Audio is here in the form of this week's chapters!
Added 2025-09-05 15:18:24 +0000 UTCThe company doing our audio format tried to con us, so we left them in the dust and started making the audio ourselves. It takes around 2 hours per chapter to edit/create/edit again, and the program we use is a bit expensive, but we think its worth it to be in control of our own destiny.
The quality of these chapters isn't quite were we want them; as you'll hear, they aren't perfect. We have a few ideas on how to get them up to snuff, but none of them are easy, so please be patient with us.
Critical feedback is needed! We definitely want to hear your thoughts, as this is the quality we are currently intending to push out for the entirety of book 3, which is slated to release on Amazon/audible this month (We have been making a huge push to get it done rather than spend another month or two locking in maximum quality first.)
Creating the story in audio has been an absolute blast! So many new funny moments, excellent edits that only stand out when listening, and the joy that comes with learning something entirely new. We really hope you like it, as we've poured a ton of time and effort into it =)
Forewarning: We went with two voices, Male/Female, and one of our biggest hurdles was finding two voices that flow together without sounding jarring. It might take a moment to get accustomed to the swapping back and forth. As neither Ami nor myself are avid audio book listeners, we have no idea how that is going to affect the average listening experience. We both love it, and hope you do too! Let us know!
Comments
Ami did find a funny voice for the Gromglenns, worth listening to the whole book 3 just for the one scene imo. Had to rewind it 3 times cause kept laughing. Thanks for the in-depth feedback!! Added several of your comments to our workflow list. As for time involved, it was definitely a detraction, but listening to all of book 3 helped me find at least 200 edits to improve the story’s polish, so it was a huge net positive. Looking forward to doing the same for books 4/5/6 and beyond. Our top priority atm is releasing Patreon chapters in both formats simultaneously, so you can safely get used to having audio chapters from here on out. Ami is doing 95% of the audio work and I’m only doing pre/post editing for her, so it's not enough on me to detract from the weekly new chapters quota.
JTP
2025-09-09 19:41:41 +0000 UTCThey snuck in some new lines on the contract for books 3, 4, and 5: tried to take the rights to everything I ever made, forever, even if I wrote a new series that had nothing to do with MM or DG, they would own audio, movie, manhua, book, everything… And I would be liable for all lawyer fees for anything, including if they just felt like they needed to invoice a lawyer entirely based on their opinion of anything random at all, I would have to pay for it. Insanity. Peak corporate greed.
JTP
2025-09-09 12:17:49 +0000 UTCI definitely support being able to be in control of your own destiny! Not knowing your workflow I'd be concerned about the difficulties in having separate voices for the various characters, including the entities in ZL (being numerous/various). For instance, is there an easy way to get a monster voice? Which simply needs to be compared with what you'd get from a voice actor who would obviously have their own restrictions in creating various voices. I also think that once you get your workflow down and iron out the tweaks to get things the way you want, it will eventually be WAAAAAY easier and cheaper to make the audio versions. You won't need to wait for voice actors and pay a company. One concern at that point is if your workflow doing the audio takes too much time and you may need to hire someone to do it for you so you can continue spending time writing rather than doing the audio work. In my experience with audio books, my ears become accustomed to the voices presented. That is to say that with consistency I just learn the voice is that character. There are definitely better and worse actors, but I'm in it for the story a bit more than the acting. The acting is a huge value add though. If the acting is bad I need to kinda do some mental work to really read into the emotions and if it isn't good enough I may be distracted and have a hard time engaging. I think for a first try you guys did well, but I think I'd like some refinement, and I'm not too concerned. You've done a good job working in the visual space to create some great visuals, and I think you can probably make similar progress in the audio space (hopefully building on what you learned in the visual.) A minor concern is that I got the first audio book so the voices are different, but that's not that big a deal. If you can release audio and text concurrently that'd be awesome and really make my Patreon membership more worth it. Even if it lags a bit. These are just my initial thoughts after having listened. I hope it works as some food for thought.
Gregory Schmitt
2025-09-07 21:09:43 +0000 UTCHow did they try to con you exactly ? Too much pricing or feet dragging ?
guillaume nguyen
2025-09-05 19:06:43 +0000 UTC
