I’ve made mentions to it here and there but now that the cover is done and narrators are picked, I can talk about everything in full.
What The Harlequin is about:
Quiet and bookish, Rosalyn always loved living in her head, especially under the glow of the silent moonlight. One snowy moonlit night, she finds someone princely and ethereal standing at the edge of the forest, the Harlequin.
Dazzled by his words and ways, Rosalyn follows the Harlequin.
But to what end?
I focused a lot on the history side of things but that’s to curtail any foolishness I’m probably still going to see but I get to be more caustic in my “you should have done your homework”. The story is really about Rosalyn and The Harlequin, not really the town all this occurs in. Oh, and I’ve already touched on how this is not a “Dark Romantasy” to curtail that as well.
The Harlequin is another one of my “legacy stories”, where it’s been in my head for over 20 years, basically since I was a teenager. Just like Dreamer, The Glassman, and Kinetics. I would be on the light rail as it went up to Hunt Valley, MD, through a forest-y, woody mountain-like thicket as I listened to Flyleaf and that’s originally where the story started of the Harlequin and the girl he lures itself. I also merged it with a story I had as well at the time but didn’t do much with called “Patiently Waiting”, which featured a shy, bookish girl and her brother who looked out for her, even tho he found her behavior as too introverted.
The Harlequin is also the story that made me switch to fountain pens because it was super tough to pen that story when I simply couldn’t find a pen to write with. I talk about that in detail here. Now I have my TWSBI Vac700R and pretty much eliminated that problem.
The audiobook will be coming out a little later in the year, around June. It will be a dual narrated work, a first for me. The narrators are Nicole Cash and Marquise Vilsòn. I originally wanted the book to be solo narrated because that’s how all my works are but because I was awarded a creativity grant from my state, I could spring for two. I tried to get my usual female narrator, Soraya Butler, but she left audiobooks altogether so that meant finding a new person. And that person is Cash, which I am very happy to have onboard. Vilsòn, I picked because I really liked him in the too short-lived CW show “Tom Swift” (which I still watch on repeat), where he played the role of Issac, Tom Swift’s bodyguard. Vilsòn is the first narrator I have ever hired from the realm of tv and film. It’s also his first shot at audiobook narrating. He will be handling all the male voices, including the titular Harlequin. I do hope that he enjoys himself. I hope I don’t burn myself out in the engineering & mastering process. I like his voice & I like giving queer people of color jobs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This book will have a small swag bag, just like The Glassman and Dreamer did. A forest bramble filled page holder and a bookmark, since Rosalyn is a bookish person and this is … a book. The book will be signed and the edges will be sprayed with Ferris Wheel Press’ Glistening Glass ink. More details about that later, it will be available in the upcoming Storygraph giveaway that’s coming on Feb 19. There will also be upcoming bookstore events, stay tuned for that as well.
Available everywhere March 14, 2025!
MultiMind Publishing 
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