“Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley: Frankenstein Diaries”

In time for the 200th anniversary year since the publishing of “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” the audiobook of “Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley: Frankenstein Diaries,” by Michael January and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, released by Winged Lion Publications, has arrived at Audible, Amazon and ITunes. Heidi Gregory (“Aesop’s Fables” “The Secret Garden”) is the voice of Mary Shelley in this unique genre-bending book of Mary Shelley telling in her own words the story of her love affair with Percy Bysshe Shelley and their elopement with Mary’s step-sister, Claire Clairmont.

The speculative autobiographical novel was first published in 2015 with a unique take on the famous characters in a posthumous “collaboration” with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, based in part on her published “History of a Six Weeks Tour,” but in the form of a rediscovered memoir from her journals, diaries and letters, both published and unpublished, melding them seamlessly with fictional speculation into an intimate atmospheric retelling of the elopement trip the two young lovers took in 1814.

“The original inspiration for the Mary Shelley book came from my following the literal footsteps of the Shelleys along the path they took in their 1814 elopement trip, the intriguing notion that Mary Shelley never publicly revealed where the name Frankenstein came from,” says Michael January. “There was something about it she was deliberately hiding. I set out to illuminate that secret in the form of a confessional memoir, and actually visiting the places where they went was very revealing, standing where they stood and seeing what they saw.”

The Secret Memoirs begins with Mary confessing that she deliberately structured the details of her well-known introduction of Frankenstein (where the idea originated from a dream) in-order to conceal some facts she had promised to keep secret. And it goes on to tell a more involving story of where the influences of her famous book came from. The journey of self-discovery of two teenage girls and the poet of “free love” illuminates the deeper themes of the Frankenstein story, and presents Mary Shelley’s personal connection to a gallery of famous literary figures, which occurred long before the familiar dream and scary story competition at Lake Geneva.

“I’m really thrilled to hear Mary tell her story in her own voice,” states January. “It adds such a personal intimate dimension. I think this unique world was meant to be heard and I was so impressed with Heidi Gregory’s vocal tone for Mary. She really draws you in to her story and takes you on an unexpected journey.”