Twas the Bite Before Christmas by Drac Von StollerAn Audiobook I Narrated and Produced is Live!

"Twas the Bite Before Christmas" is now available as an audiobook with me as the narrator. This creepy tale is about Santa coming down a certain chimney of a castle to find that it belongs to Dracula. Dracula isn't pleased to see the jolly fat man, but takes advantage of the encounter. Listen to this fully produced audiobook complete with sound effects and background music that draw you into the story and enrich the listening experience. Find a quiet place and your nice headphones then go listen to Twas the Bite Before Christmas available at Audible.com, in iTunes, and at Amazon.com. You'll be supporting the indie author Drac Von Stoller, and me an indie audiobook narrator. Thanks for stopping by!

Dan Dan The Art Man's Book Review Podcast

So, I've noticed that my blog has become a bit of a book review website. I started reviewing every book I read quite a while ago and then I post my review here, on Amazon, on Audible if it was an audiobook, and on Goodreads. I often get emails from Amazon telling me that my review helped someone purchase the book. I also get likes on my book reviews on Goodreads. I try just to brush over the things I liked and/or disliked in the book. I don't summarize it because those can be found elsewhere online and I feel like putting that in the review is a waste of time.

The reason most of the posts on my site are book reviews is that I'm working two jobs so I haven't had much time for anything else. I do a lot of my reading via audiobooks while I commute 2 hours a day. So even though I'm busy I still get a lot of reading in. I'm reading more books this year than I ever have and I'm sure it's all thanks to the Goodreads Reading Challenge I discovered at the beginning of the year. I set my goal for 35 books and I've been a few books ahead the whole year. I've read a couple of shorter books but it all evens out because I've also read The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (47.5 hour audiobook, over 1,000 pages in paper) and IT by Stephen King (a whopping 45 hours of audio). So I'm cool with counting novellas and even the occasional short story or novelette. 

Photo by PJ Hudson
http://www.morguefile.com/creative/pjhudson

Anyway, it seems that I'm doing something right in my reviews, so I thought that eventually I would start to podcast my book reviews. I've already picked out a theme song for the intro and outro and I have a lot of book reviews piled up. I'm working two jobs and around 60 hours a week at the moment so it might be a while before I can get some reviews recorded, but they're usually only a few paragraphs so they'll be short. I bet I'll be able to knock out quite a few reviews in one short recording session, then I'll start releasing one every week until I finally get to the current book I just finished reading. At that point I'll release them as I finish books. I might throw in a little chatty banter after reading my book review too adding any more thoughts about the book or author that come to me, then close it out. 

It will be a nice little repository for people looking to find something to read - especially if they find that their taste matches mine. That will be easy to tell after listening to a few short podcast episodes. So look for Dan Dan The Art Man's Book Review to hit the interwebs in the near future. That's all I've got for now. Thanks for stopping by!

UPDATE 8/1/14

Today I recorded 11 episodes of this new Book Review podcast. I'll drop episode zero sometime this week, and then one a week for the foreseeable future!

The Christmas CaveAn Audiobook I Narrated & Produced is live!

I had the pleasure of narrating author David R. Beshear's audiobook The Christmas Cave. You can find it for sale at Audible.com, in iTunes, and at Amazon. I'm very proud of this audiobook. A lot of what makes it great is of course the writing the author did that creates the story, but I had a blast figuring out all the different character's voices and personalities. There's an old woman, an old man, a few teenagers and two sets of parents. Not a huge cast, but sometimes I was very glad that I had made distinctions between narrating their voices so that the listener can easily tell who is talking. I think the story came out wonderfully in audio and is a really great listen. I'm expecting to get some promo codes soon for the audiobook from audible which will allow me to give copies away to people who will review it. Please send me a line and I'd be happy to send a promo code your way making the audiobook free with your Audible account. Head on over to the audiobook's page on Audible and listen to the sample. I hope it makes you click the buy button. Thanks for stopping by.

Moon Hooch | New Music That Blew Me Away

If you're not checking out NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts you're missing out on some incredible music and performances. I discovered an awesome band called Alt-J in this Tiny Desk Concert video and really liked what I was hearing because it was just so different from anything I'd heard before. The same goes for the band Moon Hooch. They are incredible. See for yourself:



You can also steam their entire album at their Bandcamp site here.

Thoughts on Sanderson's The Way of Kings

This is me with Brandon Sanderson. He's one of my favorite authors. He mostly writes epic fantasy. His books are awesome. Today I will finish his novel The Way of Kings. It's the one he's holding in the picture. Look at that thing!It's a real door stopper at over 1,000 pages. I have the signed copy on my bookshelf. It's the first in what will be a massively long epic fantasy series called The Stormlight Archive. The next blog post you see on this site will be a review of his book. It will be an interesting review because I both loved and hated this book. Every book I've read by Brandon has been an instant favorite. The Way of Kings, however, was grueling for me to get through. I did not enjoy the first 75% of the book, and at 1,000 plus pages, or 45 1/2 hours of audiobook, that's a lot of book to get through when you're not digging it. It was just plain boring. That said the last quarter of the book has been amazing, riveting, and easily some of the best and coolest stuff I've ever read. I've heard the next book in the series, Words of Radiance, is amazing and doesn't have a bunch of the boring stuff the first book had while it was setting everything up. I realize that this first book had to set up what may be one of the longest biggest fantasy series ever written, but that doesn't mean it had to be boring. My two biggest problems were not caring about the characters until about 3/4 of the way through, and reading scene after scene where nothing is happening. I have had the same problem with The Wheel of Time fantasy series that Brandon finished for late author Robert Jordan. Talking heads scenes where the characters aren't doing anything and you have to really work to get through the chapters. Then you finally get to a chapter where something is happening and it's the coolest stuff you've ever read. That's been this book for me. Many of my friends were never bored by this book and loved every minute of it. More in my upcoming review. Now to finish the book. 

Have you read any of Brandon Sanderson's books? What about The Way of Kings? Did you love it? Did it bore you? Did every page make you yearn for the next one? Leave your thoughts in the comments.Thanks for stopping by!