These last few weeks have been super busy for us over here. We decided months ago to get new flooring for the house. The idea was when we moved in the flooring wasn’t great, including white carpets (white carpets!), but between our dogs and potential children, it was a good idea to let them destroy them first, then get new stuff.
Since my kids turn six in a few weeks here, the time sorta came for that decision and here we are, multiple months later, juggling all the complications that come with it. It’s looking like the ordeal will be over with either later this week or early next week, but lemme tell you, playing musical furniture isn’t a lot of fun. This, on top of the kids doing a few summer camp programs, has made for a hectic few weeks, as you can imagine.
As for book projects? I’ve got one book out to some beta readers for some feedback, but this book isn’t really related to most of my other books. Is it just a book for me? That remains to be seen, I suppose. The good news is I have started Trystero 6, and once all of this stuff with the house is sorted out, I can get into gear with that. Granted, I’m still gonna enjoy what’s left of my kids’ summer vacation because they’re the best.
I’m still releasing monthly short stories via my Patreon, with my latest one posted on July 1st. My supporter tiers start at $2 a month to get access to my short stories, and $4 to gain access to previous and forthcoming ebooks. It’s pretty cool!
Audiobooks are always something I’ve wanted to do, but COVID got in the way numerous times. Then the cost of producing them kept shooting up. As I’m not much of an audiobook listener, it’s hard to get really motivated to do the production myself. I’m fully capable of it, with experience recording and performing, but… like I said, I’m not an audiobook consumer, so the dozens of hours to produce an individual audiobook as an experiment have been difficult.
Google has an interesting solution to that with their AI voices program. Getting the system to spit out something decent with some names and places was some work, the same with making sure everything flowed well, but the result is… way better than I expected? No, nothing will ever beat the real thing for performances from real, talented folks, but this is still good and allows me to sell these at very competitive rates compared to what a traditional audiobook would be priced.
So far, all the Trystero books are available via Google Play, starting with Broken Ascension.
If you’re looking for a different method, you can pick it up directly from my website and have the files delivered via BookFunnel so you can either download them or listen via their really cool app.
Giveaway Time!
This month’s contest is a little different this time out. Since I’m launching the audiobooks, I’m going to be giving away copies of the Broken Ascension audiobook.
Via Google Play I’ll be giving away 10 copies of Broken Ascension. Using the promo code SCZVTYRSTQMV0 you should be good to go. You can click here to go directly to the deal.
If you’re not into Google Play for whatever reason, the first five people who respond will get a free copy delivered via BookFunnel.