The Horror Authors Witch Haunt blog recently featured an interview guest post with “Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley: Frankenstein Diaries” co-author Michael January on the release of the audiobook narrated by Heidi Gregory on Audible, and just in time for Halloween, discussing how the book defies genre.

While the Secret Memoirs is not a horror book, Mary Shelley is the reputed “mother” of horror and with the founding of the origins of Frankenstein, suitably timely. The Frankenstein castle has in modern times become a major spot in the world for celebrating Halloween. While the spectral figures of witches and ghouls have been haunting the thick woods for millennia, making their appearances in Grimm’s Tales and Gothic legends and Romantic Tales of Terror, the tradition of parties with costumes on All Hallows eve didn’t really take hold in Germany until the arrival of American soldiers stationed there after the Second World War, who brought some of the home customs with them.

Defining the genre of the Secret Memoirs has been a bit of a challenge, as it takes a unique approach to the Mary Shelley biography, at the same time a novel and a look at history through the eyes of a real life participant in it. It is to quote, “a romantic adventure in the Regency Period of contemporary Jane Austin, a young adult coming of age story, a history of post–Revolution Napoleonic France and the London publishing world, a family drama of personal tragedy, and an exploration of the heart and mind of a young woman seeking a connection to the mother who died in giving her birth, and the creative formation of a young writer of genius accomplishment.” The audio format with the voice of Mary Shelley telling her own story is an especially intimate way to experience the young lives of Mary, Clair and Shelley as they lived them.

With the 200^th anniversary of the first publishing of Frankenstein, the book world has filled with myriad biographies about Mary Shelley, and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, examining the girl who wrote Frankenstein and academic examinations, even a biopic movie, but none as intimate and personal, told in her own words and experiences as she lived them.

How much is fact or fiction in the Secret Memoirs is outlined elsewhere here on Frankenstein Diaries. The book itself, ebook, paperback or audio book can be found here.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley Audiobook
Audible https://adbl.co/2Ji6h4X
Amazon https://amzn.to/2LcopPe

Ebook and Paperback
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00W6R8V0G

Review Quote from the Historical Novel Society: “An entertaining ‘collaboration’, exhaustively researched, skillfully adapted…long on memorable characters that will make readers see the seminal classic Frankenstein in a new light.” Historical Novel Society