Hear It Now, Read It Later: Tamora Pierce’s Melting Stones
By Shannon Maughan, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 11/1/2007
Fans of Tamora Pierce are always eager to read her latest fantasy novel. This fall, Pierce does have a new offering—but there’s a twist. Melting Stones, a story set in the author’s Circle of Magic world, was released in October as an audiobook by Full Cast Audio, but it won’t appear in print form (from Scholastic) until fall 2008. The timetable bucks the long-standing practice of publishing print and audio versions simultaneously, or releasing an audio after the print publication. Why the flip?
For Pierce, the Melting Stones production just seemed like a natural progression. “I was already working with Full Cast on my Circle of Magic books,” she says, “and I enjoyed working with them so much that I thought it would be fun to do something just for them—family-friendly books focusing on the students of the four kids from Circle of Magic. I knew I wanted to start with Evvy from Street Magic.”
About three years ago, Pierce approached Full Cast Audio’s publisher, Bruce Coville, with the idea—and 100 pages of text already in the can. In Coville’s view, it was the kind of offer you simply don’t refuse. “Once I realized she was serious, I thought, ‘Wow, if you really want to, then yes! Absolutely yes!’ ” he recalls.
At that same time, Pierce and Full Cast were preparing to record Street Magic. “When we were taping it, we cast a young actress named Grace Kelly as Evvy,” Pierce says. “She really caught my imagination. When I heard her, I trashed what I had written in third-person for the new book and immediately wrote it in first-person for Evvy’s voice.”
Pierce is no stranger to writing for voices. “In the early 1980s I started a production company [now defunct] that created original radio comedy and drama. In fact, it’s how I met my husband,” she recalls. Pierce was the head writer for the company, and directed and acted in a number of its programs. “Since I had done this before,” she says, “I knew I could write for the voices in the Full Cast company. Still, I was really apprehensive about directing.”
Coville had no problem ceding his typical lead production role for this project. “Tammy very confidently took the reins,” he says. She had input on casting and even wrote a part with her husband, Tim Liebe, in mind. And doing the audio production before the print edition had some unique advantages as well. “We have never had a writer who did not beg to change a sentence during recording,” says Coville. “But it’s something we just can’t do when we’re recording an unabridged version of a book that’s already in print. Because we did the audio first with Tammy, she had the benefit of hearing the cast read aloud and could do rewrites on the fly. That process helped make this a tight and polished production.”
 Coville and Pierce in the studio. Photo: Tim Liebe |
Levithan, an author in his own right, was in part receptive to Pierce’s change in plans because he had previously worked with Full Cast himself, on its production of his novel Boy Meets Boy. “David knew firsthand what we do,” says Coville. “He was on board immediately.”
As all the publishing details fell into place, the timing of Melting Stones couldn’t have been better for Full Cast. “We’ve tried from the very beginnings of our company to do something new every year—something bigger and different that really stretches us,” says Coville. “We got lucky with this one because it just happened to come to fruition when the Harcourt arrangement [Harcourt began distributing Full Cast to the trade in April 2007] was finalized. They can take [the recording] to places we didn’t have the capacity to. We can maximize that and it’s very fortuitous because we think the title has the potential to be big.”
Time will tell if the change in Melting Stones’ timing will pay off and if Pierce’s readers will become new audiobook listeners. The author believes that a good number of her fans are ready for such a shift. “People are more and more interested [in audio],” she says. “I think it’s amazing entertainment.” To that end, Pierce plans to write and record at least three more audio-first titles with Full Cast—in between her other projects.
