Monalia Ventress is a composer / sound designer and co-founder of Partners In Rhyme, Inc., she is also an author and has her first novel, Horizontal Rain: Memoirs from Middle Earth, available for purchase on Amazon.com.

It tells the story of our travels through New Zealand, Indochina, Indonesia, Australia and more along with detailed and exclusive ‘making of’ stories about The Lord of the Rings films which I worked on while we were living in New Zealand.

Here is the jacket blurb from the book:

Mona-Lia and Mark are two ex-scenesters living in Hollywood who uproot their recording studio, two dogs and burgeoning Internet company and move to New Zealand where Mark has landed a visual effects job working on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Both of their lives change completely for better and worse. Mark begins working inhuman hours and is swallowed whole by his new job while Mona-Lia travels around the Southern Hemisphere to escape the domestic stress and strain his new job causes. Mona-Lia and Mark rediscover themselves and each other in their quest to explore new and exotic lands such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Tokyo, Samoa, Fiji and Bali. This three year journey is filled with detailed accounts of the making of the visual effects of The Lord of the Rings films along with in depth observations on what it is they learned about leaving their home, friends and family in California to live and work in a new country.

If you’re interested at all in how Partners In Rhyme Inc came about and grew into what is today then check out Horizontal Rain: Memoirs from Middle Earth.