Good stuff's happening...

Virehnai Rune of Becoming

It's out! It's finally out!!!

The very first little nugget in the Blood and Eternity series.

Tales of Blood and Eternity, introducing you to the world of the Virehnai is now available in print, Kindle, and Kindle Unlimited. (Here's the link: https://a.co/d/i7aMftP)

I also have a Patreon set up, finally... What you can expect there is discussions on where the story goes, and members (paid or not) get the first updates! I also plan to have story related goodies for the paid members, and they'll also see material that may never make it into book form. If you're interested, you can check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/c/MagicAbounds

I'm still ironing out issues on my merch site; I thought I had that figured out, but someone contacted me, and let me know this morning that when you try to order something, it only goes but so far....and then stops, cold. Technology. (sigh.) At the moment, I'm going to label it "under construction," as a reminder that all might not be well with it, and I'll take it off when I know it's fixed. It's got some fun stuff in it, though! Check out the Magic Abounds store! Among the fun things are a mug for the book (looks a little...bloody...and includes the Virehnai 'rune of becoming' on it, and a t-shirt, and even a thermal mug. More will be coming....after the issues get fixed.

I'm preparing three 'gift boxes,' to be given away randomly. If you want in on the fun, all you have to do is sign up for my updates! I solemnly promise that if you entrust me with your email address, I won't sell it to anyone, or alternatively, send you weird, random cat pictures (unless you want me to.) The place to sign up is at the bottom of my home page. You know what to do!

I'm also entered into the #StorytellerUK contest, sponsored by Amazon. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

AUDIOBOOK ANYONE?

And last (but not least) my lovely and quite talented sister, Missy will be recording the narration this weekend for the Audible version of "Tales of Blood and Eternity." I've tried and tried to make Amazon's beta AI Audible narration work for me - and it won't.

I tried doing the easiest book I wrote: "The Magic Within Us," that has NO weird names that are a challenge to either pronounce or spell phonetically (unlike Tales of Blood and Eternity, which has a whole language associated with it, called ancient Proto-Virehnai!) Did it matter? Nope. Every single time it read a character's name, it came out differently....even within the same paragraph. "Helena." Sounds like a simple enough name, right? It was pronounced "hellen'-a. Sometimes, that's what it would do. Other times, it was pronouncing it Hell-leeen-a. Which one would I get? Flip a coin. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

I tried TWO different AI programs aside from Amazon's...with no better results, and way more effort. I don't like audio books (that's me, personally), but if I had to listen to what it was churning out, it would drive me nuts simply for the variations in pronunciations. Additionally, Amazon's beta AI (at least at the moment) is...flat. There's very little inflection, and you have no control over anything except timing. Until I heard the difference between Missy giving voice to my book, vs. the best AI that I heard that (still) won't work - I wouldn't have believed it mattered that much. It does, and all those errors are the icing on top. I won't do that to y'all. So we record it, this weekend.

In the meantime, send good vibes and juju to Missy for this weekend's recording venture! While this is a great use of her inherent snarkiness, attitude and her amazing talent for voices....um, Proto-Virehnai. It's a little like the Queen of Hallmark movies taking a deep dive into Klingon.

In the meantime, “Virehn zuth akret.”

In Proto-Virehnai, it means, "Blood never forgets."