Hello, there!
I am so very excited and proud to announce that my first audiobook, Rise of the Forgotten, is now available! You can find it on the Audible and iTunes apps by searching for Jon Wasik, or you can click the link below to go straight to the Amazon store page!
Rise of the Forgotten Audibook
If you’ve been a regular reader here, you already know this, but not only is this my first novel converted into audiobook format, it’s also narrated by me!
Now, before you scoff and say, “Great, another author who thinks they can narrate their own book,” it’s more than just that. (And for the record, some authors are fantastic at narrating their own books!) I’ve been working towards switching careers to voice acting for quite some time now, and this first release is a culmination of practicing, of taking classes and voice lessons, and several false-starts and learning experiences.
In fact, this isn’t even my first completed audiobook that I’ve recorded! But, well, the first one I completed was before I took lessons. The quality of the voice acting reflects that fact very much, and I’ll be re-recording that book at a future date ;)
It’s also not the first time I started recording a Rise of the Forgotten audiobook, it’s just the first time I’ve finished and been happy with the results. This single release represents hundreds of hours of learning, trying, learning some more, adjusting, learning even more, and then finally completing.
This particular version took me nearly a month to record, edit, and do re-recordings of a few chapters whose quality were too substandard to be recoverable.
To quote a song, “It’s been a long road, getting from there to here.” But now I’m here, and this is just the beginning :D
What’s Next?
So, the next thing I was supposed to start over a week ago was recording Burning Skies. I say supposed to because for the past two weeks, I’ve had a throat illness (maybe strep, maybe not, tests and diagnosis are inconclusive…) This week, I’ve been doing my voice warmups every morning, but my throat has been very keen to tell me, “No, dumbass, I’m not ready for this yet!” Sooooo yeah.
But, once I’m able, I definitely will begin recording Burning Skies in earnest. After that? Well, yes, I do intend to record audiobooks for all of the main-series Sword of Dragons novels (Orc War Campaigns, however, I’m not currently planning to). I also intend to record audiobooks for the Chronicles of the Sentinels trilogy.
However, due to circumstances outside of my control (and details of which I won’t be going into,) I have several months off from work. So I’m using this opportunity to try voice acting full-time. Conceivably, recording my own audiobooks is a big and important step towards making that dream a reality, but unless my books suddenly get a lot more popular than they are now, that’s not sustainable.
So after Burning Skies, I’m planning to start auditioning for other, paying gigs. Starting with audiobooks, but I’ll also be trying to find an agent willing to take me on as a client and find me roles. As I’ve learned in class, the most common role that ‘pays the bills’ are commercials, so I’ve no doubt I’ll be doing lots of those, but I’m hoping for more audiobooks and, even more of a dream, working on projects like video games or animated shows/movies!
Those are lofty dreams, and may be a long ways off. And honestly, if I only ever do audiobooks, if I am able to get steady work and (relatively speaking) steady income from audiobooks, I’d be super ecstatic and would happily leave the I.T. world behind.
That’s a lot of future I’ve just imagined and covered. It’s possible that none of this will work out. I may be going back to work as early as January, and if my voice acting is showing no promise by then, I’ll relegate it to part-time (but won’t be giving up on it).
What About Your Writing?
Well, like the blog name says, I’m a writer at heart ;) I won’t be giving up on that. But it is, for the moment, taking a bit of a back seat. While I’m sick and can’t record new audio, I am writing the next Sword of Dragons book, but it’s slow work and, once my voice is good, it’ll once again take a back seat.
But you can’t keep an obsessed writer down. I’ll finish Sword of Dragons 5. And Project Sirius book 2 is already written, it just needs polish. I intend to publish it sometime in 2024!
So don’t worry, there’s still plenty more to come from me, and plenty more content for this blog :)
Thanks for reading! And as a reminder, click here to head to the audiobook page for Rise of the Forgotten :D
-Jon Wasik
A Writer at Heart 