The Button that Saved Us

My button pushing habit might finally have come in handy! Details inside.

Dec 11, 2023

Well, we did it!

The Kickstarter is fully funded, all credit cards are charged and now it’s time to get the books to their new homes!

That's the good news. But there's bad news too, and my scribe is sad about it.

What happened?

Well, Melinda got some bad news about a loved one. After a long talk with them about their options and what they could be done, she went back to working on Stars & Angels Sing, specifically the audiobook since it ended up being a larger project than we realized.

Then she had to pause that to record a podcast episode that was scheduled months ago. And that put a smile temporarily on her face. She and her guest had a great time chatting about books for 2 hours. So that was good.

Melinda ended the interview, went for a long walk as she does everyday with an audiobook playing in her ear, not Stars & Angels Sing because the traffic is kind of loud since the route takes her across an overpass that arches over 4 lanes of traffic, then along the highway.

But she’s well back from it since there's trees and a hill between her and it. If there wasn't, I wouldn't let her walk there and back again. I'm very protective of my scribe. (This is Ran, son of Sarn, from the Curse Breaker series. But I digress.)

So Melinda returned a couple of hours later with some groceries she picked up from the store nearby. She edited the interview for the podcast, wrote a chapter for Rogue Rescue since she has to write that book alongside Rogue Gods: Summon The Gods because there's an event that happens in both books.

So you get to see it from multiple points of view. But not every point of view is reliable or tells you the whole thing. You get parts of it from each person as they deal with a world- and time-ending conflict.

More on that developing story soon. But right now, we need to go back to my tale.

After that, Melinda posted the interviews (to Spotify and YouTube) and the chapter to Patreon. Then things went terribly wrong.

We don't know what happened, but she tried to backup the original files for the audiobook for Stars & Angels Sing to a new cloud storage account. Those files had all the narration and music separated so they can be edited individually.

Unfortunately, there was some kind of glitch and all the files disappeared. They aren't in the cloud or on her PC anymore. We checked the recycle bin and the folders where there lived, but they're gone. We can’t recover them. :(

But I love to push buttons to see what they do. And I was really curious about the audiobook making part of the process, so I might have pushed the add chapters to audiobook button in BookFunnel.

It might have opened a window and invited me to select the mp3 files I wanted to add to the audiobook. I might have selected them and hit okay. The window might have disappeared and pretty status bars might have populated the screen. I might have watched them crawl to the finish line then pushed the big orange button to submit the files and compile the audiobook.

So that’s how my fascination with buttons and my need to press every one I see might have saved the audiobook!

Melinda still needed to re-record some sections of the files again to make edits because the music and the narration are all mixed down in the mp3. So they aren’t separate anymore. But instead of weeks of work, that only took a few days.

But it what an emotional rollercoaster!

Melinda wants everything to be perfect, but perfection isn't an attainable goal when you have to do everything yourself. You can just do your best and be proud of what you accomplished.

I'm not sure she believes me. But I hope you don't let the quest for perfection overshadow what you accomplished.

Take pride in what you've done. There are people wishing they could do half of what you did. That's my words of wisdom for this week and maybe even this year. Now back to book news because I have that too!

If you missed the Kickstarter or you didn’t feel comfortable backing it, worry not. You can order your copy here, and it will be delivered when ready.

If you would like a copy of the paperback, please order by Friday so we can include yours in the first printing and get yours on its way.

What’s in the final copy?

I’ll have to tell you next week since I am trying to add more color images and stuff that I’ll be happy to talk about next week.

Melinda laid down the law this morning, so I have to make my final arguments and suggestions today because she’s finalizing the book.

And she won’t accept anymore inclusions after that point. So I need to go now. I have one more argument to make, and I’m almost ready to present my case to my scribe.

I’ll tell you all about it next week. I promise.

—Ran, son of Sarn, from the Curse Breaker series.