Still no voice

I might have been able to return to the Fortress of Quietude in my basement to begin recording the audiobook for “Foes & Rivals,” but there was a little cough when I was showering, plus I had seen things about Prince Edward’s trip to Texas, so…

This skips over some political unpleasantness and jumps ahead to where the young man is going to have a dinner with his great aunt and uncle. And his non-blood cousin, who, we discover, is not an exhibitionist, but is just something of an autist: an over-focused ditz. I really want to hear their dinner convo.

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The Dismal Science

Which is itself a joke. Normies think “economics” majors must study tons and tons of math. Hah. Most of them cannot add or subtract. I would trust astrology and reading bird entrails before any PhD of Economics. Politicians get crosses; I’ll give econs a clean death at the drop of a rope, just because I’m a nice person.

It seems that Prince Edward has twigged to this fact. Race > Culture > Politics.

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Unlimited Tsundere Works

Haven’t gotten back to recording my next book, “Foes & Rivals,” for two reasons: one, until I get my first completely passed by ACX, I’m a bit reluctant to get too far into another, in case I am doing something egregiously wrong which will force me to start from scratch, and, two, I STILL – after two weeks – have not completely shaken this seasonal flu; I awake each morning with a mild fever and chills and, worse, still have shortness of breath and an occasional cough, something not well suited for voice acting.

In the meantime, I keep working on that new novel about Empress Faustina’s eldest three sons. I was so tickled to meet Prince Edward’s human cousin (no blood relation), Livia Rupert, that I’ve included their meeting in Austin, Republic of Texas, below the fold. What is up with those two! I’ve also seen a little of the “reels” of Robert’s mission to the border marches of Kentuckiana as well as what might be a life-threatening problem for Laszlo. Honestly, I would be surprised if everyone made it out of this book alive.

Considering that this is about the top three heirs to the empress, I considered giving it the working title of “Lioness in Winter.” But that doesn’t work, compared to the movie – the best I’ve ever seen, btw – as there is no ruling monarch playing a central role. I hope to have something by my next update.

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Like my books? Nominate my books!

Superversive SF is having their annual Great Bookshelf Hunt: nominations for great scifi books published in 2020. I released three. If you read one or more of them and enjoyed it, I’d certainly welcome the mention as a nominee!

Crosses & Doublecrosses (January 13, 2020) – science fiction (technically political/espionage scifi, but that’s not a category)

Empire’s Agent & other short stories (March 11, 2020) – anthology

Princess’ Crusade (December 7, 2020) – military SF

Thank you, all my blog and book readers, for your constant support!

Ports of Call

In engineering, logistics, and similar fields there is a concept called “point-source failure.” That is, the proper function of your mechanism, program, or process is ultimately predicated on one single thing working right. If it fails, the entire system fails. This, obviously, is something to be avoided and designed out from a project’s inception or as soon as possible.

When I first self-published my books, beginning in December of 2014, I was on Amazon. It was the only game in town. Later, I learned of Smashwords and have ported many of my ebooks there. More recently, StoryOrigin, where not only can I sell books, but make parts of all available for reviewers (I’m just getting started on that site). Just last week Helen Smith unveiled Helen’s Page with much more than just books. In the wings, I’m aware that Sarah Hoyt is working on yet another such outlet for indie authors.

I say all that to say this: it is just a matter of time before Amazon gets taken out by hackers, broken to pieces by regulators, or – most likely – I’m deplatformed for having heretical views of what the PoMoTranzi Party believes on any given day. In other words, a point-source failure.

Below the fold is one of the reasons I can only upload books to Smashwords twice per year or so. Exasperating.

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Talking, Coughing, Writing

Busy last several days. I have completed and uploaded all twenty-two parts of the audiobook version of “Friend & Ally.” Because ACX demands a square image for sales and marketing – of course it has to be different – I had to reach out to my very talented cover artist to try to turn a normal, rectangular book cover into the damned square they want.

In the mean time, I seem to have caught a seasonal flu. No, not the Chicom Lung Rot; calling off from work – my first time ever at this hospital – with seven of eleven “flu-like symptoms” meant I had no choice but to be tested. So: no BatAIDS but just a mild flu. Because I have a million things to get done at DayJob, I went in Friday for a partial day and again today, Sunday.

With shortness of breath and a dry cough, heading to the basement to start reading “Foes & Rivals” was out. Given that I accidentally made a writing exercise into the prologue of another novel, I decided to see where that may lead. For some reason, of Empress Faustina’s three adult sons, it was Edward’s movie which started rolling first. Below the fold is some of what I have learned about him. I’m going to come up with at least a working title for this stuff…

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Star Chamber Radio Waves

I mentioned this in a previous post, but to reiterate: in less than three hours I shall be live for an interview about my dozen, so far, books of Machine Civilization, on the Star Chamber Show on BlogTalkRadio. If you are not able to listen live, fret not: the shows are recorded and you can get a glimpse into my mind at your leisure. Cheers!

Libel and Slander

The mnemonic I developed for these is that “libel is literary and slander is spoken.” Neither of which has anything to do with this post.

Point One: the 650 raw minutes of the audio of “Friend and Ally” are complete. The first-pass rough editing is complete. Thanks to a friend’s gifted “how to use Audacity” course, it now is taking me 45 minutes to flog a chapter into shape for ACX rather than three hours. Better: I see how I can improve that for next time. The nagging issue is that I AM EFFING SICK TO DEATH OF HEARING MY OWN VOICE! I didn’t really hear it while acting (and audiobooks is voice-acting, not reading) but having to go through this twice…! Sick of it! And Wednesday is almost upon us!*

Point Two: I’d been sitting on the first three paragraphs of a micro-story for two months now. Again with Chief Daniel Hill, but this is at the other end of the telescope, when he first settled his people as the hundred million dead of the Breakup was happening around them. No such things as coincidences, a stranger wanders through their kononia.

*I shall be appearing as the featured guest on the Star Chamber on Wednesday, March 10th, at 2100 Eastern US time. It’s recorded, so don’t think you have to get up early or stay up late.

Below the fold: an unexpected visitor to the tribe of Sardis Lake.

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“Friend and Ally”: audio raws complete

Twenty chapters plus prologue and epilogue… that’s about 650 minutes. At least when I’m editing all that I don’t have to be in my Fortress of Quietude in the 45F basement. Step one will be removing my screw-ups; those are the spikes on the image below the fold, from a typical file. When I flubbed something, I would cough or yell “pop!” into the mic to give me a visual cue of where I need to fix something. Still, I’ll have to listen to everything in its entirety to make sure.

Once that is complete, then I can turn to the technical bits of Noise Removal, Normalization, Equalization, and so on. My target for commercial release is Easter, so I’ve less than forty days to go. The steepest learning curve will be getting things into a format that will satisfy ACX… I recall problems when I experimented last July. So long as my liver holds out, I’ll make it.

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