New Audio Books Reveal Secret Discovery of Civilized Life on Distant Planet.

Tom Hays, Writer/Producer

 It was a few years back, a time when life had a different feel to it. The air in the recording studio seemed electric … sparking … crackling with activity and creativity, spiced by the smells of stale pizza, herb and cigarette smoke, filled with the amplified sounds of voices, music and sound effects.

As my friend John and I worked into the fuzzy hours of the night building commercials for my advertising clients, we had little knowledge of just what was coming our way, courtesy of an errant sound mixing console.

My agency studio was filled with second hand equipment, mostly acquired from radio stations. That old broadcast console and the Ampex recorders had some miles on them, but I had a good consulting engineer go through the place on a regular basis who kept it right up to specs.  Maybe too good.

As I said, it was late, and we were trying to finish up, but as we were listening to a playback, we started to hear some sounds that were not coming from what we had just recorded, faint sounds as if from far, far away. We were in a soundproof studio. Nothing was on except the tape player, the console and the speakers. What was that noise? We turned off the tape playback, but the far away sound persisted. We turned the speakers all the way down, and still the strange sounds came. With our ears we followed the sound to the source, the small broadcast monitor speaker in the console. We were not a radio station. We were not “broadcasting” anything. It got weird after that.

“If we’re not broadcasting,” I said, “then we must be receiving.” John turned up the volume on the console monitor and the sound became more audible. It was like nothing we had ever heard before, like a microphone was on in a strange place and no one knew it was on, and it was being transmitted.  Somehow, my old radio broadcast console was picking up that transmission. Strange indeed, for the sounds were like an old radio serial from days gone by. “John,” I said, “we’d better get this while we can.”   John turned on one of the recorders and we started recording.

The recordings continued, night after night, and in time we came to discover that what we were hearing was some sort of transmission from a small planet named Amphibia, in a far away galaxy known as Croakatoria. All in all, we managed to piece together 40 of these recordings. Astounded as we were, but fearing how the government dealt with those people telling stories about "hearing people from outer space", we dared not release the recordings to the public. The project was code named “Star Base Toad”.

Kept secretly and securely in my vault for all these years, I have now decided to risk ridicule and share these recordings with others who may find them of interest …  people who may wish to hear about life on other planets, about alien civilizations and the distant reaches of space and time. It is important to me that the world has the opportunity, through these recordings, to study the society that exists on Amphibia so that we may try to better understand our own. There has never been a time when we needed that more than right now.

In order to share this amazing audio discovery with as many people as possible, I have transferred the 40 recorded Star Base Toad episodes to 4 audio books, which have been published and are being distributed online by OpenBookAudio.com. They are now available at most audio book dealers including iTunes and Audible.com.  The four audio books are also available in CD format at StarBaseToad.com.

If your imagination will allow you to believe that life exists elsewhere, you can now listen and learn about the strange and exciting life on Amphibia. I urge you to listen carefully to the entire series.

Not For Babies Only...

 As I turned on the water to draw my bath, I glanced at the shelf by the tub lined with bottles of bath oils and lotions, reflecting various colors of the sky, the earth and flowering desert plants.  Many of those bottles were given to me by friends at a birthday party who said, "Be kind to yourself, take a warm, long bath, relax, luxuriate and treat yourself like a baby."  Hmmm...

 I began by dipping my elbow into the bath water to check the temperature.  As I slowly stepped into the water, the warmth of it engulfed my leg, and my foot felt the security of the smooth mat on the bottom.  I lowered myself into the tub and cradled my neck in a soft pillow and breathed in the rising steam scented by a mild eucalyptus oil.  Closing my eyes, covered by a cool eye mask, I consciously relaxed every muscle in my body.  I listened to my deliberate, steady breathing, felt my heart beat ever so slowly and I fell peacefully asleep.

 Upon awakening I ran a hot shower and washed my hair, massaging my scalp with the hardness of my fingernails and the softness of my fingertips, making thick lather.  Using one of my scented soaps and loufa, I washed my body, the roughness of the loufa scrubbing away dead skin, the faint lavender scent of the soap making me feel lusciously clean.

 Stepping out of the bath, I wrapped myself in a large, soft towel, heated by the towel warmer.  As I poured the cool moisturizing lotion into my hands to warm it and smoothed it over my body, I luxuriated in the silky feel it was giving my skin, and it reminded me of the obvious joy a baby feels when rubbed with baby lotion after a warm bath.

 Babies are touched, caressed, massaged, nurtured for a reason.  It gives them a feeling of security, love and acceptance. The human touch is so immensely important, not only to babies, but to all of us.

 Even if we don't have the time or resources to indulge in professional massages, manicures, shampoos, or aromatherapy treatments, there's nothing to keep us from pampering ourselves and recalling those same feelings a baby feels.

 As I dry my hair and dress, I think how I feel nurtured, loved, safe and relaxed, and it makes me recall those same feelings as when I was growing up.  And I'm the one who made me feel this way.  Pamper yourself -- treat yourself like a baby!

Warmly,

Susan Hays

Tucson Book Fetival 2012

Tom Hays welcoming visitors to his book signing at the HUGE Tucson Festival of Books.  A great spring day on the University of Arizona campus.

WINTER'S END

Ben lay in a darkened room, motionless, staring at the ceiling fan above as it made involuntary, slow circles, pushed by the air register on the wall above his head. Apart from that, Ben was conscious of nothing else in his surroundings. He had no feeling, the pain driven away by the narcotics administered by the nurse minutes before.

She had come in, asked him how he felt and, although the only response she received were a blank stare and a slight grimace, she knew what he was telling her. She pulled a syringe and small vial out of her uniform pocket, filled the syringe, injected the needle and his grimace slowly eased away to stoic nothingness.

As she left the room, the overhead fan blades became like a shutter on a movie projector through which Ben watched snippets of his life, in no particular order.

He saw his mother leaning over him, tending to him as he lay in his crib and remembering her beautiful smile. Then he recalled the last time he saw her before she passed away, with the loving, pleased look in her eyes as she gazed at him as an adult standing over her bed.

In quick succession he saw scenes from his childhood, his years of discovery and growth through the spring of his teen years, then through the summer years of his young adult life with the activity of building a place for himself in the world.

He visualized the relative comfort and beauty of his maturity as if the events of that time had all been in fall colors, warm and relaxing. Then he watched his doctor’s face turn winter white pale as he read the test findings to him and pause briefly before he uttered the word “cancer”.

It had been a long winter at the end of the series of seasons in his life. Ben was a fighter, never giving up easily, but he always chose his battles carefully. This one chose him. Somehow he knew this was one he could not win. Winter had closed in, and this long, late winter’s night was to be his last.

As dawn finally broke, a thin sliver of bright, white light made its way past the window frame and into the still dark room, crossing Ben’s motionless face. He moved his eyes toward the light and looked directly into it. A slight smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. Staring fixedly into the brilliant, white light, Ben followed it to the eternal spring.

copyright 2011 Tom Hays

Christmas Interview

Twisted by the Wind1

A short movie about the book TWISTED BY THE WIND written by Tom Hays

"Life is Just a Picnic in the Park" -Tom Hays

Mable’s Boys  (From the book Twisted by the Wind by Tom Hays)

Ben used to go down to the park on Sundays with Frankie, his cousin.  They were about nine or ten at the most.   One particular summer, things got real interesting. 

Frankie had learned how to look out for himself by that time.  He could squeeze himself into about anything interesting that was going on, and make it work out for his own benefit.

His momma spent a lot of time working, and, with no father to turn to, Frankie kind of grabbed onto Ben’s family. He and Ben were almost like brothers for awhile.  Frankie, a little older and more experienced, tried everything first, and sooner or later, Ben would follow.

So, on most Sundays that summer, Frankie and Ben would be down at the park.  They’d swing, and then slide, and then swing some more and then slide some more, climb on the monkey bars and run up and down the paths.  Sooner or later they would work up quite an appetite.

Frankie would go first, over to the picnic area where he would carefully survey the situation.  Then he’d pick out a table, one with a big family around it and a lot of other kids milling around to provide cover.

Frankie would slide up to the buffet and Ben would follow.  They would take a plate and start filling it.  Fried chicken, red jello with fruit cocktail in it, deviled eggs and pie … lots of pie.

Some woman standing by the potato salad would look them up and down, and ask them, “Now just whose boys are you two?”  Frankie knew to stuff a roll in his mouth before she got to the “you two?”  He’d use an exaggerated munching motion, moving his whole face up and down, and he would mumble with his mouth full.  Ben quickly stuffed his mouth, too.

Frankie would keep up his munching, and before he could finish his entire act, the woman would say, “You must be some of Mable’s!  My, you boys are sure growing.  Bet you’ll both be about as big as your daddy some day!”

Frankie would just nod his head up and down, and Ben would catch on and start nodding his, too, in agreement.  Then, two very agreeable young boys would slowly back away from the scene with full plates of delicious, genuine, Sunday picnic food.  Life was sweet.

That gambit worked all summer, perfectly every time … well, except for that one time … with the black family.

Ben figured the real moral to the story, politics and race aside, is to just approach life like you belong there.

Sooner or later, the world will tell you who it wants you to be to make it happy.

You just have to nod your head up and down, and enjoy the picnic.