A Calculated Risk (Or, Goals Part Two: More Audio)

As I mentioned yesterday, I had a brainstorm for goals, and one of them aligns with one of my favourite things in the world: Audiobooks. I love to listen to audiobooks, I love the accessibility of them, I love how they make walking Max in minus-oh-my-gods weather a slice more palatable, and I’m lucky enough to have three audiobooks out there: In Memoriam, Handmade Holidays, and Faux Ho Ho.

My goal? Another audiobook.

But first, let’s talk about the best freaking audiobook I listened to last year.

A Calculated Risk

Detective Jo Shaw has it all worked out. She’s good at her job, she has loads of mates, and she likes being single. She doesn’t need complications, but an emergency call to the stabbing of a young woman brings plenty of those. Jo has to risk her career to save the woman’s life, and a bad night gets worse when the trauma surgeon turns out to be Isla Munro, Jo’s only real love, who walked out on her 15 years ago and never came back.

With the victim’s children missing and the husband the prime suspect, Jo’s investigation is stonewalled by a community living in fear. As one dead end leads to another, she and Isla are forced to put their differences aside and work together. But the case is far more dangerous than Jo realizes, and her determination to sort the truth from the lies may put her own life on the line.

A Calculated Risk, by Cari Hunter; Performed by Nicola Victoria Vincent

I freaking love Cari Hunter, and I cannot tell you how she presents the north of England not just as a setting but as an extra character—the way the place is, honestly, having been born and grown up there for a few years. If you partner that almost-a-character-setting alongside Nicola Victoria Vincent’s absolutely brilliant performance (she doesn’t just read Hunter’s books, she one-hundred-percent performs them), and you’ve got utter freaking magic.

I want to tell you to just grab all the Cari Hunter audiobooks performed by Nicola Victoria Vincent, or even that you should start way back with their first books together (which I believe was Desolation Point), but when I say A Calculated Risk was my favourite audiobook last year, I may be understating. It’s a contender for my favourite audiobook, period. The mystery is both vexing and perplexing, and she got me, I fell for a red herring and I can’t even be mad about it; the humour is there, even among the darkness, which is a Cari Hunter staple; the characters are fantastic, even when they’re being stubborn gits; the relationship is charming and grounded; and truly, the climax and resolution and how the next book is set up?

I. Can’t. Wait.

If you love thrillers with romantic sub-plots and just want to listen to an amazing mystery taking place somewhere you don’t get to hear about often—and performed to absolute perfection—don’t wait on this one. Nab it.

Speaking of Audiobooks…

So. I want to have another audiobook out this year. The reality of publishing being what it is, it will have to be one I’m in charge of—I don’t have much (read: any) control over whether or not audiobooks are created with my traditional publishers (The Triad books, Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks, Stuck With You, etcetera). That decision is up to them, not me.

Now, I’ve no illusions of this being a cash windfall—hence the reason my publishers don’t race to make audiobooks of my work—but I want the accessibility of things I’ve written being out there when I can. Preferably, not solely available on Audible, either. When you release to Audible exclusively, they dangle more royalties at you but you can’t also be available in libraries, which is the current status for Faux Ho Ho, alas, but if my PLR is good to me, I’d love to hire Giancarlo Herrera again—he’s magical!—and I still have “Rear Admiral” to work with.

So. It’s possibly my only choice—my wee erotica novelette—but hey, the world needs more audiobook meet-disaster funny gay erotica, no?