Excuses, excuses

My Steam history might explain why there's no new book this year, but it's more just reading.  I've been exceptionally inclined to just read, especially during the second half of this year.  I am still making (slow) progress on on Tangleways, and other project, and other other project that distracted me from other project.  Eventually, these will all be published, but until then, wishing you a happy end of year, and a good one next year.

A Note on Amazon's Text to Speech Audiobooks

 Some considerable time ago, Amazon starting cutting back the text to speech options on ebooks.  Very irritating to me, since I liked having my books read aloud.  You could still use to text to speech if you were using a browser on a computer, but the option became less available on most of Amazon's apps and devices.

Recently, Amazon's KDP has released a chargeable text to speech audiobook option, with certain minimum pricing requirements on them.  So a book that you could normally text to speech after buying the ebook, now has a separate 'audiobook' that is actually just text to speech.

After some debate, I've made these available, but keep in mind that, even with the $0.99 stories, there's a minimum pricing charge for these audiobooks.  If you already own the ebook, instead of buying these 'audiobooks', feel free to use a text to speech reader in the Kindle browser version.  I've made them available purely for readers who really want to listen to these books on a mobile device, even if there's an extra charge.

But in my view, this move by Amazon is a bit of a rort, and you're best served using existing free text to speech options.

[Note: any of my books that has an existing voiced audiobook is not impacted by these text to speech audiobooks.]

Catching up

 Not a great deal to report, I'm afraid.  A lot of life events have interfered this year, and I've been very unproductive.  Still forward progress, but definitely no releases in the near future.

Currently in a heat wave - three days of high 30s, and overly hot nights, and then a week of rain and overly hot nights.

I've created a bluesky account (https://bsky.app/profile/autumnwriter.bsky.social) for occasional posting.

Three Skips

I started accruing my book collection in my late teens.  Not too many early on, since I moved house a lot.  A couple of shelves of books.  Then a full bookshelf, multiple bookshelves, double-stacked bookshelves.

Since I moved house every couple of years, this made for a major undertaking in moving, so finally reaching the financial point of being able to put a deposit on a house (and starting the decades-long process of actually buying it) meant I no longer had that regular struggle to get all the books wherever.

Ironically, once I settled in for what turned out to be a sixteen-year stay, I switched to audio and ebooks and hardly bought any new physical books at all.  This precious hoard became decoration and dust-collectors, and when it came time to move once more, I bit the bullet and gave away all the books.

Well, I kept Diana Wynne Jones, Calvin & Hobbs and Ruth Manning Sanders.  And my own books, of course.  One bookcase worth of books.

Since I've moved into a place that was fully furnished already, I had to do some severe downsizing.  Donated clothes to the clothes charities, towels to the RSPCA, and the contents of my kitchen to a lady who had just separated from her husband and had literally nothing but her kids and a car that would not fit all the things she'd like to take away.

Furniture seems very difficult to sell these days, even at nominal prices.  I gave away most of it, and the rest went out onto the curb, for the opportunistic passerby, or the couch-munching crusher truck booked with the local council.

Everything else went into three skip bins, in a neat illustration of how much junk you can accumulate in sixteen years, or how something quite useful becomes junk when you have nowhere to put it, and no more time to get it into the hands of those who would be glad to have it.

I'm still a little confused about the furniture.  Last time I had a garage sale, the furniture went first, to professional resellers.  Now, it seems no-one wants it.

Anyway, this took up all of my head space, especially since I was also arranging for a cat enclosure and dividing door to be built at my new place (to separate my cats from the resident dogs, and all the local birds).  I'm somewhat more rural now (outskirts of Sydney rather than in the Bankstown area), and have a slightly longer commute in which to do some quality writing.

I haven't written a word for nearly a month.

This is pretty amazing for me, since writing is what I do for enjoyment, and I like the stories I'm working on, but moving stress ate up all my mental energy.

I'm looking forward to getting back into it.  Last time I worked on Tangleways, I'd just put Eluned into the infirmary. :D

Touchstone Trilogy - French Edition

Some news for the Touchstone fans. The wonderful Justine of Seraminda Editions has faced down the truly daunting task of translating Cass' Aussie ramblings into French!  And Stray is only a handful of days away from release!

You can hear/ask more about the translation process and release at Justine's Insta, or even pre-order the Kindle edition at Amazon FR.

This is my first translated volume to make it to the shelves, and I'm tickled at the existence of a book I wrote, that I can't read.  

[French is actually one of the languages where I can get the gist of quite a few of the sentences, but not necessarily end up understanding what's going on.]

Anyway, thank you Justine for all the amazing work that has gone into this translation!

Status update

 On the good and bad news front.  I have written quite a lot this year!  I have continued to make forward progress on Tangleways (finally getting past a small hurdle that was stopping me).  But I don't think I'll have any new books out this year.  Next year should be a bumper year though - I'm absolutely determined to get Tangleways out as my next release.

Writing progress

Just checking in.  Making steady, if slow, progress on Tangleways.  I'm still aiming to finish it this year, but haven't been nearly as quick as I like.

My speed on different types of stories, and sections in them, can vary wildly.  Second books in a series are particularly hard because it's necessary to introduce the existing world and through-plot while carrying the new one in an interesting way, and avoiding it turning into a dull info-dump.  So the establishment chapters of Tangleways have been particularly challenging for me (bringing in enough of the world without weighing everything down), with such a complex world as the Trifold.

I also needed to settle some plot details before I could start writing toward them, and fortunately have figured out some of the major ones.  I tend to look forward to and plan out 'fun scenes', and am soon to reach some of them, which will be nice.

Anyway, still here, still going!  My philosophy on writing is that as long as I keep adding new sentences, even if it's only one a day, I'll eventually end up with a book.