DOUBLE VISION AUDIOBOOK NOW AVAILABLE
AVAILABLE ON AUDIBLE & ITUNES
We hadn’t planned on making an audiobook. But as we told friends and family about the publication of our debut novel, the one question we were asked over and over was: Is it available on audiobook? I, myself, listen to audiobooks constantly because I rarely have the spare time to sit down and read—I’m always multitasking. And I guess everyone else is as well. So we decided to give it a try and see how it turned out.
There was a bit of a learning curve, but honestly, I used ACX and that made the process pretty easy. I created a two-page script for producers (you don’t call them narrators, you call them producers because they do all the production) to audition. I was astounded at how many auditions we received. Our audiobook was only open for 24 hours, and we got 24 auditions for it.
While some auditions weren’t great, many were! I was impressed and ridiculously excited about the talent available to us. We narrowed it down to two producers, and it was hard to choose but we finally picked one. We negotiated a timeline and I waited for the final product, which took a bit. Most producers have multiple projects on their plate. But it was worth the wait!
We had the pleasure of working with Alexander Ragona, and the result is fantastic!
The audiobook is now on sale on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. In the next month, it will also be available on many other platforms. We've decided to publish wide instead of going exclusive with Amazon.
NANOWRIMO
If you aren’t familiar with NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. It’s an annual event that lasts the entire month of November, and is promoted by a US-based nonprofit organization to encourage people to write a novel. If you participate, the goal is to write 50,000 words during the month.
I tried to do NaNoWriMo last year and failed miserably. I wrote a whopping 2,500 words during the entire month of November. This year I decided to make my goal simply beating last year's goal. But I also took it a little more seriously and created a NaNoWriMo account and friended some people for motivation. I did a little better, managing to turn out 27,000 words before the month ended.
I'm not sure that a month-long sprint is a functional way for me to write, though it definitely seems to work for some people. I think I'm more of a slow and steady writer—writing consistently at a modest pace. But I'll try again for the next few years before I know for sure.
NEXT PROJECT
Speaking of NaNoWriMo…I used it to work on a collection of short stories. It's an interesting writing exercise to come up with so many different ideas, develop them paritally, then conclude them and move on.
I find the process of writing an entire novel and fully developing characters, the world, relationships, conflict, etc. is a much more satisfying endeavor for me. I think writing a good short story is challenging. But I'm enjoying using my brain a little differently than before, and I think the finished product will something people will really enjoy reading.