First, the color versions of the Affinity Publisher collections (Ads & Covers and Book Formatting) are now available on Amazon and will be at some point elsewhere. (IS is slow to review sometimes.) I don’t actually recommend buying them because I think you can get the same thing for cheaper if you buy the ebook and black and white print versions. But for those who want color images in their print book, they’re now available.
I’ve been back to working on audio lately. Mostly because my pretty new computer that I got from ASUS spent the last month with them for repairs that they didn’t make. (Not buying another computer from them, thank you very much.)
So I published the audio of four holiday short stories from one of my romance pen names and have now recorded the audio for two of my cozy mystery novels. I should really be reviewing the last of those files right now, but sometimes you just hit a wall and don’t want to be productive. Which means I’ll wrap that up tomorrow.
I wanted to do three before I released any, but I think at this point I’ll just release those two and see how they go. It takes me about a week to record each one, which would mean another seven weeks to do the rest of the series, which is a lot of time really.
I’ve been enjoying doing the audio, though. In terms of level of difficulty I think it goes non-fiction, short story, novel, series of novels.
The biggest challenge after just getting good audio recordings is all the character voices. In a series you end up with a larger number of recurring characters that each need their own distinctive voice, which is not so easy to do. Even in a first-person POV you need them to be distinct enough to have a conversation between different characters that works for the listener.
I’ve also found that narrating audio makes any writing tic you may have glaringly obvious in a way that even having Word read back to you doesn’t. Hopefully it’ll improve my writing next time I actually write a novel or short story, but probably not. Not unless I narrate before release and then make edits and re-record which is a lot to do for fairly minor issues.
No idea when I’ll write more fiction. I have a big non-fiction project to wrap up next.
And then…I don’t know. I have a zillion fiction ideas I could write, but I may just step back and focus on other life things for a while.
Of course, I say that and then a week later I set some new goal for myself and I’m back in the race.
In non-writing news…
I was lucky to have a good family Thanksgiving get together this year, but with only half of the attendees because of sickness. Another friend didn’t even get to have her family’s celebration because of people being sick. Non-COVID.
I think that may be more the norm going forward than it was before even if it’s not directly people having COVID. Some folks’ immune systems are just more susceptible now than they were before.
Of course, two weeks ago 1/3 of my brother’s workplace tested positive for COVID, so that’s definitely still around, too. And a video I watched today by a cardiologist about the long-term side effects of getting COVID makes me more than willing to continue to play cautious for the time being.
I honestly don’t expect I’ll ever stop masking at the store. No reason to do so other than social pressure, and I could care less about what other people think of me.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again and again and again. My dad died at 45 from an illness he had when was five or six that permanently damaged his kidneys. I don’t fuck around with illnesses that can cause long-term damage. I’ve witnessed that life and it’s not one I want to live if I don’t have to.
So.
Onward.
M.L. Humphrey 