Each day, I review the narrator's latest chapter recordings of The Unlived Lives of Raymond Quinn audiobook. I will finish the last ten this morning, the audiobook should be available by mid April at the latest. I will let you know when it is.

The last "audiobook" I listened to (I prefer to read books) was an audio tape of "Jurassic Park" I played in the car for the family while on vacation thirty-five years ago. I don't recall what I thought about it at the time.

I've read Raymond's story twenty plus times getting it ready for the editor, and now I'm listening to the narration of each chapter for the audiobook. A very different experience from what will be true for those hearing or reading the book.

When I read Raymond's story, and now the RQ unlived lives sequel drafts, in my head I "hear" the character's "voices". Literally!

Women speaking as women, men as men. Raymond and Shelly's voices slightly different depending on their age and the story line. All the characters "sound" different to me (again, in my head) in Antigua, Vietnam, Germany, the US, Switzerland, and Zimbabwe. My brain is creating those "voices" based on what my eyes read.

That doesn't happen nearly as much when I listen to the audio narration, nor are Raymond's thoughts, which in print are italicized, as clearly separated from what he says.

Subvocalization comes up when you search this topic, and much of what I find has to do with preventing it. I don't want to do that. I prefer imagining each character based both on what they say as well as their thoughts. "Hearing" those "voices" helps me do that.

Maybe this has to do with fiction versus nonfiction. With fiction there is dialog and character's thoughts. Nonfiction is a story told by the author with much less, if any, dialog or thoughts.

Do me a favor. If you read some books while listening to others as audiobooks, let me know if you've noticed anything similar.

​It is what it is; audiobooks can only present spoken words. But I am interested to know if book readers/listeners feel they miss any of the detail only hearing the story as opposed to reading it.

The title says it all.

Authors, in general, self-published authors, in particular, need to know three extremely important things if they are to have any financial success writing books:

1. Your book has to be worth reading.
2. You have to market your book, and to do that . . .
3. You have to know how to market your book.

If your book isn't, and/or you don't, you will join millions of self-published authors who sell far fewer than 50 copies, most of which will be bought by friends and family.

That's not a recipe for breakeven much less making money.

Until a couple of years ago, I had the cart way before the horse:

Write the book then worry about marketing the book.

I have a marketing background, how hard could it be?

Terribly-terribly-unbelievably-you-have-no-idea-hard, to which I will add, expensive!

I've made great progress learning the marketing side of writing/publishing The Unlived Lives of Raymond Quinn these past six or so months.

Enough to achieve breakeven, possibly make a little money?

Not even close nor will I until/unless I wisely, strategically spend thousands more. And this includes writing/publishing a sequel, fall 2025, followed by a threequel spring 2026. (Writing more books is a big part of marketing the first book.)

If you are about to or currently are writing a book, and have doubts about how to market your book, feel free to reach out to me.

I'm not a book marketing consultant, I have nothing related to book marketing to sell you. No cost to you for us talking, emailing; I'd be happy to help you however possible.

And if you don't believe you need help from others, you are one of two things:

1) A well known, highly regarded, successful author. Congratulations! 
or:
2) About to waste a lot of time and money with little or nothing to show for it.

​You have only so many friends and family.
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​Good luck! 

Those of you requesting an audiobook option for The Unlived Lives of Raymond Quinn won't have to wait much longer.

I'm in the process of providing the narrator what he needs to do the project. You might think that would be simple enough, I certainly did. But consider the complexity of the story:

• Multiple male and female characters, some at different ages requiring altered voicing.
• A half dozen different nationalities with different speech patterns.
• Scenes in the US, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Antigua, Switzerland, Germany, France, each with different pronunciation requirements.

When the narrator begins recording, I will receive and need to listen to each day's output, noting errors and/or requesting changes  requiring rework.

Knowing this, I now view the story very differently than I did writing or reading it. On paper or digital, Raymond's story is multidimensional. In audio, the work to create it even more so.

Will it be worth the time and money? That depends on how many who read books would prefer listening to an audiobook. And the answer to that depends on which source you trust.

I've researched it; I don't trust any of the statistics I found. Those who print books show much higher preference for print books. Those who create audiobooks, the opposite.

I'm moving ahead with this based on requests I've received for an audio version. I'll do the same this summer for the sequel coming out in the fall.

I certainly hope having one justifies the time and expense to create it.

​For now, let's just leave it at that. I hope so. 

I can't help myself, articles like this or this one are just too good to pass up. However, what I write and what these authors write are infinite parallel universes apart. I can't understand much more than the bottom line of the underlying parallel universe/multiverse theory debate:
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There may be an infinite number of universes parallel to the only one many believe exists. And if there are, wouldn't it be cool if we could somehow get to them using inner parallel universe time travel machines?

Raymond's story, and soon to be Shelly's sequel, are fiction accounts assuming parallel universes (the multiverse if you prefer) along with the ability to access them, does exist. I'm proposing what might happen when Ray and Shelly find themself dead, visiting some of their unlived lives in universes parallel to the one in which they died. You know, the fun stuff.

Writing their stories has sometimes been trippy. I occasionally get so lost in the process of writing a scene, creating dialog between two characters, I subconsciously envision myself with them.

If they're depressed, I'm depressed. If they're surprised, I'm surprised.

Maybe writing this is my inner parallel universe time travel machine.