The Demon in Business Class Audiobook Blog Tour

Author: Anthony Dobranski

Narrator: Laura Petersen

Length: 18 hours 26 minutes

Publisher: Anthony Dobranski

Released: Aug. 19, 2020

Genre: Supernatural Thriller

She can speak all languages. He can smell evil intent.

They’re enemies. They crave each other.

Secret magic, international settings, a conspiracy plot, star-crossed lovers, and sharp writing The Demon in Business Class is a stunning debut novel spanning continents and genres.

Zarabeth travels the world for a shady executive, laying the groundwork for global war.

Gabriel offers a second chance to the criminals that a visionary leader sees in dreams.

One rainy night in Scotland, they meet…

Now, it’s complicated.

There’s also the investigator, the witch, the playboy, the gangster, the cultist, the pre-school teacher, the two angels…

And, the demon.

Fans of Jeff VanderMeer and David Mitchell will love this stylish cross-genre novel. Gorgeously narrated by Laura Petersen, The Demon in Business Class is an international story of fantasy, intrigue, and love, on the uneasy ground where the human meets the divine.

Your next read is now boarding, listen now!

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Anthony Dobranski is from and lives in Washington DC. His debut novel is The Demon in Business Class, a modern fantasy. He also designed and published Business Class Tarot, a modern Tarot deck inspired by his novel. He is finishing up his new science-fiction novel, The White Lake. He’s volunteered with many arts organizations, and now serves on the board of The Inner Loop, a Washington DC live-reading series and podcast. He loves to ski.

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Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Laura Petersen is the youngest from a very large family. She matured like a nice cheap wine in Southern California where her family moved when she was in high school. Honing her acting chops in college in Orange County and in the school of hard knocks in Los Angeles, she eventually settled down with a handsome young man and married. Then promptly moved to North Carolina, and then again headed West to Oregon where she now lives with her husband, and two kids.

She traveled extensively before becoming a suburban mom, traveling all over Europe and North America. She has also worked in almost every manner of job, from fast food service to bartending and from retail clothing to costume department PA, actress, short order cook, barista, auto repair, ballroom

dancer, and independent film producer.

Now, when she is not busy narrating, she uses her BA and MBA to homeschool her kids (thanks pandemic) and enjoys hanging with her quarantine pod for occasional game nights.

Website

• Do you believe certain types of writing translate better into audiobook format? 

Not really. I’ve listened to literary and popular fiction, non-fiction, journalism, and spiritual works. They all worked well as audiobooks. I suppose an academic work with many footnotes would be challenging — if you wanted to stop reading the main text and read the footnotes — but if a history is a good read in print, I never stop to check the footnotes anyway.

 

• Was a possible audiobook recording something you were conscious of while writing? 

Yes and no. I work hard to write smooth prose and snappy dialogue, so I knew that The Demon in Business Class would be a great audiobook. What I never considered was how much work I was making for the narrator! Demon has eighty characters who have enough lines they have to sound distinctive, plus another sixty “extras” with one or two lines — in accents from a dozen countries and several regions of the US. I maybe should have considered how hard it would be. Happily, Laura Petersen did such a good job that it sounds completely natural.

 

• How did you select your narrator?

I chose Laura Petersen from her audition samples. She read beautifully, with real brio and confidence. My characters are businesspeople. Whatever they’re feeling, they front that everything is fine. She got that false bravado, and the stress beneath it, and ran with it! She’s also got a fantastic narrator’s voice, and her character voices were wonderful and expressive. I just knew she was the one, though I couldn’t know just how good a job she would do. It’s amazing work.

 

• How closely did you work with your narrator before and during the recording process? Did you give them any pronunciation tips or special insight into the characters? 

Laura Petersen and her producer John Warton did the research themselves, and they developed their own insights into the characters from reading and discussing the book. I had a small part in the process, as a proofer, checking for minor errors, between the initial recording and the final mastering. I also helped with some pronunciation here and there.

I was happy with my minor role, and I tried to be both useful and absent. Once I heard Laura’s audition — which blew me away! — it was her performance I wanted, not mine. She was doing the work. It’s really important to respect that. 

 

• Were there any real life inspirations behind your writing? 

Absolutely! The Demon in Business Class is a fantasy novel, but it’s set in the real world of the year 2008. The characters, despite their secret magic, are business travelers. It’s a life I lived and worked. I opened international offices in Europe and Asia-Pacific for the internet company AOL, and I’ve traveled a lot in the US as well. All the places in the novel are places I’ve lived or visited. I wanted Demon to be a realistic picture both of those places and of modern business life.

My model for this was Mikhail Bulgakov’s great novel, The Master and Margarita, which is about the Devil hosting a grand party in Stalin’s Soviet Union. It’s a fantasy, but it’s also a true portrayal of life under Stalin’s brutal reign — one of the few that survived to our day. I wanted to talk about business and globalization in the same honest way, even as I also told a fantastic story. I also think the realism helps make the story believable and enjoyable. 

Antiheroes, Villains, and Lovers

The concept of the antihero is ancient, but its meaning has changed over time: from the clever servant who secretly guides a hapless employer, to a moody and vengeful hero, to an unheroic person alienated from their society, to an amoral stranger who does good as a side effect of thwarting bad people.

It’s easier to say what an antiheroes aren’t — they’re not overtly good and strong people who take direct action to make a situation better. And, some so-called antiheroes, such as Tony Soprano or Walter White, are really villains — they’re just villains we know well enough to sympathize with.

One fun aspect of my novel The Demon in Business Class is how my two main characters, Gabriel and Zarabeth, play with the hero/villain dynamic. Both start the novel as antiheroes. Zarabeth is frustrated by the impending loss of her job, and by the deeper loss of no longer being recognized for her talents. When she gets a chance to have both back, she grabs it, and demonic powers are a nice plus. Gabriel had a chance to do good works, but only open-ended and discouragingly long-term ones, and he gave up. His sudden violence to prevent an assault opens a door to a kind of redemption, a goodness he can only believe in, not understand.

One gets an arc toward heroism, the other toward villainy. Neither one is easy, but both come with rewards. Then, they get another option entirely: they meet each other, and find a deep connection with new possibilities — which aren’t compatible with the arcs they’ve traveled, and worked very hard to follow.

Is it selfish to give up a heroic life for love? Is it worthy to give up villainy for love? Is love separate from morality? They’re interesting questions to tackle.

There’s lots more going on in The Demon in Business Class: a series of strange adventures, across Europe, the US, and Asia, coming together in a grand design, a modern fantasy for our global age. Come enjoy the wild and magical journey of two people trying to stay true to themselves, even while their moral compasses swing wildly.

Welcome aboard, and Bon Voyage!

 

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