A Note for Audiophiles: Audio files are now up

For at least a third of the story anyway.

The old boombox cranks out some Clive Cussler / made using Midjourney

I like to read books, sure, but what I also like to do is listen. This is a practice learned in part from Mom, who read Charlotte’s Web and Little House in the Woods and many more novels to us aloud when we were small and out of the bath. Later, I learned of books-on-tape because Uncle Bill would get them from the Multnomah County Library so he and Dad could listen while they worked. They’d have to reserve those audiobooks at the library, and then wait for a giant binder of cassette tapes to be available for borrowing. Those were the days, I guess, but it’s even better days now because I have a giant library of Audible books just hanging out in my pocket.

Here’s another thing: I love reading aloud, and I kept up Mom’s tradition by reading to Lana before bedtime, everything from Sandra Boynton (whose board books are an absolute treat) to Mark Twain. From those performances, I always felt I had a knack—or at least a passion—for speaking stories out loud, and I intended The Cascadia Chronicles to reach audio form eventually. And while the Substack app does have a built-in audio option, patient readers had to endure Siri-esque reading and egregious mispronunciations of “Willamette” in order to hear this story out loud.

This is all a roundabout way of telling you the first third of The Blue Beacon is now available in audio form. At the top of the Prologue, and in Chapters 1 through 11, you’ll find a media player, and by clicking play, you’ll hear me reading croaked epithets from an angry bullfrog, or a song about bolas. Hopefully this story will eventually be read by Wil Arnett or Nancy Cartwright, but in the meantime paid subscribers can hear the dulcet tones of yours truly telling this story. You can start here:

The Blue Beacon Begins

I’m tackling this project in thirds, so Chapters 12-23 are on the docket next. For now, I just wanted to let you know what’s out there. Thank you for encouraging this next step! Once the audio is through, figuring out how print copies is on deck. Usually publishers deal with all this, so thank you for your ongoing patience, and thank you for reading.

Sincerely,
Jordan Green