Interview With Anna-Christina

What inspired you to write your first book?

My very first Music Audio Story ‘March of The Ants’ was written for a college assignment! I was studying Music and Sound Technology at the time and I already had the music composed so all I had to do was write a story over it. It all happened very quickly and I remember a few days after I handed the project in, my tutor Dino was so impressed, he told me I should be doing this for a living! I thought perhaps this story was a one off and wondered if I could write another one but as soon as I sat down to write my second story ‘Chris the Caterpillar’, it flowed out of me so naturally. I just kept writing more and more stories and music.

When did you start considering yourself a writer?

The moment we started to get the amazing reviews we’ve had! People have really seen how unique the stories are and that has been very exciting for me. It was great when I saw my name on the Amazon website as an author too!

Out of the books you've written, which is your favourite?

That’s a hard question because they all feel like a real journey for me. I find my favourite story always changes. At the moment it’s ‘Johnny No Cash’.

How do you feel about being interviewed by a children's book character?

I would love that!

What are you working on next?

It’s a very busy time at the moment in the land of Music Audio Stories! We’ve been invited to many libraries, nurseries and primary schools to do ‘Story Hours’ which will be great fun and we’ll be taking part in a few events too. I am always writing new stories and developing ideas with my Busy Bees Partner Adie Hardy. We’re also about to expand our shop so people can buy Cds as well as downloads and we have some new exciting features that will be on our website soon.

Can you share a little of your current work with us?

We currently have a free download of ‘March of The Ants’ on our website at www.musicaudiostories.com for everyone to have. No registration is involved so anyone can download the story and enjoy it.

Out of your own characters, do you have a favourite?

Another hard question! Sid the ant from ‘March of The Ants’ is so cute but I also love Joe the dog in the story ‘Jimi & his friend Joe’ and Ronnie the worm in ‘The Big Apple’ is very sweet too.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

Keep writing, stay creative and then be prepared to do a lot of work to get your stories out into the world but never give up! There’s always space for more stories.

What do you do when you are not writing?

When I’m not writing Music Audio Stories, I’m working on developing my classical, film and TV music. So basically I’m always writing or composing!

If you had to live in one of your books, which book would it be?

I think I would like to live in Chris the Caterpillar’s garden and look after all the flowers with Butterfly the fairy!

What was your favourite book when you were a kid?

I had many books that I loved and I remember listening to audio stories when I was little too. I had cassette tapes with books. I’ve always loved Roald Dahl stories but I really couldn’t pick a favourite one because they’re all so great!

What made you decide on creating Audio Books?

After I finished college, I began working with producer/engineer Adie Hardy on another project and I asked him if he would help me produce a new version of ‘March of The Ants’. It was so good that we both decided to start creating more audio books together. We knew what we were doing was very unique and so we invented our own genre and decided to call our audio books “Music Audio Stories”. We set up Busy Bees Publishing and it all began from there. Over the last year or so, audio books have made a real comeback, so that’s great but nobody is creating stories like ours! We discovered that we’ve both got a hidden talent for doing funny cartoon like character voices, especially Adie but we’ve also been very lucky to have had many very talented actors and musicians doing voice-overs for us. What we do involves many things and it’s a real challenge for us to make everything fit together and work. These stories take many, many hours of work to make but it’s all worth it in the end.

Anything you would like to add?

These stories are a great way to allow children to use their own imagination, acting out the stories, drawing how they imagine the characters to be, singing, dancing and joining in, stimulating their creative senses. They can be enjoyed by children aged 3 to 7 and are of great enjoyment to the blind. They can also be a useful learning tool for children with impaired vision or vision disabilities.
One of the things that makes our audio stories special from others you may have heard, is the strong themed original classical music behind the narration. Unlike other audio books, the music continues throughout and is an essential part of the stories. We combine cartoon style voices with Sound Effects to create a lot of movement in the sound and instil positive messages in each story.
We also have a very unique website with behind the scenes video footage. No other audio book makers have done this before!

We’ve had a great start to the year with so much interest and wonderful things to look forward to and we can’t wait to introduce our new stories to everyone!