Free Short Story Audiobook - and more
Apr 08, 2021 10:06 pm
Hello from London,
I promised I'd do it, so here it is. The audiobook of my short story, "Shadows" is now available and you can listen to it by clicking on the button below.
A few words about it before you click, if you don't mind... Or skip to the blue button below labelled "Click here to listen!".
On testing new things...
This is clearly a new discipline for me, and my inexperience made itself felt in every excruciating detail. Recording it was a pain in the ... and I'm still not happy with the quality. Every time I listen to it, there's something I want to change, but that's way, way, way too much work for me at this point.
All that to say ... I'm pretty insecure about putting this out there. Seriously, my finger's hovering over the "delete" button as you're reading this, and I may well sign a contract with my future self that forbids him from ever recording his voice again.
So your feedback is important. If this format is something that appeals, then please reach out and let me know, (click 'reply') because without a pretty solid positive response, I'm not likely to do it again. You can read through my back catalog here and decide if there are other stories that lend themselves to this format.
There's a small part of me that enjoys the idea of reaching out to people who prefer to listen to stories. I also like that I can read the story as I imagined it, putting the emphasis where I think it belongs. So I sort of maybe, might perhaps, possibly, want to do this again. I have lots more stories I could read into a microphone if I thought there was demand for it out there.
On the other hand, my default position is that this is an experiment doomed to fail. People will hate my accent, the lack of a recording booth will mean the quality's too awful, people won't want to listen to my stories in audio, it'll be too short, too long, too boring, too bland, too crispy, too naughty. Actually, that last one's pretty unlikely.
It's up to you to move me from that default, by letting me know if you actually got something out of it.
On where the story came from...
This is from a story prompt, and there's an article about the whole process of getting this story down on paper on my website. You're welcome to read it there if the "making of" is something you're interested in.
Again, if you ARE interested in "making of" type stories, then that's something you could reach out and tell me about (hit reply), because it's something I'd write more about. I'm not sure anyone out there cares about the false starts, dead ends, unresolved contradictions and tens of thousands of jettisoned word-trash that goes into a finished story though. If you did care about that, however, I have a lot to tell you.
To read about where "Shadows" came from, the story prompt behind the story and why it almost never got written, head over to the article on my website by clicking here:
If you prefer your stories in print...
The story will be published in written form, for download to your preferred reading device, to this mailing list, probably in a month or so, so stay tuned.
If you're one of my Patreon subscribers, you should have received it yesterday, as a thank you for your support.
It's Here: To listen to the story...
Promotions, Free Books, That Sort of Thing
A couple of promotions for you this month.
Since I've dropped the frequency of this newsletter to every fortnight, I've had to reduce the number of author promotions and free book giveaways I'm doing. I've tried different amounts over the last few months, but I can't tell what the sweet spot is for you guys. I hope two giveaways is enough to satisfy and little enough that it doesn't saturate or overwhelm. I hope you find something of value in the promotions below.
Free and Clean Fantasy Giveaway
I write an urban fantasy series with a female main character, but it's almost entirely romance and sex-free. I get a lot of requests to promote authors who assume that my audience is actually reading my books for some romance or erotic content. I turn them down because I figure the audience of my newsletter didn't sign up for that, and if that's a genre they read, they have other ways of finding it.
This giveaway is focused on books that are 'clean', which means any intimacy happens after the 'fade to black'. So my Emily Voss series fits in nicely.
Unseen Hands Giveaway
When I saw this, I signed up for it immediately, because it felt like it was designed with my series in mind. After all, Emily Voss is an exorcist who has a hidden (reluctant) helper.
If you didn't know this, you haven't read the first instalment of my book, which is free, so I suggest you click here and go read it sharpish!
Ok... that's all I've got. Thanks for reading, don't forget to reach out and let me know what you like / don't like about the story, the audio, my accent, the concept of this newsletter in audio form, or any other ideas you have kicking around your head, or you think ought to be kicking around in mine.
All the best,
Nick.
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