Mic and Pen

Www.micandpen.com is up and running! This is a thrilling leap forward in my audiobook AND author career. Please join me over there!

What can you expect at MicandPen? There are blog posts, updates about my adventure in audiobook narration, and updates about my writing life that has been the driver my personal Vertical Learning Curve these last few years.

Three Awesome Audiobooks

You will find a Book Table listing all the audiobooks I have narrated (23 to date. I just accepted a 6 book offer) with links direct to Audible. Head on over to see which audiobook won an International Best Seller sticker, which series has the most books in it (10 and counting), and what two non fiction books were first published in the 1920’s. (I was fascinated to read how culture and thought has changed since then)

Please fill in the subscription form, so you can receive regular, though not overly frequent newsletters. I publish an audiobook every 2 months or so, sometimes more often, and you’ll want to know what is available for your listening pleasure!

Thank you to WordPress for giving me a platform to learn and to meet so many truely awesome people. I won’t be leaving here. You people are the first to connect with me and this is still an important place to be known.

With undying gratitude and joyful anticipation for the community we’re building around stories,

I remain your faithful servant,

Nicola

http://Www.micandpen.com

Leoshine has a new home!

I have created a new home presence for the Leoshine Series!

https://go.micandpen.com/WP

Please click the link, Join the Leoshine mailing list and stay up to date.

I have also started a crowdfunding effort through Alberta Treasury Branch’s “Build Her Business” program. Please take a look and donate to earn a reward and pre-order book one Leoshine, Princess Oracle (valid until March 8 2021)

https://go.micandpen.com/ATB

Thank you for your support. Nicola

Cover Concept

Rapid Fire Releases

Audiobooks for Saving Bicycle Man by Cindy M. Amos and the Colour Fairies Series Books 23-25 have arrived for you to purchase!

There was a huge backlog of titles from the “manufacturer” behind Audible that now seems to be clearing. I must say, I am relieved.

Saving Bicycle Man is a sweet, clean romance about a man who knows how to do good for everybody but himself. He reaches the end of the road, where he meets a nurse. She puts him back together and shows tremendous strength dealing with her own troubles.

I have enjoyed collaborating with Cindy M. Amos. She gave me clear direction and specific encouragement! One of the best parts of being a narrator is making new friends with the authors!

Maggie Jeffrey author of the Colour Fairies Series has grown into a loving acquaintance as well. With each new release we have a Skype call so she can read her story to me. This way I learn how she would like the voices and pronunciation of characters names. We chat about what is happening around us and the distance from England to the Canadian Prairies shrinks each time.

If you would like a code for a free audiobook, and are willing to leave an honest review when you have listened to it, please contact me here. I am eager to share.

Go to the Book Table, let me know which book you choose and where I can send the code, and you are off and running!

New Content!

I’ve just added two chapters of Hagovi’s Bridge to the Secret Subscribers Only page at https://micandpen.com/top-secret-subscribers-only/

Hagovi is exiled at the furthest reaches of time and space with her parents and two servants. A raging sandstorm called The Barrier guards the mystery of the unknown.

A stranger hires Hagovi to process and study debris, twisted metal and plastic that appears to come from a society on the other side of the Barrier.

And then he takes her into the Barrier to search for her missing brother!

Subscribe to https://micandpen.com to hear the first six chapters of this amazing adventure!

The Colour of My Heart

… is not represented by the colour of my skin.

Take a look at my picture. I’m actually more mixed race than I appear, however I present as privileged. I understand that people have and continue to suffer for the good I enjoy.

Booker T. Washington opened my eyes to the thought that African Americans do not wish to be amalgamated into European based society. They ask for the respect and space to be different and co inhabitants of the country. The key word being, “and”.

I think white people have an “or” bias. They don’t think in terms of “and”. It’s us or them. When they hear “Black Lives Matter” their bias makes them hear, “or” which means threat. “There’s no two ways about it.” “My way or the highway.”

Please feel free to disagree, but the statement “Black Lives Matter” is not exclusionary. The people who say it are putting a huge, “AND” into our cultural dialogue that normally gets too wound up in “or”. “There’s a whole bunch of ways about it.” “It’s our way AND the way of high, beneficial things for everybody.” “Your exclusivity is not my way.”

There is enrichment here. Learning who the other is helps me know who I am, and expands what is good. Good has not limits!

I am eager to embrace “and”. Nations and Races. Heart and Blood. Justice and Mercy. Me and you!

What other AND’s do you have in your life?

https://micandpen.com

Collaboration: Interview with Ron Grasmick.

Thank you for joining us, Ron! You recently collaborated with Ferrel D. Moore to publish The Jesus Road II. How did the idea for Waiting, which is your contribution, come about?

Ron: I always look to science fiction because the freedom to ask what if is always there. I did some research into AI a few months back, so that was still in my mind and wondered how it might work if the programming was limited to the Bible. Would AI do all it could within the programming to live as God wanted us to live. And if it did, what an example that might be for us.

Nicola: In The John Murphys, Murphy the robot says, “Every thought I have, every conclusion I arrive at is measured against one fundamental concept. ‘Humans are the pinnacle of creation.’ They are the image of their Creator. Their choice to not behave as such does not negate their existence as such.”

No matter how perfect robots get they will never replace humans in God’s heart because it is not perfection He is looking for. How much of yourself and personal experiences did you put into the characters?

Ron: For Waiting I put myself in Gene’s (papa) place. I certainly don’t have the ability to create such a thing, but thought, how would I feel if I could. If I had created something as an example of my memory, how far would I go to protect that memory?

Nicola: And Waiting is your answer!

Read more at MicAndPen

Interview with Ferrel D. Moore

I have known this pillar of the writing community for three years and have always found encouragement, support and inspiration in his company.

Thank you Ferrel, for featuring an interview with so many thriving authors on your website www.thejesusroad.com You bring out the best in us all!

Thank you for being here with us today and giving us a glimpse into your remarkable writing career.

Nicola: Question one: What first interested you in writing?

Ferrel: You know, I don’t remember.  I endured a stroke, as you know and it wiped out whole sections of my memory.  When I woke up, I was in the hospital and couldn’t speak and didn’t know where I was.  Gradually, when they thought I could understand it, I was told I was diabetic, and had a stroke.  I didn’t even know what they were talking about.  Over the next few days, I became aware enough to comprehend that I’d had a stroke but I found that I couldn’t talk- I had aphasia.  I didn’t even know what writing was.  I couldn’t think clearly enough to remember.

But, eventually, I remembered writing, but I couldn’t remember how to write.  I couldn’t type or even handwrite and, since I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t dictate either.  I thought my writing days were behind me.  But I still nurtured somewhere inside me the hope that I someday I would be able to write.

So, when I was let go from my week in the hospital, I was turned loose, and my wife had to drive me home, but I was still an invalid.  My entire right side of my body was damaged.  I was pretty well done for, except that I still felt a glimmer of hope.

I don’t know when I became aware of God’s hand in my life, trying to teach me something like I had been saved for… something.  To do something that would glorify God, and gradually I came to the knowledge that a part of it was to write again, which seemed pretty well impossible considering the shape that I was in.  I remember sitting down at my computer for the first time and trying to type.  It was five words in the first hour, and they weren’t hardly comprehensible at all.  But every day, I sat down at that computer and pecked out the obligatory five words, even though it took me sometimes all day to think of something to say.  Then ten words, then fifteen words until I got up to 2,000 words in a day.  I don’t know how I did it.  God’s hand was in it, guiding me, keeping me going the whole time. 

Now, I am fully recovered except every now and then I have bouts of aphasia when I can’t speak- but that’s okay, because I can still write.

To read more go to https://micandpen.com/2020/06/11/interview-with-ferrel-d-moore/

Give Away!

I created these pendants for the Romance Books I narrated and for Colour Fairies Series Book 9 St. Valentine’s Day in Fairyland by Maggie Jeffrey, https://adbl.co/2tCMOdr

Paris Mends Broken Hearts by Kaya Quinsey, https://adbl.co/2DIYZq5

The Long Lost Fantasy by Ella Rose Carlos, https://adbl.co/2mkl6hQ

The Battered Orphan and The Orphan’s Distress by Molly Britten. https://adbl.co/2kqfuS4 https://adbl.co/2lYNV2X 

To win one of these unique Valentine’s Pendants, buy one of these books, leave your review on Audible, and post your review in the comments at MicAndPen.com

I’ll contact the winners on February 14th!

Happy Listening!

More than half

New post on https://micandpen.com

This is the blurb I wrote for my dearest work:

When a Princess is not a slave …

“The Myxolidian Mercy Plea Protocol begins with the Rachnorgat’s (Mercy Slave) name. “I, Leoshine, daughter of Curtstas the Mayor of Myxolidia …” and ends with starvation, beatings, and death by exposure.

Unless the Rachnorgain (Mercy giver) is an Overlord from Aeolia come to rejuvenate Leoshine’s planet.

With a new definition of Mercy, he also brings a servant who was kidnapped from Myxolidia as a child, recreated as an Aeolian, and trained as the Overlord’s physician, chief of security, and body servant.

Leoshine expects the Rachnorgat’s torturous death, but can she survive the love of these two men?”

I am saving to have this story edited by a professional. You can help Leoshine become a reality in the literary world by becoming my patron on https://www.patreon.com/nmaccameron She’s worth it!