I've produced my first audiobook!
Jovian Heat is now available on Audible thanks to their beta program for AI voice. It's surprisingly good.
I know AI is controversial, especially among creatives, but I was invited by Amazon to beta test its AI narrators and produce my own audiobooks. My first attempt, Jovian Heat, is a sci-fi noir set in Jupiter. I spent two days going through it, learning tricks to get the inflections right and having a lot of fun doing it.
The result is a narrative that is clean and easy to listen to. I’ll be honest: AI does not replace the human voice. I will not be producing anything Vern because the AI cannot reach his level of snark, for example. Others, I’m on the fence about. However, the narrative style of Jovian Heat worked very well for the AI reading cadence. I listened to this story three times before approving it. I hope the audiobook lovers among my fans will give it a try.
About the book
By 2867, we’d not only cracked our genetic code, but could stack the nucleotides like gods playing with toy blocks - yet we were still human, with the same noble desires to do what’s right at war with the basest needs of our Fallen state.
There was a storm brewing in Gravstead, but all Cass wanted was to go home, soak in a metallic bath and ride out the hormonal storm that affected every Jovian female, heavy and guppy alike. But when her old partner brings her a time-sensitive case involving a half-breed infant, she can't say no. Someone has to find the father and make him pay for the genetic resequencing to save the baby's life.
The only problem - the father died months before the child was conceived.
About the process
I have been dreaming of having my books in audio format, but since this is more hobby (that does not pay well), I’ve not had the spare cash to devote to hiring a good narrator. So when Amazon selected me for its Beta program, I was actually pretty excited.
I know a lot of people are upset about the rise of AI in creative disciplines. In fact, I’ve already had some pushback from fellow authors about my choice to try this program. But AI is a tool, just like Grammarly is a tool, or ChatGPT. I am normally behind the trend, so this time, I wanted to see if I could make it work.
I started with a Vern novel. No, nope, never. AI does not understand snark, and the few pages I tried were disappointing. However, one of the female voices had a kind of noirish sound to my ears, and Jovian Heat is a noir…
The voice was a great fit, and the narrative, while having some of the precision that only a machine can have, nonetheless had a smooth flow. In fact, there were times it sad something in a way I liked better than how I’d imagined it. That surprised me.
The AI controls allow you to change pronunciation, add pauses, and slow words. This gave me some control over the flow. I discovered I could also change the inflection of the word by altering how the AI pronounced it. That was cool. I took several hours on this novella, listening to it three times, often repeating sentences, and yet, but the end, I was still drawn into the story enough that I got a little teary-eyed in the right place.
I’m excited to try some of my other novellas and stand-alones, and maybe even Space Traipse. Who knows? If my audiobooks take off, I might be able to afford a human for Vern.
Excerpt from Jovian Heat
You can hear the AI by clicking the sample on the Audible page.
They say that if man were meant to live on Jupiter, God would have given him thicker skin and hydrogen-processing gills. That same “they” also said if man were meant to fly, God would have given him wings. Of course, by 2867, we’d not only cracked our genetic code, but could stack the nucleotides like gods playing with toy blocks. We gave ourselves wings or fins and gills and skins to suit any environment we wanted, and to hell with what God wanted. In the end, we could alter our bodies to suit, but we were still human, with the same noble desires to do what’s right at war with the basest needs of our Fallen state. God wasn’t letting us off so easy.
I sat at my desk with my feet propped up, staring out the window at the throng of life above and below me. The orange sky had taken on a reddish cast; the long-anticipated storm was coming at last, and while the meteorologists said it’d be a short one—only a couple of years—there were still whispers that Gravstead was going to be the next Red Spot. Looking at the number of movers on the flyways, I had to wonder if someone knew something I didn’t. Not that I could afford to leave.
A sudden gust knocked a group of floating Jovians into traffic. Vehicles swerved. One bumped an unlucky floater, who fluttered off in the opposite direction, shaking his fist. I imagined a few obscenities in honor of our planet’s namesake and his lovers were used.
I shook my head. Guppies.
When the geneticists designed humans for Jupiter’s environment, they fell into two camps. One wanted to create super-dense molecular structures that could withstand the incredible atmospheric pressures—the heavies. The other decided a more elegant solution was an inflated barrier between dense skin and the more delicate internal organs—the guppies, because the amusing result was that they float instead of sink like us heavies would. But floating or walking, we were all just trying to get ahead in this gaseous soup we called home.