Posts

Showing posts from 2019

Gifting E-books...

Image
This entry may seem to be a repeat but every year I get asked about how to gift e-books to someone. So here you all are and I hope everyone takes advantage since giving someone a tale they will love can be priceless sometimes... Okay gang, the big day is drawing near and you still want to get a few more gifts but don't know what to buy, or don't want to go out into the stores which have already pulled down half of their displays and are lining up Spring stuff. What to do, what to do... how about giving someone a good book to read on their Kindle? It's fast, easy, and you can have it delivered on Christmas Day and know it will arrive on time...                                    Didn't know you could do this? Neither did I for the longest time. I only found out a couple of years ago when we released "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home". I found myself rewarding some of our beta-readers with a free copy of the finished product in whatever form they wished

COMING TOMORROW (December 1st), The Next Installment of "THE FOREVER DETECTIVE" Series

Image
Just in time for the Christmas season, a good old fashion ghost story is the theme of Helen's second solo book... The year is 1947 and private investigator Rafael Jones has already learned the hard way that the supernatural is all too real. Having been turned into a vampire, albeit one who has no problems with holy objects, he's trying to continue working as a detective. While back on the continent his Interpol love, Clara Thomas, is using her considerable "occult" contacts to find a way to help him. In the meantime he has a new case to deal with. A friend has asked him to prove a mansion he's inherited is NOT haunted. Unfortunately, it is and the ghost has reached out to Rafael for help and justice.  Can our hero find answers to a 20 year old cold case no one knew about? Can he find the Prohibition gangster who murdered the young flapper? And can our boy survive the fact that he's not the only one who knows about supernatural beings and how t

Adventures In Audio Recording VII

Image
Okay now that we've covered as much of the technical that I'm aware of, let's move on to a new topic, namely doing the actual reading aloud. Now the first thing I'm going to say is please do not make yourself sound like Ben Stein. Unless of course your book is about curing insomnia, in which case then you might make a bundle on the open market. People do not want to hear a lifeless dull monotone performance. You put a lot into your work to make it come to life on the written page. Now you have to bring that same life into your reading. Mind you I'm not saying you have to put together a full-fledged performance complete with sound effects, mood music, and an entire cast. But you do need to give your listeners an interesting and gripping experience. Try to get them caught up int he moment with your voice and delivery. But equally as important you have to make sure your speaking clearly, not too fast, nor too slowly. You need to enunciate properly so they don'

Trailer: Forever Haunted

Image
Allan and I created this trailer for my soon-to-be released second novel of the Forever Detective series.

Adventures In Audio Recording - Part VI

Image
Okay, so now that we've got all the technical parts of recording covered and how to meet ACX's requirements, we're ready to record and submit, right? Yeah, what the 10th Doctor is saying. There are a number of other non-technical requirements that we have to pay attention to, in order to submit our audio successfully. First off, you need to include opening credits. These are as follows: -The title of the audiobook -The subtitle, if there is one -Written by (Name of the Author) -Narrated by (Insert your name here) All of these need to be included in the very first file. Now you can submit this as a separate file, or as part of the first chapter. Speaking of chapters, each chapter should have its own sound file. When you submit to ACX you'll be submitting an entire folder of files to them. And each file can only include one chapter, no matter how short. UNLESS... the chapter is so long that the sound file is going to be longer than 120 minutes. In th

I'm Being Featured Over On a Blog...

Image
I'm delighted and honored to say I'm being featured over on the wonderful Aurora Jean Alexander's   Writer's Treasure Chest  blog. It is an honor and a pleasure to be in the spotlight and I hope you'll all click on the link below and come check it out. Aurora Jean Alexander is the author of "The Council of Twelve" series which I have reviewed on our blog about writing. So please give her a little love and follow her blog while you're there. You won't be sorry. https://aurorajalexander.wordpress.com/2019/10/15/author-spotlight-allan-krummenacker/

Adventures In Audio Recording - Part V

Image
Okay, we covered a lot of technical details in the last entry, but there's still one more thing I want to talk about today, before going on to other details to consider when doing an audio recording. Regretfully, I'm one of those people with asthma so on occasion you can actually hear me taking a deep breath from time to time in the raw recordings. I do try my best to watch my breathing while I'm recording, but occasionally I take one of those deeper ones that the microphone catches. Now, this may not be a huge problem for audiobooks, but if you're doing recordings of yourself singing it can be a BIG problem. So to keep yourself covered on both fronts let me introduce you to Noise Gate.  Now, in my case Noise Gate was one of those Effects that I needed to add to Audacity. You may want to refer back to this YouTube Video for how to add an effect to your Audacity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdQq9W6Ot2w Of course you'll want to know where do I find the

Adventures in Audio Recording - Part IV

Image
Okay folks today we get down into some of the actual nitty-gritty with the Audacity program.  I'm going to be covering a fair amount of info here, while also supplying you with links to various videos that helped me. This way if my own instructions are not clear, or maybe you work better with  a visual, you'll have the link to see exactly what's going on. Now I'm going to introduce you to what I refer to as "My Best Friend" in Audacity. It's called the CHAIN. What the chain does is applies several clean-up "Effects" that will improve the quality of your recording in one shot. Mind you, it is possible to do every Effect separately, but you'll probably need to do it every one at a time, whenever you do a recording. The Chain command will have all the Effects  preset at the levels you already need in order to meet ACX's requirement guidelines and will save you a LOT of time. However, we will have to do those presets while creating

Adventures In Audio Recording - Part III

Image
Okay, so getting ready to record in the privacy of your own home. Sadly, this will not always be easy. Finding a quiet spot to set up is always tricky at best. But here are a few do's and don't's: 1 - DON'T use your bathroom! It may have great acoustics for singing, but for recording an audio book, not a great choice. Too much echo, unless of course you want that effect for a particular scene where the character is in a cave/tunnel.  But not ideal for an entire book. You'll drive your listeners crazy. 2 - Do not have any laundry, dishwasher, or loud fans going anywhere nearby. If you've got a really good microphone, guess what it will be picked up in the background. Not acceptable to ACX requirements. 3 - Make sure the windows are closed so you don't pick up outside noises, like traffic or kids playing. 4 - Be prepared to start over... repeatedly! Things happen. You accidentally step on something, or your clothing is crinkly, etc. Where something

Adventures In Audio Recording - Part II

Image
Okay, continuing with my adventures in recording audios, I left off last time with the image above. Now what you are seeing are the Blue Yeti Microphone, which had a huge amount of reviews over on Amazon. It's a very versatile microphone in the respects that it can give you several options for picking up sound. It can do 360, if you want a room full of people involved (or to pick up background sound effects), it can do 2-way where you're on one side of the mic and someone else is directly opposite you, while filtering out the sides somewhat. It also has a setting called Cardioid which is the one I use for audios, this allows you to not have to be directly in front of it at all times, so if you like to move a bit and perform as you record a scene, it catches everything you're saying. These will plug into your computer's USB port, so no special attachments. Also, the cord is very long (about 6-7 feet) so you have some freedom of where to set up to get away from you

Adventures In Audio Recording

Image
As many of you have learned from my last post, my great adventure in audio recordings has begun. So far I have recorded only the one short story "Wolves and the Northern Lights", which comes from our first anthology book "The Vampyre Blogs - One Day At a Time". But simply recording one story is a far cry from turning a full-length novel into an audiobook. However, that is indeed my long term goal. At this point, I'm keeping things simple for myself as I still get used to the equipment both for recording as well as editing to get the best sound quality for listeners.  To keep things manageable for myself, I'm planning on recording the rest of the 25+ stories from the anthology, as well as slowly begin recording it's predecessor "The Vampyre Blogs - Coming Home".  Like the anthology, that novel is mainly comprised of blog, e-journal, and e-diary entries from various characters in the book.  And I plan on doing different voices for

My First Audio Short Story...

Image
Okay, here it is folks. My first full-scale attempt at doing an audio recording of one of the short stories from our anthology "The Vampyre Blogs - One Day At a Time".  This particular tale features our vampyre Nathan, talking about Alaska and what it's like to have shape-shifting powers. *NOTE: Do not click on this image, link to audio is provided further down Please feel free to leave some comments below or at YouTube to let me know how I did. I'm hoping to fine tune my skills before trying for a full-scale audiobook version of the anthology and o ur full-length novels in the future. FYI, I'll be putting together a rather lengthy blog entry in the near future (possibly complete with videos including Blooper outtakes) demonstrating what lengths I go to get a good sound quality within the confines of my own home. I think I'll be able to give you all a few good chuckles as well as useful information. Just click on the link below to begin

Taking a Few Steps Back...

Image
Every so often we come to a realization that something we've been doing hasn't been working as well as we'd hoped. Admitting you didn't do something right the first time is not a sign of weakness, it actually shows growth. Learning from your mistakes is just as important as getting things right the first time.   Recently, during a book release party (for someone else) a mutual friend who is a librarian started talking to me about the Para-Earths series. She's watched trends and keeps a close eye on what's popular in the industry and she pointed out to me that the Para-Earths might actually do better aimed at a Young Adult (YA) audience. This would still make the books quite available to the adult crowd of course, while opening the series to more readers.  I gave this a lot of thought, especially after several others readily agreed with her. So I spent the next week or doing some serious research into YA books. To my surprise, what I found there real

How can I support authors I like, you ask?

Image
Well, maybe you don't ask. But now you want to know, because once you fall in love with a book, you want more like it. Review it! Many online stores and book sites allow readers to post reviews. A person is more likely to take a chance on a book that 50 people say they loved than 5 people say they do. Recommend it! Readers have friends who read, and you likely have an idea of their tastes. A recommendation makes a person more likely to find out more about an unknown book. Some authors, such as J.K. Rowling, got further by word of mouth recommendations and kids buying it for their friends, than by traditional marketing methods. Gift it! I've been running a special-- the book retails at $12 each, but I've been running a 2 for $20 special via direct sales. It encourages people to either buy an extra as a present for a friend or talk them into buying one too and splitting the savings. And I'd never ask this, but two of my buyers spontaneously paid extra, so

5-Star Reviews for "Forever's Too Long"...

Image
The first installment of "The Forever Detective" series is now available in Trade Paperback and E-Book formats And the review are just starting to come in... 5.0 out of 5 stars   " Clever writing without being campy " "This genre mashup of 1940s detective/vampire novel must have been a challenge for Helen Krummenacker to write, but she pulled it off beautfully...."   5.0 out of 5 stars " Fun Chandler-style with a twist "   "Had so much fun reading this book..." You can read the rest of the reviews by clicking on the link below: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RSGKTDF

Zero Hour. The book is available.

Image
What a tense time. Will it sell? Will people review it? I know the book is good,  but making a splash when there are so many forms of entertainment out there isn't easy.                                       This is the part where the audience keeps the writer in suspense. But don't worry, I'm good at waiting: in fact, I'll start right now.  On sale now at: Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/forevers-too-long-helen-krummenacker/1131555250?ean=2940163217083       Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RSGKTDF        AmazonUK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07RSGKTDF        AmazonCA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07RSGKTDF        AmazonAU: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07RSGKTDF       Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/938589 Signed trade paperback copies are available upon request. Simply leave a comment in the section below, or e-mail me at:   helenkrummenacker@gmail.com