This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 8:54 pm and is filed under Behind The Mic - Recording Audiobooks, Brick By Brick Audiobooks releases, Donaldson, FATAL REVENANT, Fantasy, LORD FOUL'S BANE, Scott's favorite books, Thomas Covenant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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May 1st, 2008. Mean anything to you? Maybe not, maybe it’s nothing more than any other Thursday, maybe you can’t think of a single reason to put a red X on that date in your calendar. But believe me, I can. It’s a huge day in the Brick household, my friends, a day I’ve hoped for lo these last 25 years, a day I’ve worked toward daily for almost a year now.
It’s the day THE CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT become available on audio. That’s right: both Part One, LORD FOUL’S BANE and the latest installment, Part Eight, FATAL REVENANT, are now audiobooks from Brick by Brick audio. (There will be a slight pause while Stephen R. Donaldson fans rejoice, and while I catch my breath. It’s been a lot of work.)
Click here to go to the Store to purchase and download LORD FOUL’S BANE right now. LORD FOUL’S BANE is EXCLUSIVE to ScottBrickPresents right now, you can’t get it anywhere else!
I first read this series back in college. I’ll never forget the day I spent studying for finals my freshman year in UCLA’s University Research Library. I had a huge dilemma on my hands: study for the Theater History class I was so woefully unprepared for, or learn Covenant’s fate at the end of LORD FOUL’S BANE.
Wasn’t much of a choice. I sacrificed my grades that quarter, because the idea of living with the anxiety of not knowing what happened to the Quest for the Staff of Law just didn’t seem plausible
I’ve never regretted my decision.
I learned a funny thing about those books: they sit with you long after the plots of most novels fade. A literature professor of mine once said the mark of a good fictional character is whether or not the readers spend time asking themselves, “I wonder what this character is doing now?” after they turn the final page. If that’s indeed the benchmark of literary success, then Donaldson succeeded wildly with Thomas Covenant. His dilemmas became my own, his ruminations on power and impotence resonated forcefully in my own relationships, unfortunately, and his bitter growl “Hellfire!” was never far from my mind when things went poorly in life.
I also learned I’m not alone in this. There are a TON of Covenant fans out there.
At first, I’d find them somewhat stealthily, unexpectedly. The first time was at a party when someone showed off a white gold ring (a major plot point in the Covenant saga). I mentioned the series to this person and was met with a questioning glance: have you read it, did you enjoy it, did the books resonate as much with you as they did with me, that look seemed to say. A nod, a narrowing of the eyes and a sly smile told me I’d just met a brother, a fellow member of an elite fraternity: someone who’d walked in Thomas Covenant’s shoes as I had.
Over the years, membership in that club expanded, and I found myself discussing its many virtues with acquaintances, girlfriends, even my mother got hooked on the series. There’s even a website devoted entirely to meeting other Covenant/Donaldson fanatics, Kevinswatch.com, a message board I recently (and proudly) joined. Yet with all the new members in the Covenant club I met, that sly feeling of exclusivity never faded; that feeling that you had participated in something huge, monumental; that you’d read something so painfully lovely that it felt wrong to refer to it as a mere BOOK. I feel it still, all these years later.
Of course now, the context has changed somewhat. Now, instead of being the casual reader, I’m what you’d call a PROFESSIONAL reader. I get to travel around the country and give talks, lectures, seminars and the like, sharing with people just what a cool job I have narrating audiobooks, and at these appearances I’m often asked to read a few pages of something, anything, to show the good folks what I do. And for years now, I almost always read a page from LORD FOUL’S BANE, my favorite selection from the entire series, in fact: page 182, where Covenant and the giant Saltheart Foamfollower sail upriver to Revelstone. Foamfollower asks a simple question about storytelling, which inspires an exchange that’s both heart wrenching and lyrical. (Right-click here to download an MP3 where Scott reads his favorite page). Whenever I read this, people always ask me, “Where can I get that, it’s so beautiful, where can I read the whole book?”
The first time this happened was a few years back at a lobster bake in
That was the first time I ever considered doing what I did: optioning the entire series, and filling in all the volumes. Next time I see Cheever, I’m buying him a beer. And giving him complimentary copies.
Because you see, this is the definition of a labor of love. Recording these books doesn’t even seem like work to me. All I can think about is someone experiencing this story for the first time and being blessed by it as I was. That’s enough to make me forget about the long hours and the stifling heat of my non-air-conditioned studio. And getting to work with an author as generous as Stephen R. Donaldson, all to make sure that the pronunciations of this complex language and culture are accurate, is a fan’s dream come true. Stephen has spent hours on the phone, going through an ever-expanding glossary of terms that, by the end of the latest volume, ran to 593 entries. That’s nearly a hundred more than DUNE, folks.
Well, as SPINAL TAP’s good friend Marty DiBergi once said, “Hey, enough of my yakkin’!” It’s been a great deal of fun planning and presenting this gift, and now it’s ready. Off come the wrappings, off comes the tag that says “Do not open ‘til May 1st”, out comes the card. To you, from me. Here is the first installment in the Thomas Covenant saga, LORD FOUL’S BANE, followed very shortly by the eighth and latest novel in the series, FATAL REVENANT, by Stephen R. Donaldson. Plans are to record the intervening titles at six month intervals, all of them ultimately becoming available by the time Donaldson finishes the series with Part Ten.
I hope you enjoy listening to LORD FOUL’S BANE and FATAL REVENANT as much as I did reading them, the first time for myself and now for you. Leave a comment below or drop me an e-mail to scott@scottbrickpresents.com and let me know what you think.
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a bit hectic getting all the last-minute details ironed out, so I’m going to go be unconscious for a while.
Thanks for listening,
Scott
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Note: It’s the day THE CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT become available on audio. That’s right: both Part One, LORD FOUL’S BANE and the latest installment, Part Eight, FATAL REVENANT, are now audiobooks from Brick by Brick audio.
YAY!!!! I bought Lord Foul’s Bane … and have searched high and low for the promised FATAL REVENANT! Where is it!!
And thanks!! Great job!!!
May 2nd, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Hey, folks, Scott Brick’s webmaster, the sleep-deprived Mr. Admin, here. Sorry for the confusion!
FATAL REVENANT is on its way! We wanted to get LORD FOUL’S BANE up as soon as we could, and now we have the Scott Brick Internet elves working overtime to get your next Convenant signed, sealed and delivered!
Make sure you’re on our mailing list so you know the latest on FATAL REVENANT and all the other great stuff here at ScottBrickPresents.com.
To join the mailing list, just send an e-mail with “Subscribe” in the Subject line to:
subscribe@scottbrickpresents.com
Trust me, you’ll be hearing from us very, very soon on FATAL REVENANT — probably before you’ve finished LORD FOUL’S BANE, in fact!
Thanks for being loyal Brickies,
Mr. Admin
May 5th, 2008 at 6:46 am
A bit off-topic, I know, but does anyone know if and when Axis, the sequel to Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin, will be available? I had read that Scott was narrating it as well, and I can’t wait.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Hope sales are great for your project and I can barely wait for the 2nd installment.
May 7th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
[...] FINALLY, Stephen R. Donaldson’s LORD FOUL’S BANE Hits Audio!Or, An audiobook narrator flagellate… [...]
May 8th, 2008 at 12:44 am
It has been some time since I visited Stephen R. Donaldson’s work that I had – ashamedly – almost forgotten about them! Now with your news that they are sbecoming available as audiobooks, I will have the opportunity to rediscover the stories. I love the thought that we will have the author approved pronunciations for the language, too.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:04 am
I’m incredibly excited that the entire 10 book series will be read by the same voice, especially since the reading will be done by my all-time favorite narrator, Scott Brick.
I’m the type of person who prefers to listen to all of the books in a series one right after the other so that I can allow myself to be fully drawn into the story.
I did this with the Shannara trilogy (Sword, Elfstones, Wishsong) and The Legends Of Dune trilogy (Butlerian Jihad, Machine Crusade, Battle of Corrin), both of which I feel are masterpieces of audio narration.
I’m looking forward to 2010 when all 10 books in the series are available in their newly narrated format so that I can enjoy every moment from start to finish.
I’ll have to start saving, because getting all 10 audio books in a single package is going to be quite an investment, but one I’m confident I will treasure for years to come.
Thanks to Scott and Mr. Donaldson for making this project possible. These classic works can now be introduced to an entirely new generation of readers, so Kudos to all involved.
May 20th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
From the bottom most recesses of my heart and soul..THANK YOU!! You are a SAINT for giving back to me the GIFT of being able to experience the Thomas Covenant series again for the first time! Hearing your performance on Lord Fouls Bane let me experience the book in a way I never had before, even after having read it literraly a dozen times! The best way I can explain it is this: Reading the book is like seeing a picture of a diamond. Beautiful, certainly, but the picture lacks a certain vibrance that is missing. Listening to Scotts presentation of LFB is like seeing that proverbial diamond up close, in person, with a directed light shining on it, expanding the depth of the experience and causing the myriad facets to shine with eloquence that I was never able to envision in my own mind…For that alone, Scott, I am forever in your debt and your humblest of fans. I await anxiously for future releases of books 2 to 6.
May 26th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Its great to see Stephans books being released on audio. A big thank you to all involved from one of many fans.
However I was gutted to discover I can not buy the product, it seems international right?, prohibit people in the common wealth (I live in England) from being able to make a purchase.
Is anything in the works to try and remedy this situation?.
Anyway around this unfortunate situation so fans the world over can enjoy the land in this format?.
Yours hopefully.
Mark Piper.
May 30th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Good post …. but I have a better approach up my sleeve …. I can share if anyone is interested ?
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:08 am
Mr. Brick, thank you so much for selecting a series that I’ve been wanting to hear read since the books came out. That my hands-down favorite Audiobooks narrator is reading them is almost too good to be true. But considering your narrative style and professional taste, when I read that you were, it seemed so natural that you would wish to add Donaldson’s masterpiece to your body of work. Wonderful, wonderful. I can’t wait to listen to them all, and I hope you have ten times more enjoyment and satisfaction in recording them than I will in listening to them (and that will be saying something). Thanks again so much!!
August 28th, 2008 at 10:41 am
[...] debut series, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson (which you can read about right here for LORD FOUL’S BANE and then over here for FATAL REVENANT). I was so looking forward to sharing memories and stories [...]
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:31 am
Scott, I cant possibly tell you how much your reading of Lord Fouls Bane has brought those characters to life. Saltheart foam follower is awesome. Fantastic! I would love to see you do some of the old classic works of Edgar Rice Burrows like The Martian series and the Carson of Venus series. Pretty much you read it, I buy it…
October 24th, 2008 at 3:10 am
[...] the next six months we will be bringing you Books Two and Three, completing the First Chronicles, an accomplishment I’ve dreamed about for years. In LORD FOUL’S BANE, you saw how Thomas Covenant found himself in The Land, a leper from our [...]
November 7th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
[...] knew this day would come. It’s been circled in red ink on my calendar ever since May 1st, 2008. I’ve looked forward to it with great anticipation at times, and at other times with dread. [...]
February 4th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
[...] think I first noticed this soggy trend when I did my first BBB title, LORD FOUL’S BANE. The sample file I’ve got up here on the site that you can listen to (click here to listen), the [...]
February 9th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I just finished listening to Foul’s Bane. What a wonderful read, full of new dimensions and a clear heartfelt understanding of the soul of this story. It is so clear you love this story as much as I do. THANK YOU! it means so much to me.
March 20th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
[...] email I received about it; it’s from Christian Walters, a very cool guy who came to the site after hearing about THE CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT finally coming out on audiobook. “Man, you were right about THE PHOENIX LEGACY book,” says [...]