AudioBook version of Dan's Inferno #1 & #2

 First off, it's not done, yet. Jessica has the first 6 chapters up and I honestly like them. Hopefully the entire thing will be done in a week, the only issue will then be how long will it take ACX/Audible to put them up.

I wish I had done them outside of ACX/Audible, but the contract was signed before all this recent stuff was revealed. If they do well, the rest of the series will be done, but I think they'll all go directly to book funnel. They'll only be on Audible if I can put them there non-exclusive. I will be seeing if I can get this first one set to non-exclusive as well, as I really would like to put it in places where I don't have to depend on the 'good faith' of Audbile - now that we know that they haven't any.

I still need to move the POI books off of Audible, which means I still need to fight them over the rights issues on books 1 and 2 in that series. I've been rather impressed with Jessica Threet, so I'm thinking of asking her if she'd be interested in doing the rest of the books in POI. If she's interested, I'm going to put up a kickstarter or something like that, to fund it. Then I can just set copies of the audiobook as a reward for donating at one of the levels. 

But we will see.

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, as well as a Happy Hanukkah and which ever other holidays you might celebrate. Company shows up the end of next week, and will be here through the holidays, so I may not be posting very much. I do have a lot on my plate for the next year and I'm hopeful that I'll get through all of it.

-Jan / -John

Any NOC Gnomes out there? (Looking for unused Raven code)

 The Intel Optane SSD card came with a redeemable code for the Star Citizen Raven. This was several years ago and I know there are places that bought scads of these cards, but the code was never used or redeemed. Mainly they were just thrown out.

So I'm looking to see if anybody has one that they're will to give away or sell for a realistic price and not the ridiculous pricing I'm seeing some folks asking. 

Anyway, just thought I'd take a long shot at it.

This is why I'm getting out of audiobooks

 https://www.susanmaywriter.net/single-post/audiblegate-the-incredible-story-of-missing-sales?fbclid=IwAR05Lqfy1TrYDqUfrf1N_2FFJSZfVInbNWlPeUMBZLNgubMwkTx8IIYfHlw

Dan's Inferno, Book III - Heritage, is now live!

 Amazingly it got published in less than TWO hours! Kinda shocked by that.

I've tried posting this on FaceBook, but facebook sucks and today has been very painful, not allowing me to post all that much or in several of the groups I own or admin. Serioously, if you're not on my mailing list, or following me here, you will eventually never know when I publish.

Because Facebook just loves them some censorship and the new UI (which doesn't work for me) is completely hosed (and they kicked me into some 'min spec UI because they don't like me), which doesn't allow me to see much of anything.

But, enough bitching! (Today has sucked, have you noticed? This is the one good thing so far!)

The new book is out: Dan's Inferno, Book III - Heritage

I do wish that blogger would allow us to put up graphics with links, but they seem to have taken that ability away with their new 'interface'. Not that the old one had issues. But, here's the cover:

 

Book #3 in Dan's Inferno - Heritage - Should be out soon

All I'm waiting for right now are the graphics to be put on the cover, and then I'll submit it to Amazon. 

Hopefully those will show up today and the book will be live sometime later tonight.

So, just a heads up!

Tales Around the Supper Table

 Hey everyone, I've got a short story in this anthology that just came out: Tales Around the Supper Table

This is an anthology of Texas Authors edited and published by my friend Jim Curtis (Old NFO). All of the authors in this book are friends of mine and they're all very good writers. The current series 'Dan's Inferno' actually started out as the short I was going to submit until it ... sorta got away from me and well, I wrote something else :-)

There really isn't any central 'theme' to the anthology, but there are a lot of good stories in it, so by all means go take a peek!

 

 

The Double Neck Bass / Guitar

 

So yesterday I took the body off the stand and took a couple of pictures. On the first one, you can see that there is a fair deal of orange peel on the body. That's because it needs to be level sanded, and then polished. Not sure when I'll get started on that, maybe sometime during the evenings in the coming week. On a body that big, that's going to be a long job.

The back of the necks are completely finished. Because they're a satin finish (as I've mentioned before I hate gloss on necks, it makes your thumb and hand stick, they don't slide as well). I also need to level all of the frets. The guitar frets have issues as you move up the neck (away from the pegs) the bass a little as well. Now that I have a leveling bar, the leveling goes a lot faster and is easier. Recrowning and polishing though still take some time.

I also posted a picture down below with the necks set in place, just to give a few ideas of what the finished product will look like. The bass pickups on this one are 'Soapbar' pickups and I was looking to get higher quality ones, but Soapbar pickups are over a hundred dollars a piece! I don't know if I want to go that route on this one. I may see if someone makes any kind of 'adapter' so I can put a different style pickup in there, but I'll probably just go with the cheap ones that came with the kit and upgrade later if I don't like the sound.

The guitar pickups are regular humbuckers and I think I'll probably go with the kit ones for now and change them later if I don't like them. I'm still thinking of changing the wiring and I've figured out two options, both of which involve replacing the pots that came with the kit with dual pots, so regardless of selector position, the pots will always be directly wired to the pickups. Basically each pot would control two pickups. The choice right now is one knob or two concentric knobs. With one, the pots are physically slaved together. With two, you can adjust them independently. I'm leaning towards the second option. 

Right now I suspect I won't have this one finished until the end of October, soonest. Then I'm going to see about getting a planer / joiner and a bandsaw and see about making the bodies at least, from scratch.