Burning Skies Now Available in Audibook!

Hello, there!

I’m excited to announce that the next audiobook for the Sword of Dragons saga, Burning Skies, is now available!  Currently only available on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes, keep checking other vendors as the audiobook goes wide!

Click Here for Amazon

Click Here for Audible

Taking A Break From Audiobook Recording

As I’d mentioned in my previous article, I’m stepping back from Audiobook recording for the next few months.  The place we currently live in is not conducive to recording quality audio, and it’s getting worse and worse.  On top of that, I’ve just started a new job, a new career, and as does happen often with new careers (I think?), I’m exhausted every day after work as I try to learn everything.

But that doesn’t mean I’m done – I will record the rest of the Sword of Dragons saga, including book 5 when it’s done, as well as the Chronicles of the Sentinels trilogy!

Thanks for reading (and listening!) and keep checking back for more updates!

Thanks,
-Jon Wasik

Life Update – Audiobook Finished, Back to the Grind

Hey everyone!

I know it’s been a while since I wrote a blog on here, and I’m so sorry for that.  I’ve been trying to ‘keep up with’ posting on Instagram and Facebook, and being the introvert that I am, that…pretty much is all the energy I have, when it comes to social media.

And I’m honestly not sure it’s worth it.

Instagram is no longer a photo app – it’s all about the videos.  Scratch that, it’s all about the reels, which are limited to a minute and a half.  Recording any meaningful content in that short amount of time?  Not easy.  And I had to take something like 30 to 60 takes each time, trying to get it right while compressing the topic to 90 seconds.

I think I might give up on that.  While my initial foray into reels proved promising, with new followers and a couple of comments, it quickly died out, and is stagnant.  Again.

I guess I just suck with social media.  *shrug*

Burning Skies Audiobook Coming Soon!

It’s…been a battle.  I intended to record one audiobook per month once I was furloughed from my day job.  I succeeded with Rise of the Forgotten!  Then I got sick for the month of November with a throat thing.  Started recording in December, made pretty good progress, buuuut….grew increasingly frustrated with the noise in my neighborhood getting worse and worse.

And, well, things just kept getting delayed.  I finally, finally finished recording Burning Skies in January, and started editing.  Editing took a lot longer, because the noise I mentioned in my neighborhood?  It meant that I had to re-record a bunch of sections.

But finally, as of last week, editing is finished!  And I spent the first half of this week listening to Burning Skies “in the wild” to see how an average listener might listen to it.  I found some minor things, about 6 chapters needed breaths removed throughout that somehow wasn’t audible during my editing phase, and a couple of lines needed re-recording, but all in all, I’m really happy with how it turned out!

Especially Nuuldan, the dark dragon?  Oooh.  I channeled Sam Witwer’s version of Darth Maul when I recorded those lines, and they came out sooooo good!  I can’t wait for you all to hear it!

Yesterday, I uploaded all of the files to ACX, and submitted for approval!  So, assuming no quality issues are detected by the ACX techs, Burning Skies should show up on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes in the next 2 weeks!

So despite the setbacks, I battled through, and completed my second Audiobook!

Now…what’s next?

Wellllllllllll….

Assessing The Situation and Adapting

So after all of the delays with Burning Skies, I knew I was running up against a wall, time-wise.  My furlough only allowed me 3 months of paid-for insurance by my employer, and unemployment only allowed a little more than that.  My plan had been to record Rise, then Burning, then start auditioning for jobs to actually get paid for my voice work.

That last part was originally supposed to start in December.

When I hadn’t finished recording Burning Skies until January, I knew my original plan was in big, big trouble.

Then I started looking into how much I could expect to get paid as a voice actor going through ACX, without an agent, without a director or producer or editor, with me doing all of it.

So here’s the thing.  Audiobook narrators, and voice actors in general, don’t get paid for however long it takes them to do the job.  We get paid for a product.  We get paid Per Finished Hour of audio, or PFH.

Let’s say it takes me an hour to record a segment.  That’s an hour of audio, right?  Not necessarily, and especially not as a beginner.  I make mistakes.  I have to re-record.  I’ve learned that, in order to keep my flow on a story, when I mess up, I just immediately re-do that line or wherever a good break is to edit later.  Sometimes that’s only a little bit, and sometimes I mess up a lot.

Then, later, I have to go back and listen to and edit that hour.  Editing involves cutting, adjusting, and generally takes 1.5x as long to do, at least for me (dunno if I’m missing some trick of the trade…)  So that hour recording actually took 2.5 hours of my time to polish, and I may end up actually only having 50 minutes of a final product.  Maybe more, maybe less.

As a beginner, as a nobody on the ACX platform, I could probably expect the lower end of pay for jobs, which is a range of $50 to $100 PFH.

Now, let’s do some math, yeah?  I know, I hate math, too.

Rise of the Forgotten came out to about 10 hours finished.  At the low end, that would mean $500, at the high end, $1000.

In theory, that should have taken me 25 hours to finish, with the 2.5x math, right?  Less than a week, in theory.

It took me longer.  A lot longer.  It basically took me a month from beginning to end.  Now granted, throughout that month, my voice started weak and I couldn’t record for 8 hours a day, so that’s probably why.  Some days I could only do one or two chapters at most, my voice was still recovering from previous days of recording for 6 or more hours.  That’s part of it, your vocal chords are a muscle that need to be strengthened over time.  By the time I finished recording RotF, I was doing pretty good!

But it basically took me a month to finish.

Sooooo…if this was for someone else’s project?  That’s $500-$1000/month.  Before taxes, not  counting medical insurance or anything.  That’s it.

That is not enough to live off of, even in a dual-income home.  Not even close.

So that has led to a…difficult decision.

Back to the Grind – Day Job

After figuring all of that out in January, and knowing that my medical and unemployment benefits were about to run out, I knew I had no choice – I had to go back to a day job.

I really, really didn’t want to.

And I’m so, so incredibly frustrated!!!!  Of course my body decided to get a new illness in the middle of all of this!  Of course I then had to re-build up my vocal chords afterwards and take longer than I should have to record Burning Skies!  Of course everything had to fight me every single step of the way!

At least, that’s been my thoughts lately.  I’m not happy about how it all played out.  This…this was supposed to be my chance.  This was supposed to be how I was able to become a full-time creative.  I didn’t expect to get rich, I didn’t want to get rich, I just wanted a sustainable income!

Maybe, someday, I still can.  It’ll be easier with ‘professional’ gigs, where I have an agent and a producer and I record my work, send it off for someone else to edit, and then move on to the next project.  Maybe, but that’ll mean trying to get an agent to represent me, just for starters.  That’s a big if.

But for now, I have to take care of myself and my family.  I have to make sure we don’t end up on the streets.  And let’s face it, with practically zero social safety nets in the U.S., that’d be a scary prospect.

So I started applying for jobs on indeed.  Sys Admin jobs.  It literally made me nauseous when I first started looking – I not only didn’t want to go back to a 9-5 job, I really didn’t want to go back to the immensely stressful Sys Admin career, where employers increasingly take advantage of employees, adding more and more work and hours without any added pay.

At one point, I started wondering about trying to find other jobs.  Maybe as a proofreader or copy editor.  I started looking at those jobs, and felt like I had a leg up on those, since my Bachelor’s degree was in English.  But a lot of it was ‘gig’ work or temporary contracts, not a reliable source of income at all.

Then I thought…what about technical writing?  I started looking into that.  It looked…promising.  I’d take a definite pay cut, tech writers aren’t paid nearly as much as sys admins, but it was more than I was getting from unemployment by a significant amount, and we’d already proven that, if we had to, we could make that work!  So, why not go for it?

I posted on my private Facebook about thinking about going tech writing as a career, not really thinking anything about it.  But then, that same day, an old co-worker called me up and said he was a manager on a program in dire need of a proper documentation program, and he knew and liked my work in that regard (I’ve always built up the documentation programs for any job I was a sys admin at), and he wanted to hire me!

A few weeks later, and here I am, about to start not just a new day job, but a new career!

I’m excited.  I’m terrified.  I’m anxious.  I’m all over the board about it!  But one thing is for sure – I’ll be glad to have a steady paycheck again.

For more than one reason.

What’s Next?

Remember how I was saying that my neighborhood was getting worse and worse with noise?  Well, honestly, worse and worse in general.  This apartment complex is utter shit, the management company that took over after we moved in is horrible (Seriously, second time Greystar has taken over an apartment while we lived there and turned it to shit!  How are they surviving as a company??)

So with a steady paycheck again, we’re gonna move to a better apartment/neighborhood.  One that doesn’t stress us out, and one that won’t interfere with my ability to record audio.

Until then?  No more recording.  It’s too frustrating.

But once I’m settled into my day job and get a new daily routine going, I will continue writing and publishing novels.  The Sword of Dragons needs book 5, and Project Sirius book 2 needs to come out this year!

I don’t plan on publishing Sirius 2 until after we move, though.

I’m going to probably pull back from Instagram – it’s just not worth the effort I put into my videos, I get no engagement.

I’m probably going to delete my Patreon.  Absolutely no one seems to give a shit about it or has any interest in supporting me through that platform, so no sense keeping it online.

But overall, for the next few months, I’m going to focus on two things – moving, and mental/emotional health.

I’ve worked for employers who don’t give two shits about me for too long.  I’m hopeful that this new job won’t be like that (the manager’s a pretty cool guy!), but either way, I’m going to focus more on taking care of me, and being healthy and better.

I have no doubt that this new year is going to be full of even more change.

I’ll try to be better about keeping you all in the loop here.  After all, this blog is a better avenue for that – I’m a writer!  Writing is what I do best :)

Assuming anyone is still around reading this, and assuming anyone has read all the way to the bottom of this rather long post, thank you for your support and patience!

Until next time!
-Jon Wasik

Juggling Different Creative Efforts

Hello, there!

Welcome to 2024!  Let’s hope it’s a better year than the previous four!

I thought I’d kick things off by just letting you all know what I’m working on these days, and where I’m at with them.  So let’s dive in, starting with my next audiobook!

Burning Skies Audiobook Coming Soon

Earlier this week, I finished recording Burning Skies!  That doesn’t mean it’s ready to go, not by a long shot, but it is a huge milestone!

What’s next?  Well, editing primarily.  Throughout the process of recording, I occasionally took days off from voice work and did editing, so I’m not starting from scratch on it, but I do still have about 3/4’s of the book audio files to edit, so it’s still a long ways to go!

I also know for a fact that there are some dialogue sections I’ll need to re-record.  Especially for the crystalline entities known as the Navitas – I started off voicing them one way in one chapter, and then later changed my mind and voiced them different, so I’ll need to re-record those earlier dialogue sections.  Not a huge deal, and shouldn’t slow me down much.

After that, I’ll need to ‘listen to it in the wild,’ taking the MP3 files and listening to them while driving, exercising, etc, to see how it sounds and if anything needs additional work.

Project Sirius Book 2 Will Be Out This Year

I finished writing Project Sirius Book 2 (title still undecided) last year, so the hardest part is already done ;)  Today, taking a break from, well, everything else, I started another round of proofreading on it.

Once that’s finished, I’m hoping to start working on the publication package.  I’m…well, sad that I haven’t gotten further feedback from beta readers.  But I can’t wait forever, so I’m going to move forward on this one.

Right now, due to the whole job furlough situation, I can’t afford to engage the cover artist, but that situation will probably be resolved soonish.  (More on that further down.)

I already know what I want for the cover, and should be able to communicate it very easily to the artist, so I expect work on the cover to go fast :)

The Sword of Dragons Book 5 Stalled

Unfortunately, writing book 5 of the Sword of Dragons has…stalled.

And I can’t really point to just one reason for it.  Part of it is…struggling with stress and anxiety, so creativity is hard to come by.  (That whole job furlough thing.)  Also, due to the delays to audiobook recording, I focused heavily on that lately, and that left little time for any other creative efforts.

Will I start it up again soon?  That’s the plan!  Though it’s a bit frustrating, because I really want to write Project Sirius Book 3!!!!!

Anything Else On The Side?  Why, Yes!

Long-time readers of this blog know – I’m a gamer.  It’s one of the ways I decompress.  But when I game, I often find myself playing survival games that allow building structures, ships, etc.  I’ve loved building starships on Starfield, for instance!

But a big project that I’ve collaborated with my wife and my best friend on is getting closer to completion, and I’m excited to share it with folks soon!  In the video game 7 Days to Die, we’ve recreated the Raccoon City Police Station from Resident Evil 2 Remake!  It’s taken months, and there’s still a lot of work to be done on it, but most of that now is detail work :D

Back To Work?

Speaking of my job furlough earlier, I’ve reluctantly acknowledged that, for now, I cannot yet make a living off of voice acting.  As a beginner, the most I could expect is maybe $1k/month, depending on the projects I could get outside of recording my own books (and those pay considerably less ;) ).

That’s not enough, by a long shot, to live off of.  Hence why I always intended to try to segue into it part-time at first.  As does happen frequently in my life, those plans are always shoved aside.

So I’m going to start actively looking for a new day job.

I don’t really have a choice.

My novels are selling better than ever, but still fall far short of ever becoming sustainable, my voice acting isn’t even close yet either, and there has been zero interest in my Patreon :(

What does that mean for creative stuff?  It means the output frequency is going to drastically decline.  Who knows when I’ll finish writing my next novel.  Who knows when I’ll finish my next audiobook.

I’m back to square one.

But I gotta do what I’ve gotta do to survive.

On the bright side, I acknowledge that a lot of my resistance to day job work has been toxic managers or work environments at the last couple jobs I’ve worked.  So I’m going to try to be a bit more discerning with whom I apply to and accept a job from.  I recall from past experiences that I absolutely loved I.T. work when I was with companies and had coworkers that I loved!

True, I might not have a choice at first, I might have to take whatever comes my way right away.  But I’ll definitely try for better.

Anywho, that’s all I’ve got for today.  Thanks for reading!  And if you feel like helping out a poor, starving writer/voice actor, tell your friends and family about my work, like my posts, subscribe anywhere you can, and especially to my Patreon page!

-Jon Wasik

First Audiobook Available! Rise of the Forgotten

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.

Artwork by Vuk Kostic

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

Finding Opportunities – Shifting Gears After Setbacks

The title I just wrote for this blog sounds like a bad advertisement.  You know the ones, I see videos for them all the time on Instagram.  “Turning Setbacks Into Opportunities!” or something like that.

But, well…sometimes that’s all you can do in life.  And here I am, facing the need to do that.

I was furloughed from my day job last week.  If you’re not sure what that is, it’s basically a temporary, unpaid leave of absence, with the intent of bringing the employee back after the event causing the furlough passes.  In most cases, that ‘event’ is financial difficulties (see Federal Government’s Inability To Pass A Budget as an example).

And like most furloughs, I’m unsure how long it’ll last.  Could be weeks.  Could be months.

So I had a very important decision to make.  After spending a day and a half absorbing and processing this difficult turn of events, I decided to do what I’ve been wanting to do for a long time – do something creative full-time.

But not writing.  Because I’m not profitable on my writing, let alone making nearly enough to live off of.  I wish I were, but I’m not even close.

Instead, I’m turning to the other endeavor I started working towards last year.

Voice Acting.

Last week, starting Wednesday, I’ve begun treating voice acting as a full-time job.  For now, I’m building my vocal cords back up on my own novels, starting with Rise of the Forgotten.  Fun fact, your vocal cords are literally muscles.  If you don’t use them much, they grow weak.

After about 5 hours of audiobook recording on Wednesday, my vocal cords were tired!  So I have to build up my strength, and what better way than to do it on my own books?

So that’s what I’m doing now.  As soon as I finish this blog and post it, I’m warming up my voice and getting back to it!  And if I can maintain the rate I was going last week, I hope to be finished with Rise of the Forgotten sometime next week, at least recording.  Editing will, naturally, take longer.

I’ve also decided to try to be more active on social media.  Everything on Instagram has turned to videos these days – if you’re posting photos, no one seems to care anymore.  Which is ridiculous, it’s freaking Instagram!  If you want videos, go to TikTok!  (Which, 90% of the videos on Instagram are reposts of TikTok, so…really, it’s stupid that this has become a thing!)

In any case, you’ll find me a lot more on Instagram and Facebook in the coming weeks!  Click the links below to find your way there :)  Already, you’ll find a video on this very topic, and my first excerpt from recording an audiobook!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorjonwasik

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kataar2002/

Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik

Life Update: Voice Acting Level Up, Health and Diet Changes

Hello, there!

It isn’t often that I do a post dedicated to life changes, but some big things have been happening, and I wanted to let you all know what’s going on!

Voice Acting – Completing the Advanced Class

First, as of last night, I completed the advanced Voice Acting class, called “Futures”!

I’ve mentioned before that I was taking voice acting/voice over classes through the Colorado School of Acting online classes.  After my 2nd class, which focused on characters (which I absolutely loved!), I was invited to the advanced class by the instructor, and for the past 7 weeks, that’s been my Tuesday nights!

A lot of it was a continuation of the original beginner’s class, building upon what we’d previously learned for the three major voice acting types of gigs: commercials, audiobook, and, to a much lesser extent, character voicing (IE: animation/video game characters).  In fact, in this class, we almost didn’t even touch the animation/video game characters, probably because there was a separate Monday night class for that, which I didn’t take yet (I hope she’ll do it again!)

Last night was something special, though.  In the previous class, we presented and rehearsed a commercial and an audiobook excerpt with the instructor in preparation to present them to an agent from the Voice Acting industry, which is what we did last night!

Jordan Leigh from Donna Baldwin Agency

The actor/agent in question was Jordan Leigh from the Donna Baldwin Agency, and he was a fantastic voice coach with loads of good feedback!  As both the other students and our instructor pointed out, it seemed like we all did exceptionally well last night, and the advice from Jordan only pushed us to higher heights!

Last night was also, essentially, the final for our class.  So, is my voice acting education complete?

Not by a long shot.

But I am in a much better place as a voice actor than I was 9 months ago when I first started down this rabbit hole.  I felt really good about my performance, and both Jordan and our instructor’s feedback only encouraged me more.  I have plenty of growth left to go, yes, but much like writing, and much like when I was in choir, that’ll never change – the day I decide, “I’m an expert and don’t need to improve anymore!” is the day I should quit, because I’ll have stagnated.

However, there is something that has been weighing on my mind as I’ve ventured down this path…

This Is An Acting Career, Not A ‘Traditional’ Career

I knew it going in, but last night in particular, it hit me.  When Jordan, and then later the head of the school, called us all Actors, it somehow sunk deep into my soul.

I am now an actor.

Not a stage actor nor a screen actor, true, but an actor none-the-less.

And if I really want to wade into this, I have to understand that this will not be a traditional career.

I’ve been in the I.T. industry for twenty years now, and in that time, I’ve almost always been able to rely upon a steady income.  In a way, I’m lucky – I’ve never been laid off, and with one exception, I never had a gap in employment.

I had always hoped to transition to writing full-time one day, but I’m no longer certain that goal is achievable (but I’m not giving up on it, either).  I always knew that my income as a writer would never be constant or even ‘stable.’  So in reality, this idea as a voice actor doesn’t surprise me.

But at the same time, this feels far more achievable than becoming a full-time writer.  Far more realistic.

Skynet is watching…

Uh, A.I. usurping voice actors not withstanding…I’m keeping a very close eye on that right now.  All creatives are.

In any case, that means my original plan with writing, which was to gradually leave I.T. rather than all at once, is still a solid plan.

In addition, it means working both jobs.  That’s been a bit of a problem lately, mostly due to a severe lack of energy.  What energy I’ve had day-to-day was going 100% into my day job, and I’d come home exhausted.  I have at least one other plan to mitigate that, but in the mean time, this leads me to the other topic of today’s update…

Cutting Back on Added/Processed Sugar

About 9 years ago, Not too long after I moved to Colorado, I did an experiment that was, in hindsight, dangerous – I did a Juice Fast for about 5 days.  That’s where you eat no solid foods and rely on juicing to get nutrients, etc.

One good thing came out of it – I had cut out added and processed sugars for five days.  It changed my taste buds, it reset my entire system.  The first piece of candy I tried after that tasted disgustingly sweet and I could only stand one bite.

And it changed everything.  My fitness, my energy levels, most importantly (at that time) my mood.  For the next couple of years, I was a happier person overall, I had a better outlook on life.

Over the course of the last 9 years, I’ve slowly eroded that away, eating and drinking sweets more and more.  Especially after my first hip injury and subsequent surgery, when I turned to sweets to help boost my mood when I felt down or, more often, stressed.

That came to a head when I endured kidney stones earlier this year.  I was not eating or drinking healthy.  I was more active, having mostly recovered from my surgeries, but after the kidney stones, I was wiped.  And I never quite recovered.

I knew something was wrong.  I knew I had to change something.  But what?  I had started recording an audiobook again, but after the kidney stones, I just never had energy, and I just passed out after work every day until it was time to get up and cook dinner.

And as luck would have it, I came across an article randomly about a guy who cut processed sugars for a few weeks, and the results.

Reading through it, I recognized all of what he went through – the withdrawal symptoms for the first 5 to 7 days, but then the steady energy and the absolute night and day change in mood that followed.

It was what happened to me nine years ago.

I determined in that moment that I was going to try it again.  Not the juice fasting, but the cutting back on added or processed sugar.  I knew that cutting 100% processed/added sugar was impossible.  It’s in everything these days.  Bread.  Pasta sauce.  Ketchup (which I can’t have for other reasons.)  Soups.  Basically anything and everything that is not home-made has some added sugar to it.  Lots of chips do.  Even ‘healthy’ snacks like Wheat Thins have it!  You’ll be shocked if you start looking for it on nutrition labels.

But I could drastically reduce it.  I already don’t drink soda, except on very rare occasions.  But I had a lot of snacks with sugar.  I had cereal with lots of sugar in the morning.  I love cookies and store-bought/Starbucks-bought banana bread.  Not to mention Starbucks lattes with vanilla syrup, or more recently, Dutch Bros. Grasshopper mocha.

Plus my alcoholic drink of choice?  Fireball on the rocks.  Which comes to 11 grams of sugar and 108 calories for just a single shot, let alone a whole glass on the rocks!

So, about a week and a half ago, I cut almost all of that out.  No more Fireball.  No more cookies.  I switched to regular Cheerios for cereal (and then was shocked to find it had 1g of added sugar per serving!)  I stopped eating regular bread every day.  I started paying attention to labels, and when we went out, I googled restaurants’ nutrition facts to pick meals with little or no added sugar.

Not all sugar is bad, mind you.  Natural sugar is good (in moderation).  Fruits, milk and other dairy, those are good, and in fact vital, but you don’t get the sugar rush and subsequent crash with them.

And let me tell you, that first week was rough.  Days 1 through 3, my energy levels tanked to the lowest low I’ve ever experienced.  My performance in voice acting class was abysmal.  And I napped often.  But by Friday, all of that changed.  Suddenly I had so much energy throughout the day, consistently, and even at night for a while, I had trouble sleeping even with melatonin!

But then it balanced out this week.  I feel not just steady in my energy, but my mood has significantly improved.  I feel happier, more content, and even hopeful.  And last night, my performance in voice acting was the best one I’ve ever given!  I don’t just feel that way, but the teacher and even my classmates remarked on how well I did!  (Yes, energy is essential to giving a good performance.)

In short, I think I might finally be able to get back to recording my audiobook after work.

I feel like I can finally get things back on track.

I have hope again.

Anyway, thank you for reading.  This ended up being a lot longer than I planned, but there’s a lot of exciting things going on :)

-Jon Wasik

Voice Acting – A Bold New Course

Hello, there!

In my last post of 2022, I mentioned at the end that I had begun to pursue voice acting as a career!  I wanted to go into a bit more detail on what brought me to that decision, and where I’m at with it today :)

Unintended Careers

By day, I’m a computer sys admin, specializing in Windows desktop and server administration.  (All you Unix/Linux/Mac lovers out there, I’m sorry but I don’t know enough about them to help you troubleshoot!)  And by all measures, my career is a resounding success!  I make enough money to live comfortably (though inflation isn’t helping), I’m pretty good at what I do (but not as good as the best), and I’ve built up an impressive resume over the past twenty years (wow, yeah, 20 years exactly this month!)

So why do I want to change?  Why would I jeopardize a good, stable career for something like voice acting which is inherently not stable?  And probably won’t pay nearly as much, at least not at first and possibly not ever.

Well…I’m good at what I do, that’s true.  But I do it only because I’m good at it.  I never intended to get into Sys Admin work, I just fell into it because I was good at computers and had a knack for it.  When I first started college, I majored in English with the intent of becoming a teacher while writing on the side, in the hopes of one day transitioning to becoming a full-time writer.

That plan fell through very quickly.  After just two months as a substitute teacher, I said, “Hell no!”  But in reality, my decision not to teach started long before that, when I first started learning what was involved and what it was like to be a public school teacher.  And to put it succinctly – Red Tape.  Way too much bureaucracy and not enough freedom to actually teach what you should be teaching.  The public school system was a joke.  And the pay is an even bigger joke.

During my time in college, a friend of mine who worked as a computer lab assistant as a work study said they were hiring, and she knew how good I was with computers.  So I got that job and quit my job at the movie theaters.  That’s what started it.  I made contacts, gained experience.  Did the same job at the 2nd college I transferred to, then came back after graduation to work part-time and then full-time at the first college.  And my career just kept going.

But it was never something I intended to make as a life-long career.  In my mind, it was a stopover until I could make enough from writing.

Unfortunately, 20 years later and I’m still nowhere near making enough money as a writer to quit I.T.

After the lackluster reception of Chronicles of the Sentinels, I despaired.  I thought that would have been what launched my career off the ground, and instead, no one pays attention to it.  (Thankfully Sword of Dragons grows ever-more popular, but by itself, it isn’t enough.)  I thought…my career as a writer would never become more than a pipe dream.  I thought I was trapped in I.T. forever and I could see no way out.

That thought alone made me feel far more miserable than I ever have before.  And that on top of one of the worst and most stressful years of my life?  I was feeling pretty low in 2022.

Leveraging My Talents

I don’t remember exactly when it happened.  I think it was early Summer or maybe even late Spring 2022.  I’d been seeing advertisements on Facebook for Voice Acting/Voice Over Careers.  I ignored them mostly, like I do most ads on the internet.

Image Source – masseffect.com

But…I remembered auditioning for a voice acting role for Mass Effect Andromeda, and even though I didn’t get the role, I enjoyed the process so much.  Getting the script, interpreting the character, etc.  I remember years and years of singing in choir and loving every second of it.  Working with the choir, working with the director, how much I loved using my voice to give something to the audience, and I remember how much praise I received, from directors, from the audience.  I remember the terror, thrill, exhilaration, and sense of accomplishment when I started doing some solos.

I never actually clicked on one of those ad links, but I did start ‘googling’ to learn about the industry and the methods of ‘getting into it.’  I also, perhaps most importantly, read about the average income, and started doing some calculations as to how much of a pay cut my wife and I could weather.

And it seemed doable.  The industry is competitive, but the demand is growing, especially in the areas of audiobook narration and video game roles, as I read in the 2022 State of Voice Over.  And just how much is average?  According to an article on voice123.com, about $76k.  As I said, a pay cut from what I currently make.  And perhaps not a livable wage in Denver, CO (though there are those living in Denver who make less than that and somehow get by, so it’s possible!)

But that brings me to another development in the industry: pandemic forced a lot of folks to start working from home, and even before that, there were already a lot of voice talents setting up home studios to record from home (because let’s face it, renting studio time is expensive).  In particular, audiobook narration is often done from home studios more than not.

Which means voice acting can be done from anywhere.  We could, conceivably, move somewhere with cheaper cost of living, and suddenly that $76k/year is doable.

Of course, like pretty much any career out there…you don’t start out earning the average.  And that’s why I’m not diving in head-first.

But the turning point, I think, was when I turned to my coworker one day and asked, “have you ever changed careers?”  He said he had.  When I asked how old he was when he did it, it turns out he was my age.  He had transitioned from another, wholly unrelated career to I.T. security in his late 30’s.

So even though I’m in my late 30’s…it’s not too late.  That’s when I decided to pursue it.

Caution and Education

Much like with my writing, I can’t just drop my day job on a whim and dedicate 100% of my time to voice acting.  I’d love to.  Especially lately, my day job has been exhausting me and I have to really really push myself to do any recording after work each day.  There are days when I just can’t do it.

So, I do what I can when I can, pushing myself as hard as I can without letting myself go too far (unlike I did last year…I don’t want a repeat of that).

But where am I now?  Well, one of the biggest things I kept reading online, from “how to break into the industry!” blogs to statements from voice actors, has been ‘education.’  Stage and screen actors agree on that as well – no matter how much (or little) natural talent you might have, education, voice coaching, voice lessons, etc, can make the difference between a good and a great actor.  It’s a must.

So I decided to take a combined approach last year.  Before we sold our house, I started recording my first audiobook, that of Legacy.  My thinking at the time was, since it wasn’t a super popular book, it would be a good way to practice.  And I did what I’m doing now, I recorded after work and on weekends when energy allowed.  It was a challenge in that house, though, let me tell you – that house had crap for sound insulation, and any time a neighbor decided to make any noise, it disrupted my ability to record.  And when the winds shifted just right, we were directly beneath the take-off vector from Denver International Airport, which meant jets with their engines at near-full-throttle were flying directly overhead.

But I finished recording.  Meanwhile, I signed up for my first voice over lessons, though it wouldn’t start until the fall semester.

And then we sold the house and moved into an apartment that has, I kid you not, foot-thick concrete walls separating the units.  With the hope that external noise wouldn’t be as big of a problem.  (I mean, it did help, but we still get a surprising amount of dog barking or engine break noises from the nearby Interstate.)

Moving delayed editing of the Legacy audiobook by a lot.  But it turns out that was a good thing.  You see, shortly after moving into the apartment, I started my voice over class.  Aaaaaand….about 3 weeks in, I finally had time to start editing Legacy again.  And I stopped.  Because just what I’d learned in 3 weeks in class was enough for me to recognize that I did not do a good job on my recording.

So I decided to focus on learning to be a better voice actor.  I finished the first class, and then took a Characters voice class, and I made improvements by leaps and bounds!  And I was loving doing the work, too, it was so much fun!

The instructor invited me to join her advanced class, so I’ll be doing that later this year (she’s also hoping to have an animated characters class, too, so I might be taking two voice classes this semester, if I have time!)  But in the mean time, to keep honing my new skills, I’ve started recording an audiobook for Rise of the Forgotten!

Artwork by Vuk Kostic

That…has been an interesting experience.  Um.  Well, let’s just say that I’m glad to know my writing improved in my later books, because I have some poorly-written, and therefore hard-to-read-out-loud sentences in Rise *nervous laugh*

But in and of itself, that challenge has been eye-opening for both my writing and my voice acting!  And I’ve been able to voice some very fun characters.  The best so far has been that of Larash, the slightly-crazy Keeper of the Way in chapter 4.  And it wasn’t just the ‘act crazy’ that was fun, it was the fact that he very slowly regains his sanity throughout the chapter, and capturing that was an enjoyable challenge!

I’m 7 chapters in right now, and I just hope that what I’m doing is good enough!  I haven’t stopped to edit any yet, though maybe I should, just to see if it’s up to snuff or not before I record anymore…

Anywho, that’s where I’m at.  Depending on how things go when I start releasing audiobooks, IE whether they sell well or not (I keep hearing requests from people for audiobook versions of all of my novels, and audiobooks are becoming increasingly popular, so maybe!) I could start to make a transition towards the end of the year.  IE: see about going part-time at my current job, see where we might end up having to move in the future to afford it, etc.

But that’s all for now (and what a long post this turned into!)  Thanks for sticking through and reading!

-Jon Wasik