They’re all up, now—all three volumes to date of The Chaos Chronicles. They’re all free all the time, on my downloads page. (The Infinite Sea still has a few formats unfinished, but the most popular formats are up now.) Thanks, as always, to my friends on the Mobilread forum for their help with conversions.
And do come try the audio podcast of Sunborn. Word on that doesn’t seem to be getting out as fast, or maybe the audiobook people are a different demographic. But if you know people who listen to books while they drive, or on their mp3 players while they jog, send ’em my way. Right now I have a starter file of the prologue and chapter one. It’s an exacting and sometimes frustrating business getting a good reading down, and chapter two has been giving me fits. But we’ll get there. If you record it, they will come—right? Let’s hope so.
“Half of my life is an act of revision.” —John Irving
pascalscheffers
I listened yesterday.
It’s good, reading could do with a little practice 😉 You got more into the rhythm towards the end. For the intro may want to lower the volume on the music a bit more. In a quiet room it is probably okay, but not outside. I like bridge music, but maybe something with a bit more punch? Perhaps something you could start talking over before it ends?
It is a good teaser, though, now I want more 🙂
One way to get more exposure is posting on podiobooks.com. Have you decided if you’re going to do the whole book as a (free) audiobook yet?
Evo Terra
I”ll second Pascal’s suggestion, Jeffrey. Not only is our site a great place to get exposure (each day we push our 30,000+ episodes of our free serialized audiobooks), but our community of writers and producers can help make each episode really pop. After all, some of our folks have been doing this for over 3 years now.
Come stand on the shoulders of giants. We’ll help!
Evo
Podiobooks.com
Jeffrey A. Carver
I haven’t made a decision yet. Yesterday I was sure I was going to do it; today it feels like an impossible commitment of time and energy. After 4 lousy takes of Chapter 2, and a strained voice, I’m giving it a rest for a day or two.
I have indeed checked out podiobooks, and it looks like a perfect complement to mobileread.com for ebooks. I’ll probably register there in a day or two; need to focus on writing, for now.
Thanks for the tips.
pascalscheffers
Well, you don’t have to do the entire book in one go – most authors do not. The (positive) feedback helps 🙂
I may be an outlier, but I will pay/donate for the privilege of listening.
Jeffrey A. Carver
Thanks, Pascal. The encouragement does indeed help. I wasn’t planning to do the whole book at one go, of course. But I was hoping to record a chapter at a time, and maybe get several done a week. With 42 chapters in the book, I’ll need to get them out at a reasonable rate, or it’ll take me a year to do the whole book. I think it’s asking a bit much of listeners to stick with me that long.
On the other hand, 10 or 12 weeks, coming in chunks big enough for people to listen to on their commute, or the right size to burn onto CDs, seems more appropriate for a listening audience.
That’s just me talking; I haven’t gone yet to glean the collected wisdom of others.
substandardTim
I would like to vote for an ebook version (preferably pdf or txt) of your writing course. I’ve read through part of it in the past but I would like to get through it all. The main way I seem to digest my non-fiction reading is on my smartphone.
Jeffrey A. Carver
>> I would like to vote for an ebook version (preferably pdf or txt) of your writing course. <<
That's an interesting idea, Tim. But it would require a substantial amount of work. It would need reformatting, and quite a few tips and exercises are in the form of popups, which would need to be folded into the text. Given that I haven't found the time yet to completely go through the course cleaning up the existing formatting, I don't know what the chances are of my doing that.
My to-do list has long included adding some video footage with some of the writers who appeared with me on the TV show that formed the basis of the course. I'd probably want to do that first. All I need is a month of free time, with nothing else whatsoever to do.