For years I’ve struggled to produce audiobooks for many of my stories due to the high price point. Especially for my shorter works. This has been frustrating since I know I have readers who prefer some form of audiobook over ebooks. It’s always been an accessibility issue that’s bothered me. It can exclude readers with eyesight issues or those who are uncomfortable with ebooks.
I’m happy to share that with the power of Google AI, I finally have the chance to get many stories into audiobook format that never would have had the chance before such as Night Feeders.
I admit I listen to a lot of AI audio on YouTube. Spooky Reddit stories are some of my favorite late night content when I want entertaining background noise. I’ve gotten accustomed to AI voices reading stories. When I found out that this was an option and other authors were doing this too, I knew I had to join in.
I’m happy to share that I now have my first AI read audiobook up on YouTube with my short story, Night Feeders! It’s also available on Google Play for the same price as the ebook. I plan to have it on my Ko-Fi shop and possibly Kobo too.
Look for more AI audiobooks to be posted up on YouTube soon. Be sure to Like, Share, and Subscribe so you don’t miss them!
I wrote Night Feeders back in 2012, and let me tell you, it was in desperate need of a complete makeover. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the old cover.
The old cover for Night Feeders
It didn’t give the gritty western vibe of the book. It felt generic and sorely dated. The story itself is still fantastic, and I just spoke with a reader a few months back who told me how reading Night Feeders got him back into reading for fun. (I can’t tell you how much joy that brought me as an author!) I realized as he was discussing the characters, the setting, and the action that I haven’t given this book the attention it really deserved.
You can check out the book page for Night Feeders and see the love that readers have shared for it. They not only enjoyed the story, but they hunted down my website, found the post about the book, and commented on how much they loved it. Considering how limited my formatting skills were early on, that’s dedication.
This new cover, though, I just fell in love with. It was designed by Saba Designs over at The Book Cover Designer. It reflects the horror in the blood splatter, it feels like your protagonist could be a gritty detective, and the fact that this picture could have been plucked up straight from the pages only makes it better.
Isn’t it amazing? I love the detail, the color, the way it makes you want to open the doors… okay, well maybe not that part.
If you haven’t gotten the chance to pick up this horror western featuring a werewolf detective, a vampire brothel, and one bad sheriff, I hope you’ll give it a shot! It’s a quick read, but very engaging!
This book is a prequel to a series I’m working on because I really love everything about Colton and his world, from the historical aspects, to the terrifying monsters that lurk in the shadows. If you want to peek at what the adventures planned for Colton, check out the Books page and look for One Way Down!
Night Feeders
There’s a bad sheriff in town.
It’s a dangerous existence living out in the Old West, but it’s even worse for supernatural entities. When a brothel of concerned vampires reaches out to the Agency for the Betterment of Supernatural Creatures for help, werewolf detective Colton Fen steps in to solve a disappearance.
Sheriff Ritters keeps a ghastly group of monsters underground to keep the impoverished people of Clarkville in line. Anyone foolish enough to cross his path is thrown to the creatures. Can Colton solve the disappearance and bring peace to the terrified town without getting killed?
At a total of 58,737 words, Ghosts of Pikes Peak is finally finished!
YAAAAY! *Happy dance!*
Is it perfect? No. Do I care? Absolutely not! Having the first draft done just feels so very good. Tonight’s writing was all the epilogue. It delved into some real philosophical parts at times, but ended up on a high note which is how I prefer to end my novels. (Omg I can say novels now. With an s!)
I looked over my blog posts and realized that I started writing this piece on April 5th, or at least that’s when I first blogged about it. I hadn’t expected it to balloon up into a full length novel then, and my maximum expected length was around 10k. I guess that got thrown out the window. 😛 Took me two months to churn out the first draft, and compared to my (much more dense) Secrets of Leekston piece which has been a WIP for over a year, that’s not half bad!
I had other stuff I was planning on blogging about, like Amazon’s request for proof that I owned the rights to publish Clawbinder which was kind of weird. I have links all over that piece about where it was originally published (also where it still is listed), and describes when that happened, but I guess I have to reaffirm that for them? I don’t know, but I’ll go into that mess later.
I also wanted to talk about how I’ve been ritualistically checking Zharmae’s Twitter page to see if I placed in their contest. They’re supposed to be announcing the top five winners later on tonight and they’ve been doing a countdown of their top 27 pieces. I haven’t seen my name yet which could be good or bad. Probably a bad idea to be checking so much if I don’t get in, but oh well! Right now, I’m just tickled to have another finished draft on my table!
Project:Ghosts of Pikes Peak
Summary: The old, abandoned Davis Farm just outside the bustling city of Pikes Peak is riddled with malicious spirits. Werewolf detective Colton Fen has been assigned to a half-vampire partner, Rennick Dalton, to handle the troublesome ghosts, but even their combined strength may not be enough to dissuade the poltergeists from plucking victims from the outskirts of town. Is this a simple case of ghost infestation or is there something far more malicious going on beneath the farmhouse?
Current total words: 58,737 New words written: 2,445
Progress in Story: Finished! Isn’t that all that’s needed? 🙂
White peacocks are so beautiful. Seeing one showing off his feathers like that is a real treat! I remember going as a kid to the zoo, and how the peacocks would just wander all over the zoo grounds. I’m sure it was dangerous for them, so I’m glad that they don’t allow that sort of thing anymore, but I still miss it. It was always amazing to come around the corner and see one doing a beautiful display like this.
Had a great time being the DM last night, even though one of my monsters ended up being a friend of the party. Long story short, they now have a half-human, half-machine “scarecrow” to keep them company. Even though touching him causes a person to go into fits of screaming and terror, they still like him. I guess you could say I have a pretty unique party to work with. 😉 He’s pretty awesome, so I certainly wasn’t going to prevent it from happening. Some of the most fun games come from just allowing stuff to happen like this, and I love that sort of thing.
Today’s writing updates:
Project:Ghosts of Pikes Peak
Summary: The old, abandoned Davis Farm just outside the bustling city of Pikes Peak is riddled with malicious spirits. Werewolf detective Colton Fen has been assigned to a half-vampire partner, Rennick Dalton, to handle the troublesome ghosts, but even their combined strength may not be enough to dissuade the poltergeists from plucking victims from the outskirts of town. Is this a simple case of ghost infestation or is there something far more malicious going on beneath the farmhouse?
Current total words: 56,292 New words written: 3,381
Progress in Story: So I admit, I did a little bit of extra writing last night after I made my blog post. 😉 Epic battle has finally been resolved, though it is rather bittersweet in the end. Now its just finishing up, which really isn’t as easy as it sounds! I found this site to be pretty darn awesome for inspiration too.
Mythical Creatures List – I love how it shows where the myth came from, what kind of landscape they’re typically found in, and what part of the world they originated. This is just perfect for my needs. Sure, browsing through the site is fun, but doing a site search with Google makes this a requirement in my future fantasy research.
Day two of Camp NaNo and I’m still above water! Sure, I was afraid I’d dip under a few times, but so far it’s going well.
This morning was quite busy. Took two terrified cats to the vet for their shots and a bath. I learned a lesson while we were wrangling cats too. When two kitties are locked in a bathroom, and you walk up to the door carrying two open cat carriers in your hands, it’s probably best if you don’t frighten them. Especially don’t open the door making loud noises while pushing the bags through. Poor Watson, being the big kitty that he is, tried to back up really fast, then jumped up into the tub. By the time I walked in he was straining his neck up over the edge with big, frightened eyes. I felt so bad! I’d intended just to scare them away from the door so that they wouldn’t run away, not frighten the hell out of them.
So yeah, I terrified them then took them to the vet. I rock. 😛
Ran lots of errands this morning in addition to getting my word count in. I’m a little more hesitant about tomorrow since I’ll be going with friends to the Atlanta Zoo. It’s going to be great seeing them, and getting to hang out with them before they leave town in a few months, but life does seem to be conspiring against my writing plans. Next week I’ll be taking off two extra days from work just to get some breathing time now that our major website has gone live. Turns out that will also be the next Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend. Ugh, I’m pretty sure I’ll be falling behind those days. Oh well, if you don’t live a little, what the heck are you going to write about? Maybe I’ll get some inspiration from the Zoo tomorrow. Hmm…
Tex_maam mentioned how she really liked some of the western resources I’d found, and I remembered that I never did put up this one. It’s a fellow WordPress blog that I started following, The Cabinet Card Gallery, where they post up pictures of folks who did these types of portraits and put up a small blurb about who they were. There is no About page that I could find regarding where they find these cards or where they find the information, so I can’t tell you any more information than that, but I did find the photos and information to be very inspiring. If I had to put a time stamp on Ghosts I would say its in the mid-1800s, and a bunch of these photos come from mid-1800s to early 1900s. Fanny Davenport was the lady that really got my attention. I think she showed up on a search I did for something completely different, but then I got drawn into the site. I was pleased to see that there were so many actresses working in that time period since Mary works as one. Anyway, I needed that validation just to keep my head straight. The site even has a section for actresses, which is pretty darn cool.
Today’s writing updates:
Project:Ghosts of Pikes Peak
Summary: The old, abandoned Davis Farm just outside the bustling city of Pikes Peak is riddled with malicious spirits. Werewolf detective Colton Fen has been assigned to a half-vampire partner, Rennick Dalton, to handle the troublesome ghosts, but even their combined strength may not be enough to dissuade the poltergeists from plucking victims from the outskirts of town. Is this a simple case of ghost infestation or is there something far more malicious going on beneath the farmhouse?
Current total words: 52,911 New words written: 2,353
Progress in Story: One on one battle time followed by a very bad realization. Looks like our group just got sucker-punched. Had a fabulous time describing the bad guy too.
