Month: January 2023

Utahraptor ostrommaysi, and I wrapped his shins so they wouldn’t hurt after running.

Writing

I’m officially working on the print draft for SHERIFF PORTER. It’s more or less set. I also drafted an episode of TALES FROM THE ROAD.

AND I FINALLY FIXED THE PAPERBACK EDITION OF PATRIOT’S GAME!!!! NO LONGER DOES THE MAP SAY THE ATLANTIC IS THE PACIFIC!!! It only took me 5 years to figure that crap out!!!!! Go buy the paperback edition to celebrate!!!!!

Reading

Finished pretty much everything on the slate from last week. WARLORD is getting an Upstream piece. THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER has a writeup over here. I also blasted through Larry Correia’s nonfic about guns.

This week I’m finishing EMPIRE OF SILENCE. It’ll be my third time reading this beast. I’m gearing up for a run at the sequels. After that I’m going to listen to an entire book on Speechify. It’s a kitchsy old sci-fi for the 372 Pages podcast.

In print, I am really enjoying a L’Amour book right now. It’s a long one, so it’ll be a while before I finish.

Side note, my daughter is almost completely potty-trained, know what that means? It means I’m upping my Audible membership babyyyyy, I’ve got room in the budget for more credits babyyyyyy, haha. It’s crazy how expensive it is to have your toddler poop in a tidy way. Like forty bucks a month, frick.

Drawing

The piece up top. I’m also gearing up for the full slate of SHERIFF PORTER illos. I’m forcing myself to limit it to 10 pieces plus the cover. This will help me get a realistic idea of how long it will take to illustrate HOWLING WILDERNESS.

The soft-finish date for the PORTER illustrations is Friday, March 31st. I feel like it’s doable. Then that book goes out to be crowdfunded.

Reminder that you can listen to the 3.5 hour audiobook for free on my other podcast.

Video

There’s a new segment on my YouTube and Rumble called “Ask a Trucker.” I film these short videos on my DOT break. I’m considering adding a little extra to these; they’re easy to film and I like doing them. If you have a random question for a trucker, send it to dreadpennies at gmail dot com.

Audio

New episode of Radcracker dropped here. Make sure you subscribe on any platform you use. Google, Apple, Spotify, whatever.

Fitness

I did my 2,000th pushup of the year, and also had a 10-exercise circuit in the shop, which is officially named Fortress Fatphobia. At the weekly weigh-in I was down to 215 lbs. This week I want to be down to 214.5. I still didn’t get that second PE session in with my kids but I did do the drawing class with them, so there’s progress.

The goal this week is two workouts in the Fortress, with my sons. Aiming for Wednesday and Friday because it won’t be as cold on those days.

That’s it for now. Get back to work. And when you’re done working, cancel Netflix, cash your paycheck and go buy a good book!

I don’t know when they implemented this, but you can now create hardcovers of your indie titles and they’re available as print-on-demand books. Freaking huge. I’ve wanted this for a while.

They are just printed hardcovers, so no dustjackets, but I suppose those could be acquired at a premium through another vendor. Very stoked on that.

Will I offer any of my existing books this way?

Yes, but only some. THE HERO NEXT DOOR will get the treatment, along with SLEEPLESS HOLLOW and the forthcoming ENGINES OF LIBERTY omnibus. Hardcover art will be different for all of these, so you’re getting something new for your money.

No dates or anything yet, I’m just very excited about this development.

Back to our regularly-scheduled tomfoolery.

For a long time I wondered if there was an app that would read my ebooks to me without having to buy the audiobook that accompanies them. Turns out Speechify can do that.

I hadn’t heard of it until Sanderson talked about it in one of his recent videos. Apparently the founder of the platform said he invented it to help with his dyslexia; you upload documents to the app, and it reads them back to you while highlighting the words that it’s playing. There are, naturally, other applications for this, but that was its inception.

The technology is still kind of new and rough, but I paid for a whole year up front because I want it to refine and succeed. Funding and feedback are the ways to make that happen.

So, here’s a list of things I’ve noticed as I’ve used the service so far.

1. It can read ebooks to you, but you have to upload them into your library on your account. It will accept PDFs and DOCX documents, but not the direct AZW format, which is what the Kindle uses. In order to convert those you’ll need some kind of third-party software like Calibre.
2. That’s been fine, except that some of my ebooks have DRM enabled and Calibre doesn’t automatically break that. I’ve had trouble figuring out how to make that happen.
3. The voices are computer-generated, and somewhat generic based on their sex or nationality, which you can select from a list of options. They also have two celebrity voices right now, and those are Snoop Dogg and Gwyneth Paltrow. Kind of cool.
4. One of the downsides is that it’s hard to just listen for long periods of time, because the app doesn’t integrate natural inflection into its playback. You can tell you’re listening to a computer reading something to you. I assume this feature will improve over time, and with modification.
5. Sometimes the playback doesn’t read numbers correctly. In the same document I’ve noticed it reads fractions as “five and a half” and “five one slash two.” I’m not sure what triggers the difference.
6. You can take a picture of a page of text from a book and it will read it to you. If the text includes footnote references, it’ll also say the letter of the footnote, exactly where it appears in the text. Uploading a tidy document is critical.
7. Since the app performs real-time dictation, it needs a steady Internet connection to read whatever you’re giving it. If you’ve got spotty cell service you can expect a lot of interruptions during playback. I haven’t listened for any extended periods of time while at work, which is kind what I was looking forward to. I’ll keep trying this in different parts of town to see how it works.

For the most part though, I like it and I hope it keeps ironing out the kinks.