Tracked Bernie Mack at The Gallery of Carpet Recording
Mixed by Bernie Mack at The 3rd Bedroom
Mastered by Nick Eipers
Music by Steve Mayfield
Author Steve Mayfield
Editorial reviews:
Norm Goldman:
Afterlife Crisis (Novel with Soundtrack)
By Norman Goldman "Editor of Bookpleasures.com"
In his debut novel, Afterlife Crisis (Novel With Soundtrack), Steve Mayfield spins a tender and humble narrative while exploring what makes someone a good, caring, and compassionate human being.
Mayfield's story uses the framework of a fifty-four year old Frank Moon who has just suffered a fatal heart attack. Two minutes after his demise, his soul is sucked into the "Passage," and winds up somewhere called the Resting Place where "there is only love and support now and forever." It is here where Frank meets a visionary, Luna, who explains to him the meaning and importance of "warmth", which incidentally is not the temperature but rather the human state.
Luna informs Frank that as everyone goes through an individual, unique life experience, the person's deeds and activities gradually build a character and a distinctive soul. Moreover, one of the most vital ingredients of that soul is "warmth." Frank is a trifle baffled as to what all this means and Luna then goes on to clarify that warmth consists of four features: compassion, tolerance, risk and knowledge.
Luna also informs Frank that it is fairly easy to measure warmth as we all have degrees of compassion, tolerance, risk and knowledge. In fact, it can even be learned and improved. Frank is now quite interested in knowing how he scored whereupon Luna tells him that before she gives him his results, she would like to revisit with him some of his warmth-forming experiences during his lifetime on earth. And Frank is also reminded that life is not what we think or pray about but rather what we do or in other words, actions speak louder than words.
As we read about these experiences, we get a good picture of Frank's character and some of the fine deeds he had performed during his lifetime. These include the preventing of a gang rape of a young teen-age girl and the rejection of racism that was prevalent among a good majority of his classmates. We also get a peek into some of Frank's crabby moments such as the time he lost patience with an Internet support service technician who was trying to help him with his Internet problem. Each experience is linked to one of the elements comprising "warmth" and when they are all added up, Frank does succeed in coming up with more than a passing grade. As a result, Frank is called up to return to earth and perform one more very important task.
Afterlife Crisis is narrated with a style and execution that is surprisingly uncomplicated for such a complex subject matter. In addition, what stands out about this novel is Mayfield's creativity as he interweaves excerpts from the seven song lyrics extracted from a CD that accompanies the book. These inspirational epigraphs initiate most of the chapters, and as Mayfield informed me when I interviewed him, it was the music that inspired the book. This is something that we often don't encounter, as it is usually the other way around where songs have been inspired by literature.
In addition, what I found most rewarding was that the epigraphs effectively whisper to us the principal themes that are to follow in each of the chapters. This is quite a delicate task, however, Mayfield has pulled it off with flying colors with a wonderful book with wise and heartening advice that makes us stop and ponder the kind of legacy we would like to leave our family and friends.
--Norm Goldman, Publisher & Editor Bookpleasures
Steve Mayfield
