Tag: Books

Curse Breaker, Fantasy, Mount Eredren, Sarn, Shayari36 Comments

Curse Breaker | Kidnapped

Melinda Kucsera

Curse Breaker | Kidnapped More shouts interrupted by tearing, scraping and the grating of sandpaper as something not human dragged Sarn into the forest. He ran his fingers along the grooves of the thing manacling his arm as he tried to figure out what had seized him. His fingers encountered tree bark and that made no sense. Why would a tree abduct him? It had never done that before. Why would it need to start now? What the hell was going on?   “Let go of me!” Sarn hammered the heel of his hand against whatever part of the tree that … Continue reading Curse Breaker | Kidnapped

Curse Breaker, Fantasy, Mount Eredren, Sarn, Shayari30 Comments

Curse Breaker | Commanded

Melinda Kucsera

Curse Breaker | Commanded “We don’t know if that Kid is a mage,” Jerlo corrected as he appeared between his two officers. At five foot nothing, the force of Jerlo’s personality took up more space than he did. Right now his formidable glare focused on a man sixteen inches taller than himself. Gregori could bench press one Jerlo in each hand. So whenever the commander scolded Gregori, everyone dropped everything and watched. “Oh yeah? Then why do his eyes glow all the damned time? That’s a sign of active magic and you know it. Hell it’s even mentioned in the Litany.” … Continue reading Curse Breaker | Commanded

Audiobooks, book review

Swashbucklers, Rogues and Assassins: The Bad Boys of Fantasy

Melinda Kucsera

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The bad boys of Fantasy, like the buddy cop flicks we all love, are full of friendship, ribald comments, one-upmanship and enough jokes to lighten up the darkest story. Set in places that range from the epic to the intriguing, their exploits run the gamut from world-ending to a simple heist gone hilariously wrong. Whatever these guys get up to for their clients, you can be certain of one thing: you’re in for a fun ride.  Without further ado, I bring you the bad boys of fantasy.

Royce & Hadrian

riyria

Royce and Hadrian’s exploits are penned by Michael J. Sullivan in his Riyria Chronicles series and in the Riyria Revelations series. The Riyria Chronicles series covers the twenty year period between the boys’ founding their unique partnership and the events in the Riyria Revelation series. Mr. Sullivan will keep writing those prequels as long as fans request them and I will keep requesting more. I love these guys!
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Audiobooks, book review

Audio Book vs Audio Drama

Melinda Kucsera

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in medias res continues its audio book obsession with a look into an emerging trend in the audio book world: audio dramas.

What’s the difference between an audio book and an audio drama?
A lot apparently. An audio book started out life as a book. Not a comic book or a screen play but a book. A book that sometime narrated. A book that included actual description of important things like wtf is going on in the action sequences, some kind of introduction to who the characters are and some reason to care about them.

Audio dramas start out life as a graphic novel or screenplay. They are meant  to be accompanied by visuals. The visual element is the important part of these works. Audio productions have no visual element. They are pure sound. Do you see a problem? I do and I’m not alone.

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Audiobooks, CoS Book 1, Curse Breaker, Fantasy, Mount Eredren, Sarn, Shayari, writing

Who Will Narrate: Listen and Cast Your Vote

Melinda Kucsera

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Okay, we’ve talked these last two days about audio books both the professionally produced variety and the self-narrated too. If you need a refresher, pop by this post here for a discussion of professional voice acted audio books and here for the DIY option.

You are armed with knowledge and ready to cast your vote an a very important issue. Who should narrate?

With the above posts in mind, I come to you, wonderful followers and one time visitors alike, to ask your opinion on the matter. Below I submit to you two scenes from my novella narrated by me, the author. Worry not, neither one is longer than 7 minutes. Together they comprise the first two scenes from my forthcoming audio book. It will be available for sale in 2016.

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advice, Audiobooks, publishing

Audio Book Meets DIY

Melinda Kucsera

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Yesterday we talked about audio books, specifically about the money side.  You can refresh your memory here about that. I also referred you to a great post that Cecilia Lewis wrote up detailing how you pick a narrator for your book. Read her article here. Yesterday’s discussion centered around the cost to produce audio books and the options you have about production–if you go the professional route.

If you, like me, have some skill at editing audio files on your own, there is another option. You can narrate your book yourself, edit the audio yourself and submit the files to ACX. They have guidelines and tips to help you navigate your way through the DIY option.

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Audiobooks, book review

Candy for Your Ears: Urban Fantasy

Melinda Kucsera

Me in a leather corset and boots

Urban fantasy audio books are like candy. You can’t consume just one. The first one always leads to the next and the next. It’s the gateway drug of audio books.

They’re the first person shooters of the fantasy genre. What makes these stories so addictive? Let’s toss them onto the operating table and dissect them to see what makes ’em tick.

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Audiobooks, book review

Red Queen versus White King: Alan Touring Through the Looking Glass

Melinda Kucsera

Unless you too just finished The Enigma: Alan Touring, you’re probably scratching your head right now at the title of today’s post. I did read it, and I’m still scratching my head over it. Before I attempt to make some sense out of this, because I will lose my mind if I don’t, I need to get one thing off my chest: If I die after having done something world-changing or just plain cool, do not compare me to a fairy tale character. Please, just don’t. I don’t care of I make some offhand remark  ONE time in my life and you … Continue reading Red Queen versus White King: Alan Touring Through the Looking Glass

advice, writing

Treat yourself to Book Writing 101 with a humous twist

Melinda Kucsera

desk

Ever wondered how to write a book? Wonder no more. Rands wrote a tongue in cheek blog post about the process: How to Write a Book. In his article, he advises:

Even better, stop thinking about writing a book. Your endless internal debate and self-conjured guilt about that book you haven’t written yet is a sensational waste of your time. My guess is if you took all the time that you’ve spent considering writing a book and translated that into actual writing time, you’d be a quarter of your way into writing that book you’re not writing.

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Audiobooks, book review

Hypocrite? Who me? Say it isn’t so!

Melinda Kucsera

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Yesterday I posted a rambling review of The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Sharp readers no doubt noticed at the end of the post that I contradicted myself. I talked about avoiding the fourth installment of the Millenium series initially just because Stieg Larsson, the series’ creator, passed on and a new author picked up the thread of the story.

I mentioned a thing called author loyalty. Then I ended the post speaking about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Mycroft Holmes and my enthusiasm for reading it. That got me thinking about the whole issue. How long does an author have to be dead before author loyalty erodes and readers flock in comfort to a new author’s continuation of the saga?

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Audiobooks, book review

Caught in the Spider’s Web

Melinda Kucsera

The Girl in the Spider's Web: A Lisbeth Salander Novel - Millennium Series, Book 4 | [David Lagercrantz]

I just finished The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz, book 4 in the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Maybe you’ve decided to skip the book out of loyalty for Larsson. That was my plan but it went off the rails when my fellow audio book junkies (aka my IT office mates) decided to read the book.

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writing

Maintaining the Fictional Dream

Melinda Kucsera

As writers we’re charged with the responsibility of drawing the reader in, making him care about the character and identify with the characters. To do that, we must create and maintain the fictional dream. There’s an article on that on the website in the Writers’ Aids section, but let me say here that it is through the fictional dream that a reader is transported from reading words on a page to living the events of the novel. – Vicki Hinze I quoted the above text from Vicki Hinze’s article, The Reason Editors Reject Manuscripts.  Since I am pursuing the e-book/self publishing route, I … Continue reading Maintaining the Fictional Dream

Uncategorized, writing

How much should you write every day?

Melinda Kucsera

“Write 10,000 Words Everyday is Terrible Advice” so says @virajpatel24 on Medium.com and I agree with him. I’ve seen a lot of posts lately here and on Medium.com about word counts mixed in with advice about how to write. These posts came up during a search for editing/revising advice and curiosity made me read them. Who doesn’t like free advice? Write 10,000 words in one day. I’ve actually blown past that limit in one twenty-four hour period but I couldn’t uncurl the fingers on my right hand at the end of that session. My hand had locked up from too much abuse. I had … Continue reading How much should you write every day?