New from Postwood Press... for your children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

ANNE IN MUSICLAND
An introduction to the sounds of the orchestra. For pre-school, kindergarten and early grade school children. A young girl, Anne, finds herself in MusicLand and meets the various musical instruments.

This program was designed to introduce pre-school, kindergarten and early grade school children to the basic orchestra and band instruments. Basic emphasis in the program is on recognition of sounds of the instruments. The method employed is the utilization of a story theme and the development of a personality for each instrument introduced.

A young girl, Anne, is the vehicle through which the story progresses and the instruments are introduced to the listener. It is anticipated that the children will more readily recognize instruments with which they can associate a character or story.

Anne wakes up to the clash of cymbals at the gate of Musicland. She receives permission from Cymbal the Great to enter Musicland. Anne becomes involved in a disagreement between violins and "fiddles", searches for the missing Silent Sam the Cello, and meets many inhabitants of MusicLand, including Grandpa Bass, Violet Viola, Flighty Flute, Tiny Piccolo, Blacky Clarinet, Ruby Oboe, Bob Bassoon, and Jax the Sax. 

In Chapter Two, Anne continues her search for Silent Sam the Cello so he can play in a special Musicland Concert. While searching for Silent Sam, she meets Boom-Boom the Bass Drum, Rat-a-tat Snare Drum, and Ting-a-ling Triangle. They invite her to join their parade in honor of Terry and Timmy Timpani who are returning to MusicLand after their successful debut at Carnegie Hall. She meets Big George the Tuba, Slipper Slide Trombone, Frenchy the French Horn, Mr. Trumpet, and the Timpani. Anne's adventures in MusicLand end with the successful concert appearance of Silent Sam, and a promise from Cymbal the Great that she can return to meet more MusicLand citizens in the future.

The children in your life will love this interesting story, while developing a new interest in music and the various instruments.  This fun recording is available through Amazon, Anne in MusicLand as an instant download.  Or, Click here to order the CD.

Shocked Listeners Hear Civilized Life on Planet Amphibia!

By Tom Hays

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my experiences a few years ago in a recording studio in Oklahoma, in which we were fortunate to have recorded strange signals from a distant planet.

I invited readers to visit a web page where they could hear actual samples of those recordings and, if they wished, order the complete collection of those recordings. The results have been gratifying.

As predicted, some felt compelled to question my sanity, but many were amazed (or perhaps amused) and immediately ordered the CD’s by mail or simply downloaded them in audiobook format from the internet. In my view, those who responded with an order were the smartest ones. They are already listening to every exciting episode in this historic series of recordings.

Now, it is your turn. If you have not yet listened to this series I urge you to listen and order now!

Are there really little green men from outer space? Here is where you find out.

Wak et Bong the Merciless Salamander

http://www.starbasetoad.com.

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.