Always Learning

 

As children, growing up, we have some really fanciful ideas about adulthood.  For instance -- no more school and no more "learning" stupid things we'd never use. Another would be that adults have it all together. Of course, then we "grow up" and get out of school only to learn how silly and fanciful those falsehoods we believed are. The truth is, we are always learning and being adult means you just "wing it" and make things up as you go. That's basically it. 

Recently, I have gotten six of my novels -- The Portrait of an Unlikely Affair series -- all onto Audible via Virtual Voice. I'd prefer to get a voice actor to do the books, and eventually I will, but for now the story is made available in the least annoying, least AI sounding voice that is on  there. I had many a fights with AI over pronunciation, even after I corrected it (It's not 'does' as in plural female deer, it's 'does' as in 'duzz. Duzz you moron. I told you. DUZZ!' or even 'lives' where I mean it as 'the rest of our lives' but AI read it as 'he lives here' or and read!!! OMG, when I wanted it pronounced in the past tense of 'I already read that', AI kept wanting to say it as in 'you should really read this book.' **Insert immense face palm here.** ) But the great thing about editing for pronunciation is just another edit for polishing the stupid Publishing Gremlins inserts and "F*up Fairy Visits." I am now 150% confidence (Yeah, I know, there is no such thing over the 100% mark) that my books that are now audiobooks are the most polished books of the land. 

Because I'm not really an audiobook person myself, I have written in the past that my reasonings for getting these audiobooks out, taking advantage of the AI Virtual Voice, is because I know people who really want to read but find reading to be a difficult thing to commit to in book format. Random people I have spoken to have said they can't concentrate on physical or e-book formats; they're dyslexic and reading isn't a fond relaxing thing to do; and even that they only listen to books on their commute in their cars because they're busy. I get that. As I have said before, my oldest two children are dyslexic, loathe reading, fight with me on reading and writing, have the attention span of a gnat, but put an audiobook in front of them and they'll spend all day listening to the book. I first discovered this with my son when he was a second grader and we got him so audiobooks on CD to listen to. My kids will now try to choose the longest possible books to listen to. They are auditory learners as well so it's got me thinking about finding history and science texts on audiobook too. (Hmmmmmmm.) So, while my kids thrive and stay up to the wee hours of the morning, consuming audiobooks, I find it difficult to concentrate on them. They put me to sleep. Once I put on a Magic Treehouse book for the kids when we were commuting 45 minutes for speech tutoring for my son and I had to turn it off after a few minutes because it was putting me to sleep.... And I was the one driving!! But I'll happily subscribe to Audible and buy books for my kids if it means they'll listen to them (over and over again.)

 So that's why I never really paid attention that if you subscribe to Audible, many of the Virtual Voice narrated books are included in your subscription. AND if you've bought the book in ebook or physical form, you can purchase the Audible book for a discount!!! It's true. Here's a screenshot for one of my books on Amazon. 

That's an excellent deal if you ask me. Now, granted, not all of the books will have an add on priced that low or be free with your subscription, but mine are. This is likely because the book was made with Virtual Voice on Amazon KDP.  I have priced the books themselves at $9.99 if you haven't purchased the other formats, simply because I have done all the work on them myself, but that's still lower than most of the audiobooks out there (you see, everyone wants their royalties and having an actual person READ your book, and other people produce your books and make everything sound good, costs BIG BUCKS, and I'm not talking male deer.) 

Portrait of an Unlikely Affair series is classified as "romance" in many of the categories simply because I can't really figure out where to put it. It's a "clean romance" which turns some of you off because there's no in-depth descriptions of intimate encounters, but that may be an incentive for others to read it. The series is set up so that the first three books of the series takes place over a three year period and you get to know the characters and their history. The second three books in the series take place 20 years after the fact and that's where you meet new foes, allies, and family. In fact, from some of the random things I've seen happening in today's society, if you like conspiracy theory fiction, you might really enjoy the second half of the series. (Before you go down "that" rabbit hole, let me just tell you the only "agenda" I had for writing the story was to just write what my characters were leading me to. It's a story. It's fiction. That's it. My writing method is based on 'what if' and that's where I go with my ideas.) 

And that is why I always say, "There is always an adventure in an Em Brooks book!" because that is the truth. And the adventure is never what you think it's going to be. 

Find all thirteen of my novels on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and on Kindle Unlimited. You can now find SEVEN of my novels at Audible! The others will make it on there as soon as I finish polishing them up and arguing with AI over pronunciation.