Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Pile of Leaves on Audiobook

This is one of my early books of stories, but one of my favorites. I started reading it as an audiobook myself, until I realized that 1) I was horribly unprofessional and there's a steep learning curve; 2) I didn't really have the logistical ability to get to a quiet place daily; 3) my equipment, or my understanding of how to use it effectively, was severely lacking.

But fortunately when I put it up on ACX, and offered out to find a "narrator," I got two offers, and took the first. It may be that these narrators knew a little what they were getting into, or, were willing to take a chance on short-story production, or, one more possibility, which is that short-story production, by nature shorter than novels, is a welcome break from the usual slogging through an entire huge novel.

My narrator, Greg Nelson, is very professional, and I'm really looking forward to the coming out of this collection. My most current set of stories, Free Range Flash Fiction, got six auditions, and among them, I picked a very professional one; that also should be coming out this summer.

I highly recommend ACX. It seems that listening to books by audiotape, or downloaded, or put into a cd, or however they do it, is the way to go these days. I have a very limited view of how people are actually doing it, but I do know that the primary audience is people who are stuck say driving across the plains, a three day slog, nothing to listen to. Back in the old days (1986) when I moved to Kansas, someone said, "get a tape-deck." Nowadays it's "download a few audiobooks." And, I might get some free promo codes; stay tuned, or write me, since, if you've even read this far, you are probably a relative or close friend.

More about Pile of Leaves: Stories of a rake. In those days my stories were almost intentionally spun off of my travel experience. That, I felt, was what set me apart from others. One in particular, Through Train, has that temporal, here-today, gone-tomorrow kind of feeling to it that I still remember. These are some of my favorite stories. Hope you try it, and enjoy them!

No comments:

Post a Comment