| (This newsletter was originally sent out in early April 2026, but I spaced posting it on the website until May.) Howdy! I’ve pulled the trigger. The POTG series is coming to audio! I’ve been working hard with a producer named Tory through an outfit named Spoken.Press. It uses AI voice clones of actors who get a cut of the production fees, along with voices from Hume and ElevenLabs. And I’ll be using a bunch of them for a full voice cast with a voice-cloned narrator and specific voices. You’ll get to hear the various accents and timbers that make the characters stand out. It’s really immersive. But it doesn’t happen automatically. Tory and I are working incredibly hard to refine it. It needs lots and lots of mini edits to fix wonky deliveries. But, man. When a chapter is done, I am thoroughly blown away. It sounds fricking epic. I’m pretty psyched about it. Hate the robits? I hear you. Some of the stuff with AI is indeed weird and disquieting. Please feel free to keep reading the books in ebook and print if digital voices aren’t your bag. And there just might be a separate human-read version down the road, depending on how the planets align. For those of you who are interested in hearing more, I’ll be offering a sample chapter in the coming months for Repenter. I’ll let you know when that’s ready. As this has come together, I’ve found listening to the voice cast really compelling. It’s helped me catch a few pesky typos too. And it made me realize something about the pronunciations of two main characters’ names. I need the digital voice cast to pronounce the names the way a reader would pronounce them. I’ll get into the exact moment of this revelation below. But the headline is Ashe Stelfire’s is pronounced as Ash. I had for a few decades pronounced it with a hard A, as Aesh. No more. I shall not be “um… actuallying” my readers. I shall pronounce it as everyone else reads it. And so shall the AI cast. I must have a thing for hard A’s, because I had a similar conversion for Avril. I’d been pronouncing it as AeVril when most folks pronounce it with a soft A as AvRil. So I’m joining the crowd. So say goodbye to Ashe Stelfire and Avril Enzali. And say hello to Ashe Stelfire and Avril Enzali! That… doesn’t sound any different in print, does it? |
| Jim in the World |
| I represented the Nebraska Writer’s Guild for a few hours back on March 7, 2026 at the Constellation 15 Convention in Lincoln, Nebraska. Here’s a pic of me at the NWG table with my POTG books. |
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| Repenter Got a Shoutout on the Bad at Magic Podcast! |
| I post on the Bad at Magic Reddit thread a bunch, and it came up that I’m an indie author. And one of the hosts, Ben Rich, asked me for a digital copy of my first book. So I sent one to him, not expecting much. But he totally mentioned it! He made it in a few chapters at the time of the recording and said he enjoyed it so far. But even if he ends up not liking it, I was still most happy for the shout-out. He pronounced Ashe’s name as Ash as part of his review. And that is what made me realize I need to pronounce the name as a reader would. Thanks to Ben for inspiring that lightbulb moment! Here’s a link to the Bad At Magic website, and you can follow the links if you want to play it on your preferred podcast app. The Repenter call-out is on episode 172 at around the 1 hour and 40 minute mark. |
| Players of the Game Works in Progress |
| Welp. Two factors impeded my second draft productivity this month. There’s this little audiobook initiative I’m working on. I think I mentioned something about it above. Pretty sure at least. And I had a lot more of a loose “wire frame” in part of Secret Fronts’ first draft. So I have to do a lot more first-draftesque creation from nothing for a good chunk of the next several chapters. All something I knew I had to do. But my productivity stats took a hit. I’m on page 402 with 25 pages for the month. Much fewer than last month’s 89 pages. But I’m still at it. The next few months might have a lower output with these two factors in play. But words are words, so I’ll take what I can get. The cover refresh continues. I’ll share those in the near…ish future. And hard covers have taken a back seat to the audiobook efforts. I might end up going the boutique route with the hardcovers through Book Vault instead of IngramSpark. We’ll see where that goes. Jagged Pieces is still aimed for release at the second half of the year, but I’m not going to rush it out with all the other plates spinning. I’ll keep giving updates as time goes on. Players of the Game Out of Context Quote of the Month: Gath: “Dear gods, I need a drink. Oh, wait. We have a bunch of them right over there.” |
| Recommendation Corner |
| The Obelisk Gate: The Broken Earth, Book 2 by NK Jemisin The second-person narration still somehow continues to work now that Essun’s distant past and more recent past merged with her present at the end of the first book. It shouldn’t, but it does. The saga’s middle installment remains most compelling with the slow-crawling cataclysm of the ash fall from the emerging fifth season, one that will span millennia. All the dead civ remnants continue to pop up with disquieting attention on the separated mother and daughter characters. Nassun, the daughter with whom Essun could not reunite, is taken by her homicidal father to “cure” her of orogeny in a remote com(munity) in the Stillness continent’s Antarctics region. Nassun encounters a lot of hatred for her power to manipulate geology. Again, it’s framed by the reality that people often get “iced” if Orogenes aren’t careful. She encounters someone from Essun’s past who’s gone through his own transformation. And it’s unclear if that’s a good thing for Nassun. Essun continues to barb with her new com located in a colossal geode. She’s emotionally damaged, and Nassun’s flashbacks reveal she was not gentle or kind to her daughter. Her former lover, Alabaster, is slowly turning to stone after he triggered the latest season. All in a gambit to bring the moon back into a regular orbit after it entered a millennia-long, deep space elliptical orbit, which triggered the fifth seasons by the enraged Father Earth. And Alabaster wants Essun to finish his work. Bring back the moon. End the seasons. But she must first survive the marauders at the geode com’s gates. I like it. Project Hail Mary (The Movie) I recommended the book a few years back. And the movie is just as good. The main character might be stranded in another solar system with no way home, but at its core, the story is an optimistic sci-fi yarn. Without entering into spoilers, there are two big themes in the story. A celebration of the partnership between science and engineering’s critical partnership in solving big problems. And the power of being open to very different people. Ryan Gosling did great as Grace in both the Earth flashbacks and the Hail Mary ship’s present. His resourcefulness and humorous mannerisms are endearing. And hey, wait. The Hail Mary. It’s got one person in its crew. One might say it’s full of Grace. Okay, I’ll stop now. I loved the new scene with Stratt at the karaoke. It was fantastic in showing a different side of her character. And I, of course, loved everything with the spoiler character. Just as charming as the book. I’ll quote that character to give you my succinct thoughts: Amaze! Amaze! Amaze! |
| That’s all for this time. Stay smart. Stay safe. Jim |
