Listen to a TPOTS Sample: The Rogues' Ball with Neil Gaiman and Felicia Day
FROM KATHARINE: For those of you who haven't yet gotten a chance to listen to the audiobook, here's the story of the excellent sample you can hear on Audible's The Privilege of the Sword page by clicking the green arrow beneath the cover image. (And for those of you who have heard the book-we'd love to read your reviews, here or on Audible!)
The five-minute scene brings to vivid and musical life the Rogues' Ball from TPOTS, wherein we encounter the ribbon-wrapped Companions of the King, "devilish revelry" abounds, and the Mad Duke, much to Katherine's dismany, attempts to ascend a human pyramid. It also features the voice talents of Neil Gaiman and Dr Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog's Felicia Day, two amazing performers who loved the Riverside series long before they became part of the audiobooks.
Felicia Day's involvement came about, as many fortuitous things do, via the Twitterverse. In October of last year, Felicia ( @FeliciaDay) happened to tweet that she loved the books of War of the Oaks author Emma Bull, an old friend of both Ellen and Neil's. When Ellen retweeted, Felicia responded (and I quote): "Holy crap that's Ellen Kushner. I loved Swordspoint too!"
Ellen tweeted back to ask if Felicia had read The Privilege of the Sword, mentioning that Felicia would make a perfect Katherine. Neil ( @neilhimself) happened to stop by that corner of Twitter to chime in with a "Yes! I agree!" and the brilliant idea to use Felicia's mix of nerdy-girl-next-door charm and subtle badassery for the upcoming TPOTS audiobook was born.
Felicia, of course, wears many awesome and stylishly geektastic hats, and has been extremely busy founding the YouTube channel Geek and Sundry and creating the online book club Vaginal Fantasy Hangout. (Visit both, and watch several hours of your life disappear in a way you'll love). However, Felicia still made time in her schedule to drive to a recording studio in LA and record some key lines from Katherine's scenes-including the famous Letters with Artemisia!
And here's Ellen's report on casting Neil as the foppish and fustian architect of the artists' tableau at the Rogues' Ball:
'Since Neil's the producer of NGP, and an old friend (and was so wonderful as Bogdan in The Witches of Lublin), we thought it would be fun to give him a "cameo/cookie" appearance in each book (after Swordspoint). I knew immediately that it should be "the red-haired artist" at the Rogues' Ball - and Sue (of SueMedia Productions), when she read it, agreed! This is actually the only time in the entire book that the first person narrator is in an "Illuminated" scene (i.e., one with actors doing character voices, plus lots of SFX) - we broke our own rule in order to make that happen! Now we're trying to figure out who Neil should be in our next production, THE FALL OF THE KINGS (scheduled for late fall 2012) - any suggestions?'
So the floor is open, Riverside fans-who should Neil play in The Fall of the Kings? And who else would you like to see on the cast list, if Twitter were capable of bringing us anyone our (and your) hearts desired?