Shocked Face

I made a startling discovery the other day and I'm feeling kind of stupid that it took me this long to learn this.

I listen to podcasts or audio books on my commute home from work. For the past ten months, I'd been starting the podcast on my phone, turning the volume way up, and putting the phone in my cup holder so I could hear it. There's a stretch of rough road that's difficult to hear even with the volume high, but when I get off that stretch, it's too loud. Also, tinny sound. But I'd been living with all this.

Then, Tuesday, I had to make a stop on my way home from work and for some reason, the battery on my iPhone was way down when I reached my destination. Since I wasn't 100% sure of how to get from there to my house, I looked in the console for my charging cord. I have used my phone through my car's Sync system, but via Bluetooth. The only time I've ever hooked my phone in to my car with a cord was on long trips.

My podcast was running when I plugged the phone into the car and it went dead silent. I checked and pause hadn't come on. I touch my entertainment option, select iPhone, and my podcast came through my car's sound system!

I was shocked! Shocked, I tell you. I didn't realize I could do this!

For ten months, I'd been listening to crummy audio because it never occurred to me to try hooking my car and my phone via cord. I had tried to play my audio via Bluetooth and that hadn't worked, but corded connection? Duh!

I feel like this has opened a whole new world for me! And yes, I am hugely excited by this.

These Are My Recommendations?

One of the marketing emails I get is from Audible with recommendations for books I might like to listen to. Here's a new book by one of your favorite authors! Or so they say. I open the email and almost every time it's recommending an author I don't remember ever reading/listening to before.

Audible is owned by Amazon and I thought they had some pretty strong algorithms based on past purchases. Literally 99% of the books I spend my credits on are non-fiction, but 99% of my recommendation emails are for fiction. Say what? Also, they seem to be heavily weighted toward authors that I downloaded via a free listen promotion. Um, just because I took advantage of the free book, doesn't mean I want to listen to every book that author has ever written.

I wondered if maybe my Audible recommendations were skewed by my Kindle purchases/downloads, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I get recommendations for books that I never downloaded in ebook form, but did download in Audio.

There was a free download of the book American Pharaoh because of the Kentucky Derby. Guess who's getting recommendations about books with horses now?

What I'd like to see is recommendations based on what I used credits for or even spent money to purchase. Free downloads are like, well, okay, yeah, maybe I'll listen to that some day and it's free so why not? They are not anything to base my likely future purchase history on.

My favorite audio books are educational. For example, The Great Courses which are recordings of college professors lecturing about subjects they teach about at university. I totally geek out over this and have a huge number of these in my library. Do you think I ever get a recommendation for another Great Courses listen? Do you think I get notified when there's a new Great Course available? The answer to this is apparently not.

Since Audible doesn't seem to know me at all, I mostly delete all their recommended listen emails after a quick scan. Just in case they finally figured me out.

***This blog is solely my own opinions and not sponsored in anyway. I pay for my Audible membership and my ebooks on my own with no promotional considerations of any kind.***

Commuting Time

I blogged a while ago about getting music setup to listen to on my daily commute. (I still miss my van pool!) Well, that was okay, but I was getting tired of the music. I know! After all the trouble I went to in order to get a wide variety of music, it sure didn't take long to get tired of it.

I started out with podcasts, but it didn't take long to run out of episodes and then it dawned on me. I have audio books on my phone, too.

This is actually working out really well--so far at least. I have a ton of audio books I want to listen to, but I've been so busy listening to podcasts that I just never get around to it. My first book was about the plague in medieval Europe which is an endlessly fascinating topic for me. Most of the titles in my library are nonfiction.

There are a couple of drawbacks. I can't connect my iPhone into the stereo system the way I could with my iPod. I did a search online and it can't be done per multiple websites and bulletin boards. This wouldn't be all bad if I could hook in via Bluetooth, but while I can make phone calls that way, I haven't figured out how to do that with audio books/music/podcasts etc. Issue one then, would be sound quality because I literally have my phone in my cup holder to get enough volume to hear it and even then (if traffic is loud), I sometimes have trouble.

Issue 2 is (of course!) getting so involved with what I'm listening to that I end up sitting in my garage to hear more. I have a lot of books that I haven't listened to, so I don't have to worry about running out of material!

We'll see how long this lasts, but if worse comes to worse, I can always switch back to music or podcasts.

Christmas Scent

I'm trying something new here and will be testing this several more times in the future. This is my audio blog attempt. If you like it, head over to my Facebook page and let me know. If you don't like this, let me know that as well. If it doesn't work, I'm sorry and I don't know how to make it work. This is a test. :-)

Site Organization Issues

On Tuesday, I posted about the release of my Jarved Nine series on audio. It's hugely exciting for me, but it's also led to a logistical issue on my website. How do I list ebooks, paper books, and audio books in a way that's uncluttered and easy for readers?

I went through this the first time with ebooks and paper. With that problem, I decided to list paper because sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble include links to the electronic versions. Now, as my paper copies have gone out of print, but the ebooks remain active, I've swapped out the links to the electronic versions. But now how do I handle it? I've tried to check out other authors' sites, but haven't found any method that I really like yet.

While I continue to ponder this, I've created a new page on my site and created a link on my books page to the audio books. They're linked to Audible who has all the books available, but that's something else I have to think about-linking to multiple audio book sellers.

It seems to me, there must be some way to organize my website that's clean and easy, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Now Available In Audio!

I promised to let you know when you could buy the Jarved Nine series on audio and they're finally available! You can click on the link for each book or find all my audio books by clicking here. The links all go to Audible. You can also find them on Amazon.

Ravyn's Flight:
Alone on a strange planet. Their teammates murdered by an unknown enemy. Help weeks away. Could there be a worse time to fall in love?

Ravyn Verdier is the communications specialist for a Colonization Assessment Team studying Jarved Nine. But when her teammates are murdered, their bodies mutilated, she finds herself alone with an unknown enemy lurking. Somewhere.

Damon Brody is a Special Ops captain. He and his team arrive on J9 for a training mission. They've hardly landed when they hear an emergency beacon. They respond to the call, but find only one survivor. Within hours, Damon's team is murdered, too, and he and Ravyn have to work together to stay alive.

They run for the Old City, a long-abandoned alien settlement, but it holds secrets that shake their view of the universe. To make it off the planet alive, they'll have to learn to put their faith in these strange things, and they'll have to trust each other and the bond they share. Only then will they be able to defeat the enemy and find forever with each other.

Eternal Nights:
Captain Kendall Thomas discovers a group of thieves is looting artifacts from the abandoned alien city on Jarved Nine and smuggling them to sell on Earth. While gathering evidence, she and her best friend, Special Ops Captain Wyatt Montgomery, are trapped inside an ancient pyramid. As they try to find a way out, they're hunted by the smugglers who are determined to stay out of jail and keep their profitable side business going.

Wyatt has always considered Kendall to be more than a friend, but he's been biding his time, waiting for the right opportunity to deepen their relationship without scaring her off. The situation they're in now is dangerous, but it also means Kendall can't run from him when things grow emotionally intimate. Getting trapped in the pyramid might be the best thing that's ever happened to him—if they make it out alive.

The Troll Bridge:
Lia Stanton has always played life safe, but when an incident at a particle accelerator sends her through a wormhole, she goes from Earth 2010 to Jarved Nine 2050. Almost everything is unfamiliar, and when she's accused of being a spy, nothing is safe—least of all the soldier sent to guard her.

Troll Maglaya is on his third tour of duty on Jarved Nine. He thought there were no more surprises here for him, but that was before he met Lia. He'd never given much thought to time travel, but now he needs to convince this woman to give 2050—and him—a chance.

Things Change

First, before I start blogging, there will be a special post tomorrow with information about a multi-author book sale that begins Feb 13th. Make sure to come back and find out the scoop.

Now on to the day's topic. The past fourteen months have brought about a lot of changes for me. Moving 1100 miles was the biggie, but there have been lots of adjustments and changes in my life because of this. Some have been big, others not so big. Today I'm talking about one of the small ones.

When I worked in Minneapolis, I usually listened to my iPod while I was at my job. Partly it was to drown out the coworker from hell--he was very loud and very annoying--but part of it was to keep myself entertained. I especially enjoyed listening to audio books and could get so involved in them that I'd lose track of time.

Down here, though, I haven't been able to do that much. My job is still the same job--more or less--but the projects I'm getting now are more complex and require more of my attention.

I'm also surrounded by a lot more activity and get interrupted more often. I had a cube to myself in Minneapolis, here I share a pod with three other people. There's a constant stream of people in and out of the cube, plus activity going on around the cube.

There's some audiobooks I'd really like to listen to, but just haven't had enough time. The car was out from the start. I needed my complete attention on the road down here. I'm sorry, but driving in Atlanta is like trying to commute through the middle of a NASCAR race.

I thought I might be able to start listening to some audio once I joined the van pool since I can't read in a moving vehicle, but that hasn't worked out either. I feel rude plugging in especially when there are conversations going on. I've got a real backlog of audio books to listen to right now, so I guess I'm going to have to figure something out.

There Goes the Day

My nice, quiet day at work ended up being neither. I mean, come on, it's bad enough that I have to work on the holiday, but it's cruel and unusual punishment to have the coworker from hell show up, too. :-( :-( :-( His union had Monday off so he should not have been there, but just before nine, the noise level shot up and I knew it was him.

He must have told everyone he was coming into work because minutes after he arrives, his phone starts ringing. He had his cell phone on, too, because he can't miss a chance to talk. And even when he wasn't chit chatting on the phone, he was loud. He can't sit without making noises. It's a toss up as to which one I hate the most, but I've decided it must be when he sucks his snot down. (sorry to those eating breakfast) I feel like hollering over the cube wall, "Do you not know what Kleenex is for?"

So anyway, I had to put up with that, and since I didn't think he was going to be there, I hadn't brought my MP3 player in with me. I don't use it when he's not there, but when he is, it's my ticket to sanity. He was telling people he planned to stay until 1pm, but when I finished lunch and returned to my desk, he was gone and the rest of the day was pleasant enough. Considering I was working on a holiday and a beautiful day to boot.

I didn't mean to complain about him for three paragraphs. Sorry about that. In more interesting news, I received my CDs of Through a Crimson Veil I haven't had a chance to listen to them yet. I thought about bringing them to the EDJ, but I'm working on a project now that involves words and I'm afraid I'll type in something I shouldn't. :-) And I'm hoping the tree ring guy shows up today and finishes it before it rains. We're supposed to get showers this afternoon.

Reading Aloud

I discovered yesterday that Through a Crimson Veil is available on CD or cassette tape! How cool is that? I received a letter months ago that they were considering doing audio, but I had no idea that it was done and released! The audio version has a totally different cover and when my previous books are mentioned, they call my first "Ryan's Flight." Ryan! What? Did someone look at Ravyn and figure it was a typo? Good grief. That part was actually kind of disappointing, but the rest was a wow. Of course, I had to order a copy. I had this nightmare image, though, of my parents listening to Crimson Veil at top volume and that's probably the most, um, risque book I've written.

I had a more productive day yesterday. Not only did I read a book, but I managed to answer a few emails and fixed the page on my web that was all out of whack. I also got my estimate for the tree ring and it wasn't too bad, although he figured more for materials than I did, but the labor was less than I expected. The best part is that if the weather doesn't mess things up, he expects to work on it by Friday. Yea! I could actually have my lilies off the counter this weekend. I suppose I better sketch out where I want to put each type of flower.

Now I guess I better start gearing myself up to promote Midnight Hour since it comes out in August. This requires organization, though, and I think that's beyond me. :-) The worst part, though, is writing the cover letters. I'd rather write a whole book than one letter of any kind. I always feel awkward and stupid. What do I say? "Here's my ARC. I hope you love it." Do I quote reviews of other books? Write a sales pitch? Sigh.

I'm hoping I get a lot accomplished today, too. I'm supposed to blog tomorrow over at TBR (what was I thinking?) and I have to write something today. Sigh. The last thing I feel like doing right now is writing anything.