Finding Heaven Audiobook Update… and an Announcement

For the past several weeks, I’ve been working to complete the edits on the digitally narrated audiobook for my romantic women’s fiction Finding Heaven. For this project, I’ve been using ElevenLabs, who have some of the best AI voices available.

This has been quite the process—I originally started working on the audiobook in late 2023. Because it’s a long book and I have both time and budget constraints, I was planning to complete it bit by bit over six months or so, using one of ElevenLabs’ lower-tier plans to spread out the cost and time required. However, after completing the first eleven chapters (nearly 25% of the book), they discontinued the narrator I was using.

So, I started over and managed to complete the initial full-chapter outputs by last fall (and also worked in the audiobook for Every Bell that Rings while I was at it). However, I’m not the type to just publish whatever the AI spits out—there are always artifacts, mispronunciations, weird stresses, and other issues that need to be edited. As an audiobook listener myself, I really want my listeners to have a good experience.

Up until now, my workflow involved manually editing the corrected audio clips (or “punch-ins”) into the completed file in my audio editing software instead of re-rendering entire chapters (which used to cost credits). Before I finally got back to working on this project three weeks ago, I was already a little over halfway through creating the punch-ins, but I hadn’t done any of the final audio editing. Luckily, ElevenLabs had updated a few things in the several months I had been away (and it was to my advantage this time!), and now I can fix those poorly rendered bits and output an entire finished chapter without the onerous extra step of editing in the punch-ins, and at no extra cost to me. Yay!

I’m nearly finished fixing the second half of the book I’d had remaining, then I’ll need to go touch up the first half too (since the editing process is different now, and way easier than manually editing in those bits). And then this book will be done!

Which got me thinking... Since this story holds such a special place in my heart, and in the hearts of many of you, perhaps this launch deserves a bit of extra oomph. Like a new cover. Which would make a great special edition hardcover. And wouldn’t it be amazing to have a human-narrated version of this book?

And that means…

A Kickstarter for Finding Heaven

You read that right. I’m in the early stages of planning a Kickstarter for this book. The Kickstarter rewards will include:

The digitally narrated (and painstakingly human-edited) audiobook

A new special-edition hardcover with a gorgeous new cover and other special treatments (to be revealed soon)

Stretch goal of a human-narrated audiobook

What would you like to see? What kind of bookish swag or extras would light you up if I included them in this project? Let me know in the comments!

By the way, BATL Librarians and above can already listen to the (unedited) early access version of Finding Heaven’s digital audiobook. The first three chapters can be accessed publicly, if you want a preview.

Have you ever backed a book Kickstarter? If so, I’d love to hear what your favourite rewards were. This is my first project, and I want to make sure it’s full of awesome stuff! Hit up the comments section and tell me what you’d love to see in my Kickstarter!