In a process that started way back in August of last year, the Tales of the Risen Tide audiobook is finally out, triggering the rollout of the book in all formats!

I’ve had a lot of questions about my approach to the audiobook, so I’m going to try to tackle some of them here.

Why create an audiobook when your book isn’t even out yet?

With the power of retrospect, I can see it’s not the ‘done thing’ – the self publishing industry isn’t really geared up for it. But it was always the plan and I wasn’t budging – here’s why:

When it comes to questions about the process of writing a novel, there are three I get asked most often: I’m going to devote three blog posts to answering these questions in the hope that I can point people here when they ask and give them a much richer answer than I could in the moment. Here goes the first:  How much planning do you have to do before you can start writing? None. Not unless you want it to

As any creative person will tell you, one of the most common questions you get asked (besides ‘when are you going to get a proper job?’) is ‘where do you get all your ideas’?

Confronted with this question often enough, you could fall into the trap of believing you are blessed with a special power. A unique way of looking at the world that allows these ideas to come to you (and only you). An inalienable ability that can’t be earned, improved, or taken away. It’s a very seductive idea – it requires very little work and it makes you feel special.

But like most seductive ideas, it’s a load of bollocks.

I hadn’t even left school when I fell for my first love. Infatuated with the extensive ‘behind the scenes’ content that came out of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, my oldest friend and I set about making an hour-long ‘medieval romantic tragedy’ picture, replete with horses, knights and castles. This was long before YouTube existed, so everything we knew (which wasn’t a lot) we had learned from watching and re-watching Peter Jackson and his merry band of Kiwi rogues.