DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
Members' Mausoleum => Calendar Events / Announcements '24 I => Topic started by: Uncle Roger on March 06, 2019, 09:09:54 PM
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An announcement popped up on my Facebook newsfeed saying that audio versions of the entire Marilyn Ross paperback series would be released through Amazon. 15 to start with, followed by the rest. The price was decent but information was sparse. No mention of who would be reading them, let alone who was releasing them.
Several fans apparently reported the announcement to you know who. No such release is planned through legitimate channels and the announcement has been deemed a fake. The Amazon listing will probably be deleted shortly.
Which raises an interesting question. Who made the original announcement in the first place? After the leak of the 2004 pilot, one would think that you know who would keep a closer watch on licensed properties.
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I wonder - has the copyright for those novels lapsed or is it still in force? The current copyright law is for novels published after January 1, 1978 (life of the author plus 70 years). But being that all those novels were published before 1978, their copyright may be different. And if it has lapsed for them, there probably wouldn't be anything you know who could do about someone releasing them on CD.
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I see that copyright for books published starting with 1923 but before 1978 is 95 years from the date of publication, so the copyright would still be in force.
Maybe the first CD's release isn't planned until 2066 for 1) DS' 100th anniversary, and 2) after the copyrights for the first 15 have all expired. [snow_laugh]
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No such release is planned through legitimate channels and the announcement has been deemed a fake. The Amazon listing will probably be deleted shortly.
Which raises an interesting question. Who made the original announcement in the first place?
In early 2011 I bought a book for my kindle from Amazon, To Live Again-A Dark Shadows Novel. It was supposedly the first of a series. It was unauthorized and soon made unavailable, but Amazon did not delete the file from my account or devices. I'd had a PDF made immediately in case that happened, but it didn't. I suspect these books might be a fan project someone hoped to sell on Amazon. If the offer is genuine, I hope he didn't put too much work into the project. I doubt the listing will be there in time for the first CD to be released.
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Maybe the first CD's release isn't planned until 2066 for 1) DS' 100th anniversary, and 2) after the copyrights for the first 15 have all expired. [snow_laugh]
Or until U know who expires.
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Dom, what a terrible thing to say about u know who. The correct term is "passes."
Gerard
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that "announcement" is still going around FB today. i thought it was legit.
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Just saw on Amazon, that the Ross DS novels are going to be available on audio CD for $5.71 on June 17, 2019:
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Shadows-Marilyn-Ross/dp/1640912134/ref=tmm_abk_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1553441813&sr=
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It's going to be very interesting to see if this release really does come to pass and remains available without any interference from you know who, who in the past has never let anything like it to exist.
It's also worth pointing out that the $5.71 price seems to only be available to Amazon Prime members. Though the regular price is apparently only $6.99.
One thing that I do find fascinating apart from the actual CD release is that one of the commentors says "I started reading this Dark Shadows book series by Marilyn Ross after watching the new Dark Shadows movie with Johnny Depp."
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For all the reasons cited in this thread, I am not optimistic about this release audiobooks of the Ross DS. About three years ago, I began learning the the novels in paperback with the intent of rereading them. Unfortunately, my macular degeneration rapidly decreased my site, and I have been listening to audiobooks ever since because I cannot read anymore. I would love to have these books available by a great narrator (not necessarily an original cast member).
In the intent of this thread is about the books not about my eyes, so please… There is no need to comment with concern about my vision. I’m well-adjusted to it in doing just fine in my early retirement. Is money good news—that I am able to retire before age 65. (And I’m glad there are text to speech programs that I can use to listen to the posts, and dictation software I can use to make posts.)
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According to Amazon, the reader is Ronny Nordlinger. Apparently he's a professional reader because he's got a long list of reader credits. This makes me wonder if the offers are legitimate, especially since the listings have remained up on Amazon's system for so long.
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If these listings are genuine, it makes me wonder why DS actors are not doing the reading.
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The whole situation seems very strange, especially the professional reader development because that would seem to remove the notion that it's simply a fan project. Well, unless Ronny Nordlinger is a fan. But we shall see...
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It's also curious that there has been no announcement of the project, vague or otherwise in Shadowgram. [easter_huh] [easter_huh] [easter_huh]
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[pointing-up] Yes, that is interesting - especially IF it IS legit...
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I guess the Ross estate has no right to do this.
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The Ross CDs are also being offered at Barnes and Noble and Books a Million.
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I checked to see if the listings were removed from Amazon and discovered that the reader has changed." Kathryn Leigh-Scott is now listed in place of the Ronny Nordlinger. Unless this is a hoax, I would expect an official announcement soon.
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As Uncle Roger would say, curiouser and curiouser...
And no, dom, the Ross estate has no right to do the CD because, even though he wrote the books, DCP holds the copyrights to them...
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Perhaps an announcement will be made at The Paley Center.
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A fan who attended the Paley Center event stated that Jim Pierson confirmed the release of the Ross audiobooks. This was reported today on social media.
G.
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Fascinating. And I'm very happy for the fans who are actually interested in the CD. I'm not one of them because, as I've said many times, the main reason I continued to buy them after I happened to find/buy the first five after they were reissued in October of 1968 was for the cover photos - and I lost interest in reading them after I read about half of them. They have so little to do with the show, even going so far as to greatly contradict it with Barnabas out of his coffin and gallivanting all around in time periods when he should have still been chained in his coffin. Though I suppose, given the way Ross wrote, the books wouldn't have worked any other way...
Thanks for the info, Gothick. [easter_smiley]
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I personally think of this latest project as going beyond scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of marketing stuff related to the series. I'm surprised that they didn't start with the book BARNABAS COLLINS, given that other marketing strategies always start with the Barnabas character.
It's nice to see that some fans genuinely are excited about these, though.
G.
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I'm with you guys. I bought them all back in the day. It's basically the same plot repeated 32 times. Some incredibly dimwitted ingenue comes to Collinwood, falls in love with Barnabas but only likes Quentin. She endures all sorts of nastiness from the villain of the piece, which usually culminates in burning one of 8,000 gothic mansions. Just when she's ready to give Barnabas a little something something, he tells her that that the parting has to be to preserve their love.Tears flow. Reset.
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Uncle Roger, as much as I enjoyed buying and reading the novels back in the day, you're so right about the plots. It's like all those current Hallmark movies. Make sure to put the world "Love" in the title, cast a bunch of washed-up has-beens, the whole thing is he meets her and she meets him, he hates her and she hates him, he loves her and she loves him, they dance, they get married.
Gerard
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Gerard, I know that I have posted this before but I think that it bears repeating. Mega DS fan Jeff Thompson did his doctoral thesis on the collected works of Marilyn Ross. Not just the DS books but the entire Ross library which got the author into The Guinness Book of Records.
I had two reactions when I learned this. First, I think that the faculty had to be pretty sure that he didn't buy a prewritten paper. The second was Wow. He actually read all that, uh, stuff.
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No mention of who would be reading them,
Amazon and Amazon Audible are two different things.
You don't even get Audible with Prime.
(I actually dropped Amazon a note about their viewings aren't great, but, the Audible is; they thanked me.)
Gildart Jackson is a good narrator (Gideon from 'Charmed').
(I'm actually currently listening to my 2nd or 3rd Audible book from him now!)
Patti
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Wow, that was most informative. Thank you all. Now my teeth are chattering a bit at the price of a new paperback starting at $819.16! Yikes.
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I guess, Uncle Roger, we must give "Ms. Ross" his due (some still don't know that he was a man and that was one of his pen names). He pumped out tons of paper from his typewriter (and I'll bet it was a manual) back at the height of gothic novels back in the early/mid-seventies. All the plots, whether they were DS or other-orientated, followed the same plot which you perfectly stated. He made lotsa moola doing that because the audience was out there.
I worked in our local public library during that gothic novel height and it had an entire section just for the books, most paperbacks. They all had the same cover: a spooky mansion in the background with only one window lit while some young, pretty thing in a nightgown was running away in the dead of night. By the late '70's, the gothic novel saw its collapse and in the '80's came the trend of "romance novels" about some young, buxom girl being wooed by a chesty, handsome, long-haired hero. Fabio gained fame as a model for the book covers which always showed him, bare-chested, holding on to the heroine with bosoms barely kept inside. It was common to make them period, especially in the 18th century, so she could suffer from some disease but eventually recover. They had titles like "Love's Wildest Dreams" and some-such. By the '90's, they had come and gone after flying off the shelf in bookstores and libraries. On an episode of The Golden Girls, Blanche tried to write one. She ended up with insomnia when she got "writer's block."
Gerard
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Marilyn Ross was one of his many pen names. He had quite a few of them, depending on what genre the book was meant for. He used his own name, Dan Ross, mostly for westerns. His wife was named Marilyn, so he couldn't get sued for usurping someone's real name.
There's a historical story that I read somewhere where a deadline was approaching and the book wasn't finished. It needed another chapter. So he drove his car to the local post office and typed out the rest of the book in the back seat. Needless to say, he made his deadline.
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More news. It says here that KLS is the reader. And there's a link to listen to a free sample (I haven't checked that out yet).
http://www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com/2019/06/here-today-gone-today.html
The "temporarily out of stock" thing he say might mean that the production/distribution has been at least somewhat delayed, though at the end, it switched to "shipping."
G.
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The first two books are available for download on Audible. I'll hold off a few days to see if anyone offers reviews, though.
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I think that's smart, Brian.
The only way I could enjoy this is if somebody found a recording of Grayson Hall reading one of the books, perhaps while sipping a cocktail and making various "observations" about everything from the prose "style" of the author to the inanities of the various personalities in the "book."
Otherwise it would be a slow walk through aitch ee double hockey sticks for this fan.
Best, G.
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I give KLS due credit... she infused life, luster and wit into very tired prose. The excerpt has her reading
aloud a scene that, in a revised form, will be familiar to viewers of our show. It is one in which KLS herself was one of the players.
G.
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I do remember at one of the early Festivals, two fans did a staged reading from the Ross books. They were totally serious. I don't think that I lasted only a few minutes. I could only repress my giggling for so long.
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After almost 2 years listening to audiobooks, I’ve gotten very particular about my likes and dislikes for narrators. I like to hear character voices in dialogue to help me distinguish one character from another, but I don’t like those to be over the top, either. I’m even annoyed when the narrator takes frequent, audible breasts—even though I know we all have to breathe in order to speak.:)
The samples by KLS do sound pretty good, and I will probably buy these soon. Right now I have three different books going on, so these can wait a few weeks.
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Apparently they will be doing the entire series, all read by Kathryn, with releases planned well into 2020.
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What an ambitious project. And I do have to say that Ms. Scott does a very good job reading the text, at least in the excerpt that I listened to. She actually makes it quite listenable.
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KLS posted this on her Facebook page, regarding the Ross books: "Almost all are told from Maggie's point of view, as governess at Collinwood and companion to Elizabeth, who befriends and grows to love Barnabas."
It's been years since I read any of the books but Maggie only makes a brief cameo appearance, in her Eve Arden version, in the first book and is not seen or mentioned again in the series for quite some time. The focal character for the first group of the books is Victoria Winters. Until she simply vanishes without a trace and no one seems to even notice that she's gone. The next book has Maggie Evans as the governess, again with no explanation. Did Paperback Library simply change the name from Victoria Winters to Maggie Evans before the book went to the printer? Maggie is the designated heroine for another chunk of books, until she too disappears with no explanation.
I don't recall any real romance between Barnabas and Maggie or Barnabas and Victoria, for that matter. Vicki had a running romance with Ernest Collins, a cousin that Ross introduced in the first book. Ernest was supposed to have died off page in a plane crash. Similar to Burke Devlin, who was still alive in the books until he too simply stopped appearing.
The only ongoing romantic relationship that Ross seemed invested in was between Barnabas and Carolyn in some of the later books. There was never any hint of that in the series, other than him using Carolyn as a blood source/flunky. But even as a kid, I found the quasi incest angle just yukky.
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How in the world are they going to be told from Maggie's POV? Though why am I not surprised...
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That's pretty funny. I can only imagine that Kathryn has never read any of the books and simply prepares each one shortly in advance of the recording, the way she would handle any similar voicework assignment.
Perhaps what she was trying to say was that for fans, since she will be doing the readings--and doing them, judging from the one excerpt I heard, with considerable flair and liveliness--this will have the effect of the stories being narrated from Maggie's point of view. Or at least, that is how she presumes a classic DS fan would hear her performances.That would kind of make sense and I can see her thinking something like that.
G.
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According to a friend, Miss Scott's recording of Barnabas Collins is now available. So they are moving right along with this series.
G.
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I just checked Audible and Strangers at Collins House and The Mystery of Collinwood are available (release date was 07/0 26/19). I’ve only listened to the first three chapters of Dark Shadows. It is a slog, not through any fault of KLS (although I would like more variety in her voice when she is reading quotes by different characters, that is my preference only). The material is just not very good.
Brian
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My friend posted a photo of himself holding a CD of the Barnabas Collins recording. I do not know if he got hold of a pre-release, or if the discs are coming out in advance of the online drop. I don't really have the interest to try and find out.
As I have commented frequently, the cover photos were the best part of those "books" for me. It was nice to see in my friend's photo that the disc art featured what seemed to be a decent color scan of the 1968 book cover.
G.
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Apparently the Barnabas Collins Audiobook is available on eBay:
Barnabas Collins (Dark Shadows) (Audio CD – Audiobook, MP3 Audio) (2019) (https://www.ebay.com/itm/Barnabas-Collins-Dark-Shadows-Audio-CD-Audiobook-MP3-Audio-2019-r/264432268278?hash=item3d916433f6:g:jQ0AAOSw8fldVedg)
And there is a photo of the CD's cover, which is not actually the original coverof the book, though it is the same photo...
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My friend posted a photo of himself holding a CD of the Barnabas Collins recording. I do not know if he got hold of a pre-release, or if the discs are coming out in advance of the online drop.
Mine was delivered by Amazon on Wednesday, August 14.
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This seems bizarre to me -
The Marilyn Ross renaissance is upon us (http://www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com/2019/09/the-marilyn-ross-renaissance-is-upon-us.html)
- but then I'm not a fan of the novels.
About the only way I would buy the reissues is if they have rare photos covers that are different from the originals...
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If they're being published by Hermes Press, then it's probably going to be a quality reproduction. And expensive as well.
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Yes, the days of 50/60/75 cent paperbacks are long, long gone...
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I think that we're past the $5.99 era as well
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Oasis Debuts New Vintage Pulp Audiobook Imprint (https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/audio-books/article/81108-oasis-debuts-new-vintage-pulp-audiobook-imprint.html)
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Barnabas Collins (https://www.booktopia.com.au/barnabas-collins-marilyn-ross/audio-book/9781640912182.html)
"Buy a discounted audible edition of Barnabas Collins (MP3 CD)"
Can something discounted so little really be "discounted"?
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What, you don't think close to 2% (well, really not even 1.75%) discount is a great deal?
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[pointing-up] Shocking, huh? [ghost_cheesy]
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The latest bizarre development:
http://www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com/2019/10/new-editions-of-classic-dark-shadows.html
Yes, that's right, fans. The phrase "classic Marilyn Ross Dark Shadows novels" really and truly occurs in this article, which reads as if it was most likely simply reprinted from a promotional press release.
G.
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I'm going to assume that the "error free" and reproofing refers to correcting typographical errors and not mistakes in logic, plot holes or contradictions in character. [Black Cat] [Spooky_Ghost] [Black Cat]
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Are you talking about the originla series with that comment? ;)
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The only thing I would be interested in from these re-releases is the version of the first book signed by Alexandra Molkte. I'm sure that will be a fast moving unit for their line. Otherwise, I don't see the purpose of releasing these. I have the original collection of books and haven't looked at them in years. I toyed with reading them a few times, but didn't want to damage them, and lately I've been thinking of purging them from my collection. I wonder if there will still be a market for the older versions once these are released.
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I was initially interested in these reprints, but I assumed they would be omnibus editions of 5 or so books with extras. I thought it would be similar to the Gold Key collections and probably prices at about $30-$40, for a cost of about $8 per reprinted book $14.99 for EACH novel is quite high and I don't plan to buy them.
I would like to have hard copies of these novels so I can retire my originals, so they won't fall apart, but this is extremely expensive.
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The idea of a book signed by Alexandra Moltke is very tempting but I'll bet it will be pricey. The comic strip collection signed by Lara Parker is listed on the Hermes site at $95.00 which is way outside my budget for this kind of thing. I wouldn't be overly surprised if the Moltke book is selling for a similar price.
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The idea of a book signed by Alexandra Moltke is very tempting but I'll bet it will be pricey. The comic strip collection signed by Lara Parker is listed on the Hermes site at $95.00 which is way outside my budget for this kind of thing. I wouldn't be overly surprised if the Moltke book is selling for a similar price.
It would be pricey but I MIGHT buy it. Lara's autograph is very easily obtainable. Unless she's discontinued her website since I last checked, a person could buy any numbers of signed items from her at fairly low prices. I have numerous things autographed by her. Alexandra Moltke's signature is much more rare. I'd definitely at least consider buying a DS book signed by her if it was in the neighborhood of $100. I doubt I'd pay much more though.
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Yes, somebody with extreme fortitude and devotion is now doing a "blog" series on the Ross novels.
http://www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com/2019/10/the-marilyn-ross-codex-2-victoria.html
G.
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KLS discusses her work on the audiobooks in this article, which I wanted to post on the Sleepy Hollow thread, but the search engine led me to a different thread and then I tried scrolling through to find it. And then I gave up when I saw this one.
https://www.filminquiry.com/sleepy-hollow-dark-shadows/
It's really extraordinary just how many errors are to be found in this short article. I realize it isn't Kathryn's job to keep the basic facts of DS history at her own fingertips even though she often seems to think of herself as a leading spokeswoman for the series, but at one time, journalists would do some basic fact-checking when composing an article of this kind.
I see nothing at all about the Frid documentary. Presumably Mary O'Leary did mention it in her presentation but the reporter may have failed to pick up on it.
G.
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April of 1966, huh? [wizard] [wizard] [wizard]
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And KLS supposedly confirmed that! ???
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April Fool!!
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I read this article as well and was surprised that there was no mention of the Frid documentary, especially because that was some of the biggest news of the event. At least as far as being "news" is concerned.
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And there was no mention in the article of the pilot, either. But then, there would seem to have been no news on that front because we would have certainly heard by now...
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If you scroll down to bottom page here, you can see the first 2 pages of an overview review essay about the Dan Ross DS books here:
http://barebonesez.blogspot.com/2019/10/now-shipping-best-of-barebones.html
The complete article is included in a book just out, The Best of Bare Bones, which is an anthology of various piece published in a fanzine. I don't know whether one can order the book via the usual online retail sites or if it has to be obtained directly through the Bare Bones website.
G.