How to Read a Book While Blindfolded
It’s one of the many tricks my readers will soon be able to master, thanks to my books being turned into Audiobooks. I have four of them in the works right now, Wanted, Dark Earth, Child of Fate, and lastly The Lost Girls. All of them the first books in a series, which bodes well provided the sales are decent enough to justify converting the remaining books into audio as well.
But my readers won’t be the only ones benefitting from this process. I’m learning a lot too! Not just about the audiobook creation process but about my own writing. I’ll use Dark Earth for my first example – while listening to the narration of it by the superbly talented producer I noted how there were parts were the story dragged a little. Duly noted, I can use that knowledge in future books to keep things moving faster. The flow was there, it was just a slow paragraph or two that delved into the character’s past.
Example #2 comes from someone that I’m extraordinarily excited to be working with on The Lost Girls. I won’t release their name until the project is finished and the audiobook is available, but I will say that this individual has had several movie roles and co-starred in multiple television shows, including both Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU. This person helped me to take my books from being just a series of images in my head and words on paper to something real. And helped me figure out where things just didn’t make sense and needed to be fixed. That sort of education is invaluable for making sure future books are even better.
Case in point, I’ll be using the lessons learned on my current project, Vitalis: Provenance. So far I’m weaving together a biologist with ulterior motives anxious to get her hands on some samples from Vitalis and a transport ship’s crew that is dealing with the horror of having one of their member infected with something special from Vitalis – except they don’t realize it’s happened quite yet. Muahahaha.
To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com .
