Lessons Learned will soon be available as an audiobook. This is a short prequel story for my epic fantasy series The Rys Chronicles. I am the narrator of the audiobook, and it represents my first foray into narrating audio fiction. I’ve been developing my voice over skills for the past year or so, and have successfully recorded and published one of my nonfiction books Get Dicey: Play Craps and Have Fun.
Because Lessons Learned is a short story of just over 9,000 words, I decided that it would be a good place to start. Narrating an entire book is actually quite intimidating. I hired narrators to record my full-length novels Union of Renegades and The Goddess Queen partly because the thought of reading a big fat book aloud daunted me. When I outsourced the voice over for those novels, I did not feel like I could tackle the task myself. I did wish that I could do it though, and that desire gradually overcame my reluctance until I starting learning how to do voice over.
From my experience of narrating short books, I’ve gained some confidence. I speak the words and minute by minute I work my way through the pages.
I’ve completed the recording of the audiobook and am currently editing the audio. Occasionally, I need to go back and re-record parts, mostly dialogue, that I decided to be inadequate while editing. I then splice the fixes into the raw audio until I’m satisfied with a track.
Although I prefer to be painfully secretive about things until they are ready for public release, I’m sharing a wee snippet of audio from the upcoming audiobook.
Once the audiobook is complete, I will distribute it to retail and library audiobook channels through Findaway Voices. I’ve been pleased with this audiobook publishing platform.
The full-length audiobooks for Union of Renegades and The Goddess Queen are widely available online as well as right here at Brave Luck Books where you can buy the mp3 files.
Lessons Learned reveals a crucial episode from the back story for Shan and Onja, two of the main characters in Union of Renegades and The Goddess Queen. I categorize Lessons Learned as a dark fantasy because it does not have a happy ending. If you know what happens in Union of Renegades, however, the short prequel story has extra meaning.
Until I complete the Lessons Learned audiobook, people can read the ebook version by downloading from Smashwords.
In the coming days, whenever I can make time, I’ll be editing the audio and pecking away at writing my new work in progress.
