Merrily, Merrily: Part 1 by Jennifer Kropf

Karyne (00:00:07) - Hi fantasy readers. This is Karyne Norton, your fellow book binger, and you are listening to the Finding Fantasy Reads podcast where you can test out a new fantasy story every single week to find your next favorite author.

Last week we wrapped up a fantastic novella that spanned over five Christmasy episodes. I was excited to hear how much you all enjoyed it, because it really opens up my options for inviting authors with longer stories on the podcast. My goal is to still have the majority of the stories fit in a single episode, but I will always value quality over length, and I'm glad to hear that you all do too.

Now, I know that I promised we'd be returning to our regular once a week story for a bit, but I screwed up and got super excited about featuring today's story - so excited that I didn't really look at how long it was until my brother sent me his recording. So I'm sort of sorry because I sort of lied to you all, but I'm also sort of not sorry because it's a great story, and well worth having spread out over two episodes.

Merrily, Merrily is written by Jennifer Kropf, and it's part of a much bigger anthology with stories featuring water. This particular one is about a boy willing to make a deal with a deadly sea creature in order to escape the clutches of his controlling mother. A lot of Jennifer's stories have wintry or Christmasy settings and themes, but this one is a little bit grittier.

I love that she has a fantastic mix of lyrical writing and adventurous high stakes, which are two things I don't often see paired together, so I'm excited to share this story with you. Today's narrator is Paeter Frandsen, host of Christian Geek Central. Stick around to the end or check out today's show notes to see where you can find more from both the author and the narrator.

For now, please enjoy Merrily, Merrily: Part 1 by Jennifer Kropf.

Paeter (00:02:05) -  Merrily, Merrily is read by Paeter Frandsen. Due to copyright, the full transcript of the story cannot be included here. 

Karyne (00:44:26) - I hope you enjoyed listening to the first half of Merrily, Merrily by Jennifer Kropf, narrated by Paeter Frandsen of Christian Geek Central. Next week you'll get to find out more about the mysterious prisoner, as well as Zane's deal with the octosiren.

If you want to read more by Jennifer, go to jenniferkropf. com to find more of her books. She has audio options for most everything on her site, which I always appreciate. And if you enjoyed listening to Pater narrate the story, you might also enjoy listening to his podcast, Christian Geek Central, where he discusses movies, video games, and all things enjoyed by self proclaimed geeks from a Christian worldview. I will have links for both of those sites in the show notes.

You may have noticed that we are missing this month's giveaway on the site, and that would be intentional. With the new year, I am changing up my process a little bit, and I will most likely be doing a quarterly giveaway rather than a monthly giveaway, so keep an eye out for the first one of those next month.

Thank you all for listening, and happy reading.