Getting Set For a New Adventure

Sorry for being quiet for so long, a lot's been happening over here. First I was needed to help some very dear family members deal a terrible loss. Then both Helen and I had to deal with a vicious bout of Bronchitis which turned into Pneumonia in my case. We've just gotten over that and have been told it will take some time for our lungs to get back to normal, only now we're dealing with serious fires here in California which has turned our normally nice sea air into a smoke-zone. Needless to say this is not making the healing process for our lungs that much easier, especially since we're both asthmatics to begin with.

But we wish to thank you for your patience as we've been dealing with all these crisis and want to let you know that even during our force down time we have been working on our anthology “The Vampyre Blogs – One Day At a Time”. With a bit of luck it will be coming out in a week or so, and pre-orders will be announced shortly.

We're also pleased to tell you that work has also been progressing on “The Door”, latest full-length novel in the Para-Earth Series. Furthermore, “The Pass” (our collaboration with Richard Caminiti) is close to a finished 1st draft. After seeing how that project has been developing, Richard and ourselves decided "The Pass" would not be part of the Para-Earth Series, but the beginning of an all new series comprised of fantasy, history, and the supernatural. There will be more updates on that project soon.

In the meantime, Allan has been studying and purchasing the necessary equipment to begin audio-readings. As you can see below he's been slowly setting up a “Recording Studio” in our office/guest room.

Now some of you may be asking “Don't you have enough writing to do?” Well the answer is simply, a growing number of people have been telling us that they'd love to get our books but they prefer “Audiobooks” because they don't always have time to sit and read. Or they lose track of the book they're reading, etc-etc. This we can believe because a number of our co-workers are always telling us about their daily drive from San Jose or Monterey. Plus, there are a number of folks who always have earbuds on and are not always listening to music.

Still you may be saying, “Why do it yourselves? Why not hire someone to do the reading and converting them into audiobooks?”

Well, a number of folks who've actually heard either of us do public speaking and readings insist we should be the ones to do the audio-readings. Furthermore, there are a number of readers who would prefer to hear the words spoken by the one who actually wrote them, and we are part of that group. After all who understands the story and the characters better than the the invidual(s) who created them?

As for how soon will any of our books be ready for audio? Let's just say that we're just experimenting with audio-readings at this point. Allan is going to try his hand at some classic short stories by others like HP Lovecraft and share them here as well as on YouTube. This will allow us to get some feedback and tips from those who are more experienced in doing audiobooks. Furthermore, it will be fun to actually know what it's like doing audio recordings, the experience might lead to the creation of a new character or even a storyline. After all they say write what you know, and drawing from life is always a much more satisfying for us.

Now if any of you are interested in hearing what happens on this little journey, we are planning on sharing in detail what we learn as this adventure continues. We'll probably start posting entries about equipment and why some of it was chosen in an upcoming entry.

Some of Allan's first attempts will be short pieces by other authors some which are in the Public Domain. We've chosen those first because there is a volunteer project called LibriVox (link: https://librivox.org/), which is similar to Project Gutenberg (link: https://www.gutenberg.org/) which takes books/stories in Public Domain and are making them available for free here on the internet. However, it's much easier to reproduce typed words than it is to get audio versions and LibriVox depends on volunteer readers to record and submit works for public enjoyment, especially for those who are blind for instance.

So, that's all we have to report for now. Until next time, keep writing!