My Audiobook Odyssey

L to R: Me, Tanya Mills, Terry Deighton, Ann Acton,
Christine Thackeray. Not shown: Bonnie Harris

My audiobook odyssey began a little over 5 years ago when I met Tanya Mills at a writers retreat at Silver Lake Washington. She and I and four other retreaters formed a critique group that’s been going strong for five years now.

As a function of our weekly meetings, we exchange 5 pages of manuscript, critique them, and meet each Wednesday evening for 2 hours to discuss them. (We're far-flung, so we meet by Skype.) We read two passages each time, and everyone has always loved to have Tanya read. She makes your writing sound great, and she even does accents.

About two years into the critique group, Tanya and I both moved from Washington state to Southern Utah. We’ve shared rides to three or four writers conferences, and on the rides we’d talk about goals and even set a few. Several times she mentioned she’d like to do audiobooks. She had purchased some of the hardware she needed to set up a studio, but she needed a sound booth, and she was stuck there.

Heck, I thought. I can make a sound booth. I’ve got this industrial sewing machine that could sew through a Sherman tank, and I’ve got yards of canvas from our erstwhile waterbag manufacturing business.  How hard could it be?

Well, it was harder than I thought it would be. It took me about three times longer than I thought it would. But I got it done and called Tanya to say it was on its way.

Tanya, in the meantime, had fallen and bunged herself up pretty bad, so that she couldn’t go downstairs (where the new studio was) for a couple months.

But, she finally healed enough to do stairs, and she learned the recording/producing process on her own first book THE RECKONING. After that, she was ready to do my book INTERLUDE AT COTTONWOOD SPRINGS.

This book is a rewrite of my award winning book, Counting the Cost. If you’re familiar with it, the new version has three new prequel chapters to it, before Ruth Reynolds comes to New Mexico. Also, I moved the middle section, the one that was set in the Prescott, AZ area, to Kanab UT. I intend to write a sequel next summer. It will be set here in red rock country and be called RETURN TO WILLOW CANYON.

Anyway, INTERLUDE AT COTTONWOOD SPRINGS is now out as an audiobook. You can listen to Chapter One by clicking here. Click here for a purchase link at Amazon. Or, you can get the audiobook free on Amazon if you get a trial membership at Audible. (A membership at Audible is $15 a month after your first free month. For that you get a free audiobook download each month plus 30% off other books that month.) If you’re into audiobooks, that seems like a pretty good deal.

Kanab Library will have the audiobook for patrons to check out, too. If you want your library to carry it, talk to your librarian.