For those of you who are wondering about the audio version of Happiest Days of Our Lives : it's currently in post-production. My producer/partner/engineer/friend David, who should be working on it 24/7 and only stopping to occasionally eat and pee, had the nerve to go get cast as Eric Doyle on Heroes, and I guess the producers "like him" and "want to keep working with him" all the time, so he's "kind of busy" with "that" and he's working on the audiobook in his diminishing free time. GOSH! Uh, I hope it will be finished and available in the very near future. Like, maybe next week, but you didn't hear that from me.
I mention this because I've come up with something cool and special that involves the audiobook and the special expanded edition of the book that I'm doing with Subterranean Press.
Months ago, I talked with Bill at Subterranean about taking something from the audiobook and putting it at Subterranean Online to help promote the special edition, and hopefully sell audiobooks. Everyone wins!
The thing is, David and I are already very busy, and it's unlikely that we will be able to coordinate and record the extra material and get it edited together in time for a holiday release. I don't want to do two versions of the audiobook, so I've decided to kill several birds at once, make a necklace from their skulls, and attach their feathers to football shoulder pads, just like that guy in Mad Max: using my rig at home (which isn't nearly as nice as David's, but is good enough) I will record audio versions of the stories we added to the expanded edition, and give those to Bill to put on Subterranean Online.
For free.
Yes, you read that correctly: it's for free, as in, "Hey, look what Wil gave me for free! He sure is a neat guy!"
I hope that this will help sell the expanded edition by letting people who aren't familiar with my work hear me perform it, and I hope that it will create interest in the audio version I did with David. It may even generate sales of Just A Geek: teh Audiobook, but I don't want to get too close to crazy talk, so I won't count on that. Additionally - and this is really important to me - the people who don't want or can't afford the expanded edition, but already have the MP edition will have a chance to hear the stories that they're missing. This special edition wouldn't even be possible without those people, and this is my way of saying thank you. It's really important to me to take care of my customers, and I hope that this effort will convert unhappy people into happy people.
This plan was formulated in the middle of the night, when my brain wouldn't let me sleep and not even the pouring rain could drown out its incessant babbling, so I haven't worked out a release schedule yet. When it happens, I'll be sure to post about it.
Hooray for awesome news that is awesome!