helen Lloyd), I am publishing short excerpts to share just how extraordinary the voice artists are, and how the stories truly come to life when read aloud, with a little music for mood.

You can see all the voice artists on their page HERE (we will add them as each story locks in).

As I get new tracks I will add them to this playlist here as it’s a great way to hear everything in one place.

Post by Stephanie Wessell

It’s with some trepidation that I sit down to listen to this extract of my story in its new audio form. My narrator, Hannah, has lived in my head for over a year but, perhaps weirdly, I have no set ideas about where she comes from, her ethnicity or what class she is.
 
I am, however, definite about Hannah’s age, so I’m slightly worried that an adult voice actor might sound too old for my fictional teenager-veering-on-womanhood. I obviously know Hannah well and feel very protective of her. Will another artist’s interpretation of her voice damage my own slightly nebulous, imagined version?

Some of the stories in Twisted50 are demented, disturbing and downright, well yes, Twisted. Then there are some that are melancholic, beautiful and lyrical. Sum Of My Memories by EJ Hughes is one such story.

Originally written from a male perspective, Helen Lloyd our Audiobook producer asked the author if we could go with a female voice as Susie Riddell seemed perfect for it. EJ Hughes agreed and so we have a tonal shift in the reading.

This ability to re-interpret and discover new layers in our collective work is one of the aspects of Create50 that I love. Art and craft in motion, as a collective / team / community. Discovering, reinventing and recreating.

A comment from Richie Brown (one of the Twisted 50 Authors) on the Twisted 50 Audiobook Blog got me thinking.

Richie asked “Are some stories better suited to reading aloud than others because of the way they are written? If so, what lends a story to an audio performance? Or is it the case that an experienced narrator with an engrossing manner is able to read any story to good effect?

Great questions.

Some of the tales in Twisted are just a little bit more Twisted than others. Do Blastocysts Dream Of Foetal Sheep? by Alex Thompson is one such story. Read it if you dare.

I just got the first part of the Audiobook performance by Joan Walker and it is, as with all other excerpts from the Audiobook, outstanding.

I cannot wait to get the whole book completed and share it with the world! As ever thanks to Helen Lloyd for doing such a great job! You can listen to the clip below…

WHAT ON EARTH AM I THINKING!!!! A daily audiobook diary? I must be mad!

Not only do I not have the time to do a daily diary, but you’d be bored stupid. So … I think a diary entry per week is more realistic!

You see, everyone thinks that we lead very glamorous lives. We work in the entertainment industry right? We’re actors, narrators, producers – we work as creatives … we read aloud and we get paid for it – it is a darn sight nicer than a lot of jobs I’ve done in the past, but glamorous? No … not really.

You may have heard that we are making an Audiobook of Twisted50 volume 1, aided and abetted by ace producer Helen Lloyd. We asked all the authors in the book to make a small contribution to help pay for this (anyone can make a contribution HERE) and we will be selling both physical and downloadable copies too.

You can pre-order yours in the store HERE (and please do so as we have to find a way to break even on the recordings). Helen wrote an article about the process HERE…

But most excitingly, we have our first sample from Killer Heels by Sasha Black and read by Jane Copland. You can listen to it below…

Twisted50 volume 1 will have an audiobook. How cool is that! You can pre-order your copy now (and please do as we need to sell 50 copies to cover the cost of making it). You can pre order a digital download OR a disk version. You can get it on the Twisted50 store HERE.

Heading it up is experienced Audiobook producer and seasoned voice over artist Helen Lloyd, whose voice sounds like what a bottle of Baileys would if it could talk. Rather delicious. So we are in very good hands. Helen has agreed to write an Audiobook Diary as we go… Here is part one.