Award nominated musician & author with a fascination for the dark side of being human.

Hi, and thanks for being here. I'm a full time musician who also writes. I have a passion for folklore and contextual sound (when I write albums, I make sure I dig out the sounds that the characters would have been surrounded by at the time). I like tales that are dark, mysterious, or bravely real - and combinations of that are my favorite. 

A while back I was commissioned by the New Zealand Arts Council to research our pioneer history. I was sent to a place called Karamea, on the west coast of New Zealand's south island. A town so remote it is still left off many maps (though not google maps ;)).  It was one of the earlier settlements, organized under the "special" settlement scheme by Eugene Oconnor in the 1870s. Families in the UK left their lives and relatives behind to journey for 80 days by ship in the hope of a better life. Whey they arrived in Nelson, there was no work for them, and a group of some 30 men were sent to Karamea, later to be joined by their families on allotment land. The land had been mis-surveyed, and most of the land was swamp and podzol, and therefore unfarmable. Surprisingly, the settlement went ahead, but tales of hardship and courage were abundant.    

image: turn of the century settler hut in Karamea. Phot taken early 1900s. 

For the project, I read through old letters, interviewed direct decendents, and talked to the local people about the stories that had been passed down to them. They ranged from the folkloric to the factual, and from the unnerving to the couragous. I focussed on a woman called Susannah Hawes for the album "How the Dead Live" but there were too many talesto go to waste or fit in one album. In order to preserve them, I decided to set them inside a larger tale - a ghost story about a gravedigger, who goes to Karamea in the employ of History, to harvest the tales of the dead. 

The Book and Audio Book - "Remembering the Dead".

"Remembering the Dead" is set in a Kithicor forest - a place where the undead walk at night, desperate to tell their tales to the living. The undead are scared of being simply dead. The dead, as we know, are forgotten so the  undead, spurred on by their fear, seek out the ears of the living - to give them hope that their lives were for something and that they will be remembered.
Lethe, a gravedigger in the employ of History, returns to her hometown of Karamea. Her task is to gather the tales of the undead, at least, those that seem to be of historical import. But a ghost of her own begins to interfere - slipping through from her past in the places where time is stretched thin. He is unhappy with the nature of her task and wants her to know it.  

How Many Readings will There Be?

There will be approximately 20 readings in total, each of 40 minutes length (if there are more than 20, I will make them available to you for free as I understand the need to budget!). 

You can subscribe for as little as $1(US) per reading  ($4 a month), which adds up to less than the normal cost of an audio book, but you are also helping to preserve some of New Zealand's forgotten tales into the bargain. There are also some extra rewards for those who'd like to give the project extra support - from copies of the e-book to music, to songs specially written about your own life, tattoos, dinner, and more.  

Sound like something you'd like? I'm glad. You can hear the first chapters here https://soundcloud.com/jordan-reyne/sets/remembering-the-dead-audio. 

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support. I hope you enjoy the book! 

image: Karamea today. The wooden piles in the foreground ar eall that remains of the port at the entrance to the Karamea river. Ships came to Karamea less and less frequently after the first decades of settlement, sometimes cutting off the settlement from the outside world entirely. The port fell into disuse after the 1929 Earthquake raised the rivermouth. Photo by Paul Murray. 2003.