BLAST, BLITZ, PROMOS, REVEALS, & TOURS . . . : SPOTLIGHT Audio - LGBT FANTASY - APPLE BOY (The Quiet Work, #1) by Isobel Starling Narrator: Gary Furlong

APPLE BOY
The Quiet Work, #1
by Isobel Starling
Narrator: Gary Furlong
Length: 9 hours 43 minutes
Publisher: Decent Fellows Press
Released: April 24th 2019
Genre: LGBT Fantasy Romance

A new LGBT fantasy series from award-winning author Isobel Starling

A lost lordling, a farm boy, and a tale of mystery, magic, and murder!

After a traumatic event, Winter Aeling finds himself destitute and penniless in the backwater town of Mallowick. He needs to travel to the city of Serein and impart grave news that will bring war to the Empire, but without a horse, money, and with not a soul willing to help him, he has no choice but to line up with the common folk seeking paid work on the harvest.

As wagons roll into the market square and farmers choose day laborers, Winter is singled out for abuse by a brute of a farmer. The only man who stands up for him is the farmer's beguiling son, Adam, and on locking eyes with the swarthy young man Winter feels the immediate spark of attraction.

Winter soon realizes there is a reason he has been drawn to Blackdown Farm. The farmer possesses a precious item that was stolen long ago from Winter’s family, and he determines to retrieve it. He also cannot take his eyes off Adam, and as the young man opens up Winter can’t help wondering if Adam is just kind or his kind!

Isobel Starling spent most of her twenty-year professional career making art in Ireland. She relocated to the UK and, faced with the dreaded artist’s creative block, Isobel started to write fantasy and found she loved writing more than making art. Isobel writes M/M fantasy, thrillers, and comedy, and to date, has written twenty books, 11 of which are audiobooks narrated by Gary Furlong . In 2018 Isobel Starling and Gary Furlong won what is now called The Independent Audiobook Award - Romance Category with the audiobook “As You Wish” . Isobel and Gary are also finalists for the 2019 Independent Audiobook Awards in the LGBTQ+ Category with the audiobook “Sweet Thing”.

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Q&A with Author Isobel Starling

How did you select your narrator?
- I listened to auditions of about a dozen narrators, all talented, but as soon as I heard Mike’s I knew that his voice and character were the voice that I’ve been hearing in my head ever since I started writing my first rough draft. Even the inflections and timing were perfect, better than I had even imagined! It made me smile, big time.
How closely did you work with your narrator before and during the recording process? Did you give them any pronunciation tips or special insight into the characters?
- Mike is such an amazing actor and narrator, with such sharp instincts and intuitiveness, that he needed no real “direction” from me. There were only a few Nebraska-related words or names that we needed to talk about. I hereby declare that Mike is now an honorary Nebraskan!
Were there any real life inspirations behind your writing?
- My home town in Nebraska and my current town in California both played big roles in shaping the idea for the story (the special magic of small towns and big trees). And some of our memorable friends from my youth in Nebraska may have helped shape a character or two.
What's your favorite:
- Song: Stranger in Paradise
- Book: A Tale of Two Cities
- Television show: All in the Family
- Movie: (that’s a tough one) Doctor Zhivago
- Band: My son and daughter are in bands: Cave Babies, SOAR, and Coherence. Check them out!
What bits of advice would you give to aspiring authors?
- Ah, that’s easy: read good literature, as much as you can get your hands on! Browse the library for forgotten classics.
What’s next for you?
- The next story is set in California, not Nebraska. It’s about a retired couple confronted with the loneliness of too much togetherness. They begin to realize that, sometimes, two’s not company, it’s a crowd. She wants to make new friends, but he has grander ideas. So he goes overboard with a certain guilty promise and an obsession to keep that promise. I just have to figure out whether he sinks or swims (so to speak).
Please list a couple books that have been published by other authors that are similar to yours in style and substance (for instance, “if you liked that book, you’ll like my book.”).
- Huckleberry Finn, Little Big Man, Forrest Gump (I know this list seems pretentious, but these are the books that definitely inspired me.)
What are some of the criticisms that your book might receive?
- It is not an easy read (or listen), because of the narrator’s dialect, and also because details of the plot are not always directly spelled out. The reader or listener has to do some inferring and analyzing along the way. And of course, not everyone appreciates satire.
Anything additional you want to share?
- I worry that technology is robbing us of our human nature, our humanity. Some aspects of science and technology are beneficial and beautiful (I’m kind of partial to modern plumbing). But I’m not so sure that cars and television haven’t done way more harm than good. Don’t get me started on those sinister gadgets you put on your kitchen counter and you call them by name and ask them who invented mouthwash or to tell you a joke about St. Patrick’s Day. I wouldn’t want my kids to end up having a best friend that you plug in, instead of one you can play hide and seek with in the park. Sorry to end on a preachy note, but this sort of goes back to the reason I wrote the book in the first place: Trees and nature, GOOD. Big screens and pollution, BAD.
- Audiobooks, by and large, are a good thing, though. They represent the positive uses of technology. Blogs, too! Thanks a million for giving me the chance to be interviewed on your blog.

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Originally from Ireland, Gary Furlong worked a teacher in Niigata, Japan; a puppeteer in Prague; an improv artist in Memphis, and a festival performer in Ireland.A naturally-gifted mimic, Gary began narrating audiobooks for a living in 2015 and hasn’t looked back. Gary specializes in accents and dialect, with fluency in Irish, British RP, and Standard American. In four years of working full-time with audiobook production, Gary has narrated over 100 audiobooks spanning Fantasy,Thriller, Romance, YA, and non-fiction for world-class publishing houses and independent authors. In 2018 Gary won a much coveted AudioFile Earphones Award and the Independent Audiobook Award for Romance. He now lives in Texas with his wife and their golden retriever called "Gansey," which means "Sweater" in Irish Gaelic.